Investing in Trade Shows • Trade Show Staffing • Trade Show Etiquette • Logistics and Shipping • Brainstorm

Chasing the Elusive ROI
Pay your money and take your chances--unfortunately, that’s the bottom line for many companies that exhibit at trade shows. The vicious cycle goes something like this: Decide on a show. Pay for the rental space, expenses for staff, freight, the exhibit, and other accessories. Get on a plane, do the show. Hope to get leads. See a few clients. Get on a plane, go back to the office and do some “real” work.

When was the first time you heard of these companies—GE, Ford, IBM, Honda, AOL, Sony, Google, Kentucky Fried Chicken, or Amazon.com? Some of these are old-line firms, some are new. Chances are you heard of them because they developed their name as a brand name, have pervasive advertising, marketing and sales—and have learned what works and doesn’t work in getting people to buy.

Do these big firms do trade shows? Of course. Do they rely on shows as their only marketing outlet? Of course not. A trade show is a compressed experience and it should never be a one-time experience as in “I see your company at the show and I never hear about it again.”

Remember, trade shows are not isolated marketing events. They should be integrated into all of your marketing efforts. So, chasing the elusive ROI—return on investment—for a trade show can be difficult.

Here are tips to track ROI:

How do you measure other marketing efforts?
Do you just mail everybody, or do you have a system for direct mail and response tracking? Do you cold call everyone or have you segmented your potential market and developed a sales strategy? Yes, trade shows are different because you may have less control over who visits you, but there has to be a system in place before you attend a show.

How much promotion before the show?
If you’re introducing a new product at the show, what is your lead time for promotion? How many inquiries does this promotion generate before the show versus after the show?

What’s your purpose at the show?
An opportunity to get publicity, to market the company, to sell a particular product, to recruit partners or employees? There are various measures other than sales to use in determining success at a show. For example, you can measure by samples given, by the amount of trade press received after the show, the number of applicants who actually became employees, the number of license agreements signed within a year. Planning for all of the functional benefits that a trade show can deliver gives you a better sense of the impact a show can have on your company and your bottom line.

Who follows up?
Do you personally contact people within 10 days? Or is the lead from the show passed through a number of hands before it reaches the right agent or salesperson? The farther the distance and longer the time frame, the less likely the lead will be contacted. What is your system for reporting on the progress of the lead?

What’s your sales cycle?
Trade shows shorten the sales process because you pass the totally unknown prospects and the cold call process. If your sales cycle is usually three months from qualification to completion or an order, a trade show lead should close in that time frame or less.

The secret?
Unless you are a brand new company with a brand new product, you never advertise and only do one show, there’s no definitive way to determine your return on investment on just one show. Does that mean you can’t find ROI for shows? No. It means you have to plan, track and follow up.

Consider trade shows to be targeted marketing which allow you to get closer to the client in a faster and more trustworthy fashion.

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