Hope everyone is having a spectacular holiday season, whichever holidays you celebrate. We will now resume the regular programming that was interrupted by puppies and Christmas.
Puppies and Christmas… wasn’t that the call to arms issued by a favorite television character a few years ago…. mmm. I know at least one of my readers will get this pop culture reference 🙂
But I digress. Today’s promised marketing plan topic is trade shows — how and when DO they fit into a marketing plan? When I began my career 20+ years ago (ouch), big annual trade shows were a large part of the plan. One big event per quarter (sometimes two), where you pulled out all the stops, booth, giveways, contests etc., was not unusual. This is still true in some industries, particularly business to consumer products on a regional basis, but for many B2B marketers, the trade show is far less a fixture in the plan than it used to be.
Why? Unless your product REALLY needs to be seen and is too cumbersome to ship out for trial — for example capital equipment like printing presses — trade shows often are not as cost effective as other tools at our disposal. With the Internet to provide pre-purchase information and all the options for fast shipping if a product does need to be sent out for physical trial, signing up for a big expensive trade show is far less attractive. If the product can be delivered through the Internet itself in a form acceptable to the buyer, trade shows are a very hard sell. In my opinion, that is one of the reasons for the demise of big computer shows like Comdex, and why I don’t think Internet World ever caught on. Too much money, too much investment of human capital and far too little return.
Now there are some exceptions to this phenomenon, even for computer products. Trade shows can still be an attractive venue if they are associated with an association meeting/convention. And I mean a real association meeting, with an active membership and a real education program that provides tangible value to the attendees. Big trade shows that stand apart from a real convention, even if they have the trappings of one, will not attract attendees the way the real thing does. Comdex. It started as a dealer show, morphed into an end user show, and eventually died (and IMO it was code blue for a few years before it was called.)
So trade show rule number one: unless a trade show is still the only option you have to show your product to potential buyers and dealers, make absolutely sure a BIG show is associated with an association meeting that will truly attract the attendees. [BTW, for these big capital products, the most popular trade shows do usually meet this criteria. Budget is ALWAYS an issue. In order to attract the big equipment manufacturers for whom drayage is a BIG BIG BIG expense, shows really need to pull the attendees, or the companies would find another way.]
Word of caution: affinity is not enough (example: Macworld) to develop a sustainable "big show." In my opinion, you must have an actual association connected to the show to guarantee the attendance, year in, year out.
In addition to the "really big show," there have always been a number of smaller shows, meetings and conferences to consider. Often held on a regional basis. These have proliferated in the past few years, even as the big big shows have somewhat declined. These may or may not be affiliated with an association meeting, and given that the investment is much less, it is much less critical as well. I prefer events that are affiliated but I have seen some good independent ones as well.
Here affinity and solid programming are often enough to get the audience necessary for a decent ROI. Your display, if any, is a tabletop that can be staffed by a couple of people. Sometimes, it is just a sponsorship — coffee break, tote bag etc. — with a corresponding lower total cost.
The audience may be small, but is usually highly selected. So the challenge here is to pick carefully, and sign up for the conferences that will actually deliver YOUR prospects. Don’t do a conference aimed at C-level executives if your principal buyer is an IT director. Yes, you want to talk to the C-level guy, but guaranteed, the conference isn’t the most cost effective place for you to do it. The president of the prospect company may be interested in meeting your CEO, but she doesn’t want the sales pitch.
So my trade show rule number two is look for these smaller, more targeted events. If you can find the right audience for your value proposition and you have adequate staff to work the show, they are an excellent addition to the marketing plan. However, no matter how cheap the event is, if you can’t give it sufficient resources, both promotional and staff, I still say, don’t bother. It is not worth doing if you aren’t going to do it right.
And that is our final rule: whatever you decide to do about integrating trade shows into your marketing plan, make sure you allocate sufficient resources to do it right. It is better to stay home and figure out another way to reach your targets than to go to a show and look like shit.