In mid-June we returned from the largest trade show in our industry, the National Apartment Association Education Conference & Exposition. This show represented months of prep, thousands of man-hours, and hundreds of thousands of dollars investment. I really do love planning, promoting and attending these events, but as I decompressed from the show I wondered if the return could possibly be worth all that investment.

The fun part of my trade show job as a marketer is now over. Now comes the hard part— proving out the investment. Trade show ROI is notoriously difficult to quantify. Piecing together the right metrics and measurement strategies can sometimes take months to accomplish, but if you know what you are looking for it can be possible to prove trade show effectiveness.

The first thing that I want to determine is if trade shows are even worth our time. Currently 89% of marketers say that trade shows hold some level of importance and value to their organization, but only 31% say that they are vital¹. In fact 40 percent of companies are cutting back on big shows in favor of more targeted gatherings, and 44 percent are choosing to host their own events such as the 2nd Annual Property Solutions Summit (sorry I couldn’t help myself). So, is the trade show world slowly dying like it showed a few years ago? Actually the opposite is true. According to the Center for Exhibition Industry Research² the trade show industry has grown consecutively over the last nine quarters and is projected to continue to grow through 2015. So, if trade shows are valuable and growing in our industry³ then we had best be ready to make sure that they are providing a good return. Below are a few tips to make sure you are getting the most out of your events.

Lead collection

Collecting leads can be done a variety of ways, from lead cards to badge scanners and so on. The key to making these leads count is to ensure that the proper follow up is taking place. Be sure to utilize all the tools that you have available within your CRM  to make sure that the leads are being nurtured according to their needs. One mistake that I have been guilty of on more than one occasion is to just send out a mass email blast to the list of leads following a show and hoping that the sales team takes if from there. Making sure that leads are tagged properly and accounted for can make a huge difference in tracking the ROI from your show.

Customer management and tracking

Many of the leads you get at a show are not new to your system. In fact, the majority of the leads you collect at your booth may be current customers. Tracking and tagging current customers can take considerable time, but the payoff can be substantial. Obviously it’s impossible to assume that if a current customer increases their wallet share with you that one single trade show was the root cause of that increase. There are many factors that come into play in these types of decisions, but it is great to be able to track the factors in the decision making process to find trends over time. I suggest going back to your CRM not just once, but quarterly to track revenue and incremental growth from various event tags. Put it on your calendar now so you won’t forget in October.

Booth activity and social media presence

Counting the number of attendees in your booth, the number of brochures that you give away, or the number of social media mentions during shows is nice to know but it doesn’t give you all that much insight. What could give you substantial insight is tracking the number of engaged meetings and demos that are given, tracking the number of attendees engaged in interactive portions of your exhibit, and tracking those social media posts of attendees that you interacted with. Using these numbers divided by the money spent on the show will help you set a benchmark for the revenue that should be attributed to each show.

Competition

Don’t let the history of your competition dictate what you do at an event. A few questions you may want to ask during a show could be:  How did you stack up against your competition? What type of traffic did they have at their booth(s) at specific times? Did you see any mutual customers at their booth? What did you learn about their products, customers, sales tactics, etc? Answering a few of these questions will help you tell a better story and provide a higher level of service to the attendees that visit your booth the next time around. Remember also that just because your competitors attend a show doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to be there. Be sure to follow your own internal ROI rules for previous shows in order to determine event effectiveness.

Those are just a few of the ways that help me determine the ROI of a trade show. Obviously it’s impossible to gather all that information within a few weeks of the show. But, by the time rolls around next year to budget for that same show we should have the ammo needed to determine where to spend our money, where to cut back and useful benchmarks to track effectiveness year over year.

 By: Coby Rich

1http://www.successfulmeetings.com//News/Research-and-White-Papers/Marketers-Struggle-to-Prove-Trade-Show-ROI,-Study-Shows/
2http://www.ceir.org/article?id=92
3http://www.naahq.org/news/2014-naa-education-conference-exposition-draws-record-attendees