trade show marketing

Your first question may be why am I focusing on a Trade Show Marketing Strategy? I have to work on the actual trade show!  Won’t the trade show marketing strategy take care of itself?

Unfortunately it will not.

People get so caught up in the the logistics and the design of the booth that they forget that this is just one huge marketing tactic. And we all know that all tactics need to be guided by a solid marketing strategy.

Especially one that takes such a huge outlay of time and money.

Look at it this way.  Let’s say you have a modest budget for a show, say 10k.  Let’s assume it is a 3 day show and you have 7 hours a day.  Out of that you have 21 hours of actual show time on the floor.

Multiply that out and you have 1260 minutes on the floor.  Now if you divide the $10,000/1260 m you get $7.93 a minute that this marketing is costing you.

That is pretty expensive. Not to mention the cost of the people you have working the show, travel meals, opportunity cost, etc.

Shouldn’t you maximize your ROI?

Much like any strategy, this is a physical manifestation of your goals and objectives for an individual trade show.  It lets you know where you are going right and when you need to correct.

This gives your team an idea of where you are going.  It should be shared and used as a training document for all of the staff attending and supporting the show.

It illustrates to upper management that there is a plan, and proves an ROI for events and for you. Best of all this is customizable for you and your team, and will work for huge shows to smaller niche ones.

Want to download our trade show marketing strategy guide? You can get it here.

I have gotten push back from C-level on why we need so many people on the trade show floor. If you have ever organized a trade show you probably have as well. That’s why we created a trade show calculator.  The push back  usually sounds like this….

What are they doing?! Just hanging out and eating dinner on the company?! They should be out doing (insert whatever they should be doing). 

This is my response,

You are making a huge investment having the show to begin with. The concrete alone costs thousands of dollars. Yes,it is an added expense to have good coverage. But know this.

Working a trade show booth is hard work that requires concentration and alertness.

You have to be on and going for every minute of your time there, or you may lose out. You are standing on your feet for hours. ( I buy all the pad they will give me and it still excruciating). People need breaks in order to have a high-level of alertness.

If your people aren’t at 100% how much is that costing you?

Your employees are hopefully meeting with prospects which takes them off the floor, they are pushing people further down the sales funnel.

But that can still be a tough sell.

So I created this tool to help you back up and the number of booth attendees you need. Notice, I did not say want, how many people you need.

Get the Show Attendee Calculator

Now you can back up the number of attendees with math.

And guess what? It is adaptable. For different industries and different setups and different shows.

If you are in an industry that has product you are displaying you can manipulate the square footage. You can change the expected visitors.

You can make this tool your own and win those arguments.With Math! My hated enemy. My usual response to math is,”I am in marketing you do the math.” But now with the help of this handy-dandy tool you don’t have to!