Automechanika is a global exhibition brand owned by Messe Frankfurt. With 14 trade shows spanning four continents, it stands as the leading international platform for the automotive aftermarket industry.
Automechanika Birmingham, held at the NEC Birmingham, welcomes 511 leading brands from 23 countries and hosts over 14,400 attendees across three days. While the Automechanika brand reaches an international market, in 2023, the Birmingham edition aimed to expand its exhibitor base to attract more international exhibitors to its UK event.
Alex Jones, Marketing Director, explains:
“Growing our international exhibitor audience was one of our key event strategies in 2023. Being part of the Automechanika global portfolio allows me to learn from our international event teams and identify opportunities for our Birmingham event.
Upon analysis, I discovered that many Automechanika teams run localised exhibitor promotional campaigns, creating marketing materials in languages that engage with local businesses in key target regions. To date, we had only produced our sales material in English, assuming that because we were a British event, companies wanting to do business in the UK would respond to our international marketing in English. Instead, my marketing colleagues used localised messaging translated into the local language and experienced better engagement.
While I recognised the opportunity, I was hesitant. Budget was a key factor, as producing high-quality sales brochures and accompanying sales materials in multiple languages would require investment. Additionally, sourcing a language partner whom we could trust to translate the language around exhibiting and our industry could require a significant amount of time and additional resources.
TranslateAble was recommended to me by an industry colleague. They immediately became an extension of the Automechanika marketing team and quickly understood our objectives. Their event experience means they are incredibly intuitive and asked the ‘right’ questions without requiring a huge amount of handholding from my team.
I was impressed at how affordable the pricing was, and the quality was impeccable. Even our local event teams reviewed the copy and were impressed by the 100% accuracy.
The results were amazing. We saw an immediate uplift of 35% in exhibiting enquiries from target countries, which filled the pipeline and resulted in us welcoming exhibitors from five new countries to the show. The ROI on this project has been significant, and it was easy for our team to point to this as a real ‘movement in the needle’ moment.
I can highly recommend TranslateAble as a language service partner to any exhibition organiser looking to draw more international audiences to their event. Their industry experience is incomparable and really takes the pain out of potentially challenging projects.”
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