Today we’re talking about trade shows - that necessary evil! As much as we live in an inbound world (especially here at Quintain where we provide inbound marketing services), the fact of the matter is the vast majority of the world still lives in an outbound marketing world. And trade shows are a huge piece of that.

Kathleen had one of our clients ask her the other day about combining inbound marketing with outbound marketing - something which she wrote a fantastic blog about not too long ago. Even if, like us, you’re a huge advocate of inbound marketing, you can’t be so wedded to one approach that you become unwilling to include others.

In fact, there is a big place for outbound marketing in inbound marketing than you might think.

This topic is very timely, since our team is getting ready to head to Boston for INBOUND, HubSpot’s annual conference. We’re going to be up there September 8 through September 11 and we’re really excited to once again bring a big group of our marketing team to the show and watch their faces light up with inspiration.

GENERATING LEADS AT TRADE SHOWS

This stat blew me away: “98 percent of exhibitors collect leads at their trade shows.” Okay, that is not so surprising, but: “Less than 28 percent of them actually measure the results of those leads.”

Are you guilty of this? You go to a trade show. You come back. You’re exhausted. You have this stack of buisness cards just staring at you on your desk. One day goes by. Then two days go by. Then three days go by. And you never follow-up with them. Or if you do, it’s such a small portion of the people you connected with.

But it’s still a huge waste of money (and sales and marketing resources). Trade shows represent a significant expenditure when it comes to marketing budgets. But what percentage of companies do we think actually measure the ROI of their trade show participation? I say less than half.

Kathleen says the number is even smaller.

She often hears from clients and prospects that it’s a given they will be participating in trade shows. In the past, we had one client in particular who regularly exhibits in five or so trade shows a year - including international trade shows, which drives the cost up even higher. They probably spend $150,000 on trade shows, easily.

We ran a pilot project with inbound marketing for them. The pilot project cost $21,000 and lasted for three months, and it was designed for them to test out and see what kind of lead generation they could get through inbound. Those kinds of pilots are very difficult and we very rarely do them, as there is quite a bit of set up involved to get an inbound strategy up and running. This makes getting results in three months really tough.

Despite the difficulty, we were able to get them 70 new, qualified leads that met their criteria of what they were looking for and were not a part of their database before. Nonetheless, they are still questioning whether or not that investment in inbound was worthwhile. And if you multiple that and annualize those numbers, you’re looking at close to 300 new qualified leads for the year, which is probably nowhere near the number of leads you’re getting at a trade show.

HOW TO MEASURE THE ROI OF A TRADE SHOW

It’s annoying, because somehow trade shows slip by the budgeting process. It’s assumed. It’s something that everyone does. “Everyone is at the show, so we need to be at the show!” It’s about checking the box. But does anyone really measure the success of these trade shows? And if they measured, would they still do it? How much are you paying for each of those leads? And are those leads any good?

I love when the trade show organizer tells you, “The attendance is going to be 20,000 this year!”

Here is a little calculator to use: In that pool of 20,000 attendees, somewhere between 20 and 50 percent of those attendees are likely to be exhibitors, suppliers or other team members from those exhibiting companies. Others will be your competitors. Only around 10 percent of the attendees are likely to be actual prospects that fit your pipeline needs. So if you’re going to a show that has only 2,000 attendees, you’re looking at 200 meaningful people you want to talk to.

Now, it sounds like we’re beating the hell out of tradeshows. The bad ones should be beaten up, because they’re not helping businesses. That said, there are trade shows that do a great job. So what we want to focus on is how to get the most out of those trade shows as an exhibitor, a speaker or as an attendee. Because there are strategies that you can implement for all three of them, which can make the time you spend on the trade show floor more valuable.

The other thing to keep in mind is that there are smaller companies out there who think that since they can’t afford to be an exhibitor or a sponsor at these shows, or they aren’t a speaker, the only value these trade shows hold is for them is networking. That’s simply not true. It’s a faulty assumption.

BUT FIRST, LET’S TALK ABOUT EXHIBITING

Companies spend so much money exhibiting. As the sales guy, I’m going to a trade show to exhibit, and the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to sit down with my marketing team and ask them, “Okay, so what’s the plan?”

The plan itself should have three parts:

1. What are the plans for activities before the show?
2. What are the plans and activities during the show?
3. And what are the activities we’re going to be implementing after the show?

Most people mistakenly focus almost all of their effort on what they’re doing during the show, but the real opportunity is before the show even starts.

This is where there have been significant changes in what marketing companies should do. It used to be that you would get an excel spreadsheet that was emailed to the marketing department of an exhibitor containing a list of the attendees. But truth be told, they could be a list of attendees from last year, and the company just assumes the list won’t change.

Now we know of some people who would take that list and begin calling them prior to the trade show to set appointments, etc. Talk about a flawed strategy. If your marketing team is proposing that as your pre-show strategy, you need to have a heart-to-heart with them, because that’s just not going to get it done at all.

WHAT TO DO BEFORE THE SHOW

So what’s the solution? The goal of any trade show is engagement. You’re not going to sell anything to them at the show. You want to engage them and qualify them. You want to have meaningful conversations, and you want to start those before the show. A trade show that does a great job of this is HubSpot’s INBOUND conference.

If you’re going to INBOUND, odds are you know about the hashtag #INBOUND15. You can do a search on Twitter and see attendees, speakers and other people talking about the conference. The marketing for this event recognizes that there are opportunities for people to connect before the show, so they have provided a way to nurture these communities of engagement.

However, as Kathleen rightly points out, INBOUND is not really a trade show, but rather it’s a conference. There is a difference, but there are sponsors exhibiting there, and most big trade shows do also have hashtags or LinkedIn groups. For example, a true trade show that we attend is the ASI Show, and they have an ASI Trade Show group on LinkedIn. It’s all about finding those hashtags or LinkedIn groups or forums where you can begin that conversation in advance.

WHAT ABOUT DURING THE SHOW?

That’s what we would do as an exhibitor before the show, but what about at the show? During the show, you’re going to need a differentiator - something compelling and interesting. And quite honestly, we have done trade show strategies for years, and they can be something simple. One we did awhile ago that was a big hit was a “Relax” station. We had warm hand towels, much like you would get in the first class cabin of an airplane.

This was not for us. For many years, we developed experience-based trade show strategies for Sodexo, because our belief was that no one is interested in the typical 10”x10” booth with the backdrop, and you’re giving away candy, and someone is trying to say, “Hey, come here! You can have this koozie or this bag!”

That is so tired and so boring. We wanted to give people a different reason to come into the booth, and then we would strike up a conversation.

To go back to pre-show activities for exhibitors for one moment, Kathleen shared one strategy that really worked well for her. When we went to one of the ASI shows, and one of the exhibitors was Maui Jim sunglasses, she received an invitation in the mail to visit their booth. In that invitation was a sunglasses cleaning cloth that had printed on it something like, “Come to our booth. We have a special gift for you. But you have to bring this cloth to get it.”

Instead of a keychain or something along those lines, when she presented the cloth, she was told she could pick out any pair of sunglasses she wanted - “It’s yours!”

Fast forward a year and a half later, I remembered them when a client of ours needed a broker gift for an event in Boston. I sold them on a Maui Jims package, and Maui Jim got about a $45,000 order from us. Talk about ROI!

The last thing as an exhibitor that probably less than one in 10 of you are doing, are the metrics you’re using after the show to capture the leads and the return on that spend, so that you can know quantifiably whether or not you should attend a show next year. (We have tons of templates for just this purpose - see below!) At some point, someone is going to ask you this question, and you need to be able to answer with hard dollar results.

WHAT IF YOU’RE A SPEAKER?

Kathleen speaks regularly at conferences and trade shows. In fact, she’s speaking at INBOUND this year as part of the Partner Track for other marketing agencies. As a speaker Kathleen has found there are plenty of opportunities for lead generation. Here are the little tricks she’s learned:

• Do not honor requests to send your presentations in advance, unless you’re contractually obligated to do so. Instead, build a landing page with a conversion form, and require attendees to fill that out to get your presentation. You can provide the link to the page on your slides and let people know that they can download them right there in your session.
• Offer something more to anyone who fills out your conversion form and requests your slide deck. For example, a downloadable toolkit containing an ebook, checklist, template or other helpful tool. 
• Find and connect online with fellow speakers. Send them a LinkedIn connection request in advance of the show, and be sure to customize your invitation with a note explaining that you are both speaking at the same event.

YOU’RE NOT A SPEAKER OR AN EXHIBITOR. YOU’RE AN ATTENDEE.

As an attendee, how can you generate buzz? We’re a big fan of guerilla marketing. In fact, I have a little hijinks planned for the upcoming INBOUND conference. Guys, if you’re attending, if you take a photo of what we’ve left for you in the men’s room - it will be very obvious, you won’t be able to miss it - and you can tweet it to @Quintain using the #HeSaidSheSaidPodCast and #INBOUND15 hashtags. If you do, we’ll send you a little swag!

RESOURCES FOR TRADE SHOWS

• Trade Show ROI Calculator (Single Show)
• Trade Show ROI Calculator (Multiple Shows)
• Trade Show Lead Capturing Form
• Trade Show Lead Scoring Template
• Trade Show Evaluation Matrix

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