trade shows

There is plenty of opportunities to grow your business when you sponsor and exhibit at a trade show. Both big companies and small companies can show and tell attendees your new products, move prospects through the sales funnel, and gather feedback from your current customers.

What can be difficult for marketing professionals is determining how to measure trade show effectiveness.

According to statistics, 93% of “face-to-face” marketers feel “hopeful” or “optimistic” that trade shows are effective as a marketing medium. The second largest source of U.S. business-to-business revenue is trade shows. Over 90% of attendees for a trade show say that they are looking for new products.

If you think trade shows are highly beneficial for your organization, and you want to prove it to your leadership and colleagues, there are ways to measure trade show effectiveness. We will tell you about them shortly.

What is a Trade Show?

A trade show is essentially an exhibition event. It brings together companies and lets them show new products and services to attendees. Attendees can be members of the trade or other businesses in their vertical.

Many industries have trade shows where sponsors can build buzz and excitement around their brand. They can bring key players to collaborate and learn about new trends. It is an excellent venue for capturing new customers.

Trade Show Tips

If you are looking for a positive trade show ROI, you must be resilient, creative, and organized. How much work you put into a trade show will ultimately determine how successful you are in the end. Here are some tips to help you.

  • Plan well in advance.
  • Prep your sales team and your executives.
  • Schedule meetings pre-show.
  • Actively promote the event on social media.
  • Provide giveaways and swag at the event.
  • Use a badge scanner to capture leads.
  • Afterward, debrief the teams and follow up.

For companies, trade shows are a tremendous investment. Follow these tips for ultimate success.

Measure Trade Show Effectiveness

Trade shows are events that can drive sales leads and revenue. Just like any other marketing tactic, there are ways to measure trade show effectiveness. Here are a few ways to help your team measure the impact that trade shows have on your organization.

Count Strategic Meetings

The more strategic meetings you have, the more influence you will have on revenue. Trade show ROI is a big concern for marketing professionals, so they want to maximize the number of meetings that get scheduled.

There may seem like a fine line between the success and failure of trade shows and events. That is why opportunities and leads that can be tied to a meeting scheduled are critical to show your team’s effectiveness because of a trade show.

Influenced Revenue

Fulfilling many requirements, strategic meetings will allow for confidence, validation, and building trust. It allows for informed decision-making. The more meetings your team has, the more it will shorten sales cycles and influence higher revenue.

When your salespeople increase their number of strategic meetings, it will help advance a deal faster. This contributes to increased revenue. This means that when setting measurable targets, you can use a metric such as “revenue-generated-per-meeting.”

Average Deal Size

When measuring trade show success, you cannot always measure it by deals closed, but by revenue targets. You want to focus on the opportunities which facilitate bigger deals if possible.

Unfortunately, you may find that bigger deal sizes have a lower success rate. They may even take longer to close. That is why you want to have an average deal size to help show the prospect types and point them to a deal based on their buyer persona.

Resources Used

When creating your budget for the event, the booth and meeting space are the biggest components. You want to assess and assign the meeting spaces based on the needs of the meeting managers so that you pay for what you need.

You will want to account for more than scheduled meetings. Consider ad hoc meetings and walk-ins too.

Many companies will choose to send their executives to a conference for meeting with prospects, hoping to build relationships and lend credibility to the business. Often the presence of the C-suite will shorten sales cycles.

The rest really depends on resources being used appropriately. Your on-site C-Suite should take high-priority meetings as a part of their schedule. This is to maximize impact.

When you analyze meeting resource utilization, you can find how effectively the budget is being leveraged. If there are ways to benefit from further investment, you will have the insight you need. You can also find things you don’t need, too.

Meeting Effectiveness

Scheduling meetings is great. Converting them to opportunities is even better. Another way to measure trade show effectiveness is to highlight those on your sales team who are effective at closing deals.

It is important to know your sales representatives’ strengths and weaknesses. You want to know if an individual can benefit from further training. You also want to know if you should reassign representatives to a different sales cycle phase.

How to Measure Trade Show Effectiveness

You want to speak to revenue generated at each event in the end so that you can justify the expense. However, it is not necessarily easy to attribute the returns.

It is critical to implement an approach from the beginning that is metrics-driven. This is a starting point. When you can prove above-average results from a trade show, you can show that the investment is an excellent investment.

This will encourage your leadership and help them consider increasing the budget in the future.

Put Your Business on the Map

With trade show publications, search engine marketing, managed SEO campaigns, email marketing, and social media management, Source Group will help you put your company on the map. We have over ten years of experience and over 5,000 active clients.

If you want to know how to measure trade show effectiveness, put your trust in us and we will help you with modern digital marketing tactics and traditional ones, too. Contact Source Group today and learn more.