Exhibit of the Month:
To Show, or Not to Show
This might sound like strange advice coming from an exhibit company, but not every firm really benefits from frequent trade and consumer show exhibition. We hope you don’t faint from surprise when we add that some companies shouldn’t go to shows at all.
Don’t get us wrong. There’s no substitute for the face-to-face contact with potential clients that can be found only on the show floor. However, the decision to invest in this type of marketing should not be automatic. Your company should only participate in shows where it has verified that the attendee demographic is a good fit for its marketing and/or public relations goals. It should also have a detailed action plan for maximizing its trade show participation -- just showing up isn’t enough.
Here are a few things to consider before making your decision:
1. Can I be sure about attendee data? Unfortunately, promoters sometimes “pad” or “massage” their attendee demographics to make themselves more attractive to exhibitors. Therefore, it’s a good idea to do some of your own research. Call exhibitors who you know attended the prior year's show and ask them what they thought of the show. Also, stay abreast of the latest news about the tradeshow industry. Trade Show Week and Exhibit City News are two outstanding resources. Finally, if you have the budget, consider hiring a consultant to provide you with a cost-benefit analysis. A little expert advice never hurt anyone.
2. Are you sure the exhibit will be ready on time for the show? You’re probably fairly sure that you can get something together in time for any show you’re seriously looking at, but that’s not what we mean here. As we already said, just showing up doesn’t cut it – you have to look at several factors.
For starters, you need to have enough staff members available to properly man your exhibit and you need to drive enough traffic to your booth to give them something to do. You’ll need a strong pre-show marketing effort (usually via direct mail, e-mail, and print advertisements). Once you’re at the show, you’ll also need to be prepared to do just about anything you can think of to get bodies to your booth, including special events, give-aways, and having personnel hand out flyers on the show floor
3. Will the show be a cash generator? Answering this question might seem like a daunting proposition -- requiring maybe three MBAs, an Economics Nobel Prize Lauriat, a crystal ball, and possibly a magic wand. Fortunately, it’s not that hard -- you can make a reasonably educated guess about whether your participation in a particular show will be profitable by working backwards from the desired result.
Let’s say, for example, that your total costs will be about $100,000 for your exhibition at the ‘07 MegaWidget Expo. Now, let’s say that your company makes $25,000 in gross profit from each MegaWidget that it sells. So, you need to sell four MegaWidgets to break even on the show and one more than that to be in “the black”.
To get those necessary five sales, you can start with a reasonable expectation that about one-percent of the visitors who pass by will actually stop at your booth and show some interest in your product. You know from your research that the show attracts 200,000 visitors and about five thousand of them will likely walk by your booth’s location. So, using a ten-percent expectation and a strong, attention-getting booth, you can be reasonably hopeful that those five thousand walk-bys will turn into five hundred visitors.
Now, if five percent of these five hundred anticipated guests actually need a new MegaWidget in the near future, you will have twenty-five potential orders. If you can convert twenty percent of these into actual MegaWidget sales at the show, you’ll have made the required five new sales and, if you work extra hard and are very lucky, maybe one or two more for good measure. Not a bad result – and that doesn’t factor in the goodwill you’ve created, the potential for repeat business, and the contacts you’ve made that should turn into more purchases in the years ahead.
So, in this case, the answer to the “to show, or not to show” question would be “to show.” Now, all you have to do is to turn all that theory into reality. It’s not easy, but successful exhibitions happen every day.