I want to begin this post by reblogging Tom Teynor, The Lonely Marketer blog’s “Are Trade Shows a Waste of Time and Resources?” Tom makes some good points and has provided a template for measuring trade show ROI. I recommend every trade show organizer should include Tom’s article in the survival kit for your exhibitors.

Here is a short summary for Tom’s trade show template:

(Cost of trade show)

- Event sponsorship / Exhibition
- Transportation
- Travel
- Promotional gifts / collateral
- Resource costs (Time x salary)
- Customer meetings

(Benefits of trade show)

- Lead
- Public Relations
- Customer Relationship Development and Savings
- Promotional gifts / collateral
- Market Research Insight

According to this template, exhibitors can calculate the trade show ROI by subtracting the total cost of trade show from the total benefit and then divided by the total cost again. Tom also purposes 3 important metrics to measure the performance: (1) Advertising equivalence (2) Cost savings from customer meetings (3) monetizing brand impressions with speaking engagements. I like the idea of quantifying the show using advertising equivalence.

As a digital marketer I often advocate adding online to offline marketing practice for strategy enhancement. Here I’d like to propose some digital practices to boost further cost-benefit effectiveness for Tom Teynor’s trade show ROI framework.

(Cost of trade show)
- Event sponsorship / Exhibition

Allocate your sponsorship budget on the official event website. The online sponsorship period definitely lasts longer than the actual show period. Potential hits of the target audiences are certainly bigger than the number of physical visitors. Many trade show organizers have provided the virtual booth service, some even give this feature away as freebie. Exhibitors should take advantage of this online sponsorship option to maximize the return of the event marketing spend.

- Transportation / Integration with promotional gifts and collateral

To minimize the shipping cost, you don’t necessary to ship all the printed catalogs and brochures for the show. Consider setting up a couple of computer stations for your visitors to download all these materials. It would be even better to integrate/embed all these information with your promotional gifts. A handy USB memory stick will do the job nicely.

- Customer meetings

Setup video chat and web conference at your booth that enables your sales manager or product manager to virtually interact with the trade show visitors. The video conferencing technology is so common and low-cost today. Some organizers have been using it for hosting virtual buyer conferences during the show. If you are not going to send everyone to the fairground, why not having your own virtual conference hosted at your booth.

(Benefits of trade show)
- Lead

Nowadays the number of leads that you can generate via online should be more than offline. Besides, the lead scoring process is more effective to be handled digitally. Also your lead nurturing process is more likely to be done via email, etc. In every lead management aspect, you should always integrate online into offline practice to increase the utmost benefit.

- Public Relations / Customer Relationship Development

Tom Teynor talks about the benefit of press release coverage, exposures, etc. Actually you can leverage the trade show organizers’ online news distribution channel for better and wider publicity. Negotiate a deal with the trade show organizers for the inclusion of your press release in the electronic post-show reports. For something considered advance, plan a viral campaign using UGC – User Generated Content and CGM – Consumer Generated Media such as photo sharing, video, blog, etc. All these can boost up your PR if they are handled correctly.

- Market Research Insight

Exhibitors love to conduct product survey for collecting customer reference and measuring tendency. But again it doesn’t necessary to be conducted on the fairground. Using online survey or to setup some computer stations at the booth will handle the job effectively. I also recommend to negotiate a deal with the organizer to implement exit survey over the Internet. Something that allows you to conduct the survey right after the online registration. This gives you the best timing with great target intent for data collection.

By adding an digital companion to the offline trade show plan, exhibitors will be able to achieve better result on trade show ROI because the period of lead engagement is virtually extended, hence the size of the relevant reach has also been expanded. If exhibitors can justify the show with better ROI, then trade show organizers will also gain economic return from offering useful value-added digital service.

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