How To Pick a Tradeshow Or Expo For Exhibiting
How To Pick a Tradeshow Or Expo For Exhibiting:from Business 2 Community
We want to start exhibiting this year and have found five different shows we think would be a good fit for our company. Some are national and some are smaller regional shows but we only have the budget to do one or two. How do I know what is the right show for my company to exhibit?
Depending on what your goals are you may want to exhibit at a national show or start with a regional or local show. Regional and local shows tend to be much less expensive than national shows. A local show may cost only $500 to exhibit while a national show can run starting at $2500 for just the 10 square feet of space. If you are looking to expand your sales efforts beyond your regional area then, of course, the national show is for you. But if you don’t have the resources to follow-up on leads across the country then as tempting as it is to go with the national show, you may be wasting your money.
You also want to make sure the attendees of the show match your demographic. If you know your sales team needs to call on senior level executives and middle management attends the show you are looking at, you may want to think twice. You need to decide if exposure to the decision influencers, not the decision makers, is worth the expenditure. Every show should provide you with audience demographics. It’s important to find out if they use an outside auditing company for their data. You don’t want to take the show management’s marketing department’s word for who is attending the show. What you may get is inflated numbers as well as inflated demographics. I usually recommend a company attend a show before exhibiting to get a lay of the land. This gives you a chance to see who is there first hand, what topics are hot, is there good show floor traffic, and find out from other exhibitors how productive the show is for them.
If you are trying to decide between two or more similar shows, you will want to create a spreadsheet so you can compare apples to apples. Some shows offer a lot more bang for your buck when it comes to PR and marketing help. Don’t base your decision solely on price. A less expensive show may not provide the important extras a more expensive show does. Check for availability of pre-show promotion opportunities (direct mail or electronic), a media list to help with your PR efforts, new product showcase options, and lots of formal networking events.
Also check to see how extensive are their exhibitor listings. Some shows offer only the basics, your name, address, phone number and website. Other shows offer the ability to post video, product information sheets, pictures, extensive summaries, white papers, brochures, catalogues, etc. If these extensive listings are available you can level the playing field a bit more. Often bigger companies are so tied up with procedures they rarely take advantage of these offerings. Possibly a case of too many cooks in the kitchen.
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