How Did We Go? Measuring Your Exhibition Success
You may feel pretty good about how your brand did at the last exhibition or tradeshow. Maybe you met a lot of new people and everyone seemed receptive and eager to learn more. That’s a great thing, but it doesn’t tell you anything concrete.
You must do research to determine if you truly were successful. This is vital to maximising your ROI (return on investment) and improving your approach for future events.
Outline Goals before the Event
How you can measure success if you don’t have guidelines set from the start? You need to create a list of specific goals for the event.
You may want to make more direct sales or increase the number of leads in your database.
Or perhaps you are looking to strengthen customer relationships or raise brand awareness.
Other possible goals include:
- generating media coverage
- market testing products and;
- recruiting new partners and/or distributors.
A list of goals is important before and after the event. It should be used to make important decisions about your marketing materials, exhibition stand and artwork as well as how you interact with attendees.
Afterwards, these will be key areas to focus on when evaluating the results.
For more about goal and objective setting see Setting Goals & Measurable Objectives
Rate Your Leads
Exhibitions are very good ways to increase leads. If this is your focus, make sure you have a detailed rating system in place. This can be customised however you like based on your goals and needs.
For example:
You could use a letter rating approach:
- A could be “hot” leads that made large purchases or are ready to buy.
- B could be really warm leads that made a small purchase or have potential to become long term customers.
- C might identify leads that made small purchases but are less likely to make a large purchase in the near future.
- D could be reserved for leads that only requested literature or some kind of follow up without a purchase.
No matter what system you use, having a way to break down leads will allow you to identify the overall quality of the leads generated at the event.
Long Term Goals
Exhibition success doesn’t begin and end with the event. Some companies continue to measure results long after the event through follow ups.
Consider including this as part of your monitoring system to determine which events are better for producing long lasting results and higher profits for your company.
3m Stands ----------- 6m Stands ------- Island Stands ---- Modular Stands
