5 reasons why you are wasting your resources at trade shows

Trade shows are the only place where you have the opportunity to meet face-to-face with prospects who have both the time and the interest to listen to you.

No other marketing or sales activity allows you to do so.

Yet, exhibitions are the most time and money consuming of all promotional activities and for most companies, trade shows are a complete waste of resources.

1. You are not prepared

If you believe you simply need to show-up at your trade show booth on the event's day to generate new business, think twice.

Trade shows require a lot of thinking and efforts to be well-prepared. How long do you give yourself to plan your participation? Two weeks? One month?

Wrong again.

To be efficient and really get a positive return on investment, you must start planning AT LEAST 3 months in advance, 6 to 8 if you can.

There are a million things to think about: booth location, booth decoration, furniture, carpets, electricity, lighting, samples arrangement & placement, staff hiring & training, marketing collateral, booth promotion, follow-up strategy, logistics & shipment, plane tickets, hotels, and the list goes on and on! Do you believe all that can be (properly) arranged within a month? Not a chance.

Take your time and equip yourself with a complete checklist (you can read one of my past articles "Checklist for a perfect trade show") if you don't want to be overwhelmed and miss essential aspects of your organization plan.

2. You overspend

You are most probably on top of your personal expenses because you know yourself, you know your habits and you can predict your expenses and income.

But can you show the same confidence when it comes to trade shows? Are you budgeting all the expenses coming from the various elements mentioned above?

Trade shows expenses don't stop at the booth rental: in average, renting a booth represents less than a fifth of the total cost of such event. If you don't budget correctly you lack visibility and end-up overspending.

Let's take an example: if you do not plan early enough the logistics of your equipment, you will end-up paying air-shipment instead of land one - the price is definitely not the same.

Your very first step before confirming your participation in a trade show is to budget your future expenses and estimate the viability of your project.

Extra tips: keep your budget sheet from one event to the next, it will save you a lot of time and mistakes to refer to your past exhibitions.

3. You waste time 

You waste time at every stage of the event.

You waste time when planning - there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Stick to an existing checklist and follow-it step by step.

You waste time at your booth - your sole duty at the show is to talk to visitors and capture qualified leads. You are not there to chit-chat with low-potential visitors and you are definitely not there to do some admin work, taking pen&paper notes after each discussion - upgrade your strategy and go digital! Scan business cards, tick boxes to qualify leads and do not write long sentences that waste as much time to write as it will to read.

Arrange meetings ahead of time: each minute you spend in your booth waiting for visitors is wasted. Inform your prospects and setup appointments to make the best of your investment.

You waste time after the show - reading notes and business cards to transfer them to excel while it should have been digital from day one.

4. You don't follow-up

Did you know that 80% of the leads captured at trade shows are never followed-through? This is the direct consequence of poor lead capture and poor planning.

And if you follow your leads 10 days after the event, you are simply wasting your time. Think about it: an average visitor talks with tens of exhibitors, visits hundreds of booths and sees thousands of products. What are the chances he would remember you 10, 7 or even 5 days after the event?

Be fast! Have a follow-up strategy in place before your event, pre-write your emails so you simply need to customize them a little before sending. You should follow-up all leads within 48h, and not with a generic email but with a customized message.

But your job as a sales doesn't stop here: make use of a CRM, set reminders, control your sales funnel and be on top of your leads until converted into customers.

5. You don't track your results

You couldn't imagine paying thousands of dollars in Adwords campaigns and never tracking your results, could you?

You wouldn't spend tons of money making and promoting a video and not track its impact, right?

Yet, you have no problem spending an even larger budget and countless working hours in a trade show and never really track your results.

Cost per Lead, Gross Revenue, Total Investment, Total Leads Captured, Conversion Rate, ROI (Return In Investment) are more difficult to track at trade shows than through online advertising, yet it is possible to get these figures with the right discipline and there are essential to intelligent data-driven decisions.

Set individual targets for your team members, track results, organize debrief meetings post-event, 3 months and 6 months later and review the results.

Only that way could you be sure of your results.

Are you already doing all that? Congratulations! You're part of the rare minority of people who really own their strategy. 

If you don't, it is never too late! Start planning, budgeting and managing your event correctly today and increase your results dramatically - trade shows are an amazing marketplace full of opportunities and all it takes is some discipline to make things happen. Take the test "How efficient are you at trade shows?" and share your results with us!

If you need any help in managing all these aspects, visit myfairtool: we offer a solution that will guide you through this process and provide you tools to make it easier. You have more important things to do than planning everything yourself, get the help you deserve and focus on growing your business instead.

Julien Rio.

Author of The Trade Show Chronicles.