Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

I presume you are already using some kind of lead scoring system which you can use to track the ultimate conversion rate of leads from different shows and different sources.

Beyond that, there's a wealth of information in the book, "Trade Show and Event Marketing," by Ruth P. Stevens. If you haven't been through that book, it should be at the top of your reading list. Link here: https://amzn.to/bnl7AI

And Ruth Stevens is a terrific consultant on this topic. You'll payout her fee after the first trade show.

Hi Jason,

Great question. Actual conversion from tradeshow leads to purchases is very important, and it indeed includes the quality, not just the quality of leads - check out how Avaya did so in the case study for wwww.itsnotsizedata.com. I find return on investment assessments especially useful for the non-essential spendings on "booth designs, space rental, logistics etc." As to the essence of participating in the tradeshow in the first place, it is also important to consider its strategic role for your company. Despite my best attempts at quantifying the payoff of marketing actions, some spending items are just 'needed to play the game': they put your firm on the map for prospective customers, boost the morale of your employees and retailers and make later sales efforts more effective ('our company is a key player in this market, as reflected in its success on tradeshow X).

Thus my proposed compromise: tell your sales people you are open to being convinced, challenge your sales people to demonstrate for each tradeshow (1) how many leads that ultimately purchased were generated, (2) how they use the tradeshow attendance in their later sales efforts and (3) what the company would loose by cutting spending on this trade show by half.

My prediction? you will end up with a lot fewer trade shows, on which you might even increase spending to obtain better results. Overall tradeshow spending is down, sales success is up, both you and your sales people are happier, and your company makes more data driven decisions

Here I think the tail is wagging the dog. It's my belief that trade shows are about generating awareness of products, goods, and services through marketing, demonstration, and visibility.

I'd challenge the sales team to list reasons for these events being "must do" events. By all means let's ave opinions, but let's have them being VALID opinions.

Let's have them being INFORMED opinions that are backed up by "reasons why"—I'd want to hear the sales team telling me: "Based on A, B, and C (industry data), we expect this trade show will increase our leads by X%, which will lead to X% new business inquiries, which will lead to Z% in long term sales."

I'd then expect to see a five solid reasons like this and then that they have and are prepared to execute a workable plan that makes the predictions a reality. Challenge them to show you "Here's our desired outcome, here's what we expect, here's how we're going to make it happen."

it is definitely challenging to assess the impact of trade shows. I had a client who ran a tradeshow years ago, and he quoted a statistic that the average purchase related to a tradeshow visit occurred nine or more months after the trade show. This sort of delay makes measurement difficult.

Everyone today wants to measure results, and certainly we need to try. But we also need to be careful. When you measure something, you change it. Let me give you one quick example. Suppose I work for a company carefully and diligently attempts to measure the source of all leads. Suppose I have a choice between working on two equally qualified leads: one which I developed myself, and another from a tradeshow. I would be smart to drop the tradeshow lead and work on my own lead, so that I would demonstrate my value and contribution to the organization.

Another problem: if some bean counter is visibly hostile to trade shares, and is the mandate to see results, as a salesperson I would ignore the primary purposes of trade shows and work instead to identify one or two immediate opportunities. this may satisfy the bean counter in the short run, but it will reduce the results from the tradeshow in the long run.

If I were in your situation, I would take a close look at my industry. I would identify my company's primary competition and I would compare my tradeshow presence with theirs.

I understand telemoxie's point about comparing your tradeshow presence to that of competition. After all, if you want to be seen as a market leader, you can't very well come off as a cheapskate by taking a minor spot at a major tradeshow.

On the other hand, tradeshow expense can get out of hand and do some terrible damage to your marketing budget -- and challenge top management to question the ROI of the entire marketing effort.

When one of our clients faced this dilemma several years ago, we found some trade-offs that we negotiated with Sales. These were things like whether it was more important to have a large booth in prime location at show #1 or to keep participating in smaller shows #2 and #3. This got the idea across that we were going to reduce trade show spending, but that we needed their input and priorities in order to do it in the least painful way (for them).

It worked very well, and we did it again in 3 out of the next 5 years, eventually (a) reducing tradeshow spending by about 40%, and (b) demonstrating that cutting back didn't necessarily destroy Sales credibility or decrease high-quality leads..