Imagine this, you and your team have spent many months (and let’s not forget the dollars) preparing for your trade show exhibition. After the event your exhibition team tell you they “had some great conversations” or it “it felt good”, yet when they return to the office there weren’t as many conversions as you had hoped. 

Trade shows are a big investment of your time and money, so it’s vital that you have the tools in place to measure the success of the show (not just the say so of your sales team).

How you measure success comes down to what are your unique company goals. Everyone has different goals but rule #1 is making sure that you have clear goals and KPI’s set for the event.  Otherwise you could end up tracking the wrong things or not enough things to really get a clear picture of what went on, especially when it comes to goals around developing prospects and brand awareness.

On Your Stand

When you’re working your display you don’t really want to have to keep a tally system just to keep track of your conversations or what products people are showing the most interest in.

Ensuring that you have successfully integrated technology working in the background tracking the important stuff, will mean that it’s easy for staff to collect the data and that it doesn’t interfere with the visitor experience at your booth.  There are lots of tools out there you can add to your artillery to help out your success, but our advice is always to pick a few that you can guarantee commiting to using. 

Knowing Your Funnel

Next step is knowing how will prospects (new or existing) enter your funnel and be nurtured.

This is largely dependent on the systems you already have in place, but you want to make sure that whatever technology you use works together. Whether it’s making sure that your on site touch screen solution can link data captured to your CRM system or lead scanners that can help score leads and then target them with personalised marketing. 

Whichever systems you use the key is to measure the same thing every time you do a show. Consistency in measuring is important so that you can start to benchmark and see what worked and what didn’t work at each event. 

Post Show Metrics

Don’t just look at the data from the show but make sure that you adopt best practice and track beyond the event, as this is where a lot of conversions happen (especially for B2B companies). 

Consider looking at:

• click-through rate
• email open rate
• new customers gained
• lead-to-sale conversion rate
• cost-per-lead
• web traffic

Company’s who don’t track are often the ones who come to us and say that trade shows haven’t worked for them before or are too much of an expense.  The companies who are tracking their numbers properly, have a good strategy for attending, and know that the return they get from the show exceeds their costs so they do it anyway.

 “It costs 38% less to close a sale through a tradeshow than in the field”

(Ref: Exhibit Surveys)

They recognise that sometimes closing that sale takes place 3, 6 or 9 months after the event but they only know this because they are tracking it!

Want help creating an effective strategy for your next exhibition display? Contact us today and see how we can help integrate some processes to help you get the most from your attendance.