Setting up a trade show budget can certainly include a lot of thought, research and input. You must consider the key elements of a trade show budget and how to choose a reasonable budget that enables you to perform better and reach out, and help achieving your trade show goals. Your trade show budget should be in complete accordance with the objectives of your trade show participation and therefore, it’s an important piece of the trade show planning puzzle.

To consider all kinds of expenses related to your trade show, start working on your budget at-least six months before the trade show begins (if not 9 or 12 months prior). Most of your trade show budget would go into renting the booth space alone and 32% of your entire budget, on average (according to Exhibitor Magazine’s previous studies).

The next element of a trade show budget is exhibit design, graphics, shipping and show services. These items will all include all your exhibit design and layout needs for your booth, such as the graphics, display, shipping, labor, cleaning, power, internet and other maintenance and technological needs of the booth. Around 43% of your budget would go into all of these exhibit related items.

The final portion of a trade show budget are promotional activities, travel and other expenses. You can limit your travel expenses by booking in advance at airlines and hotels. Lastly, I always recommend an additional 5% -8% (or even 10%) as a “buffer” or emergency expense for unforeseen items or an emergency expense.

To help our clients easily plan their budgets, we’ve created a “Budgeting Worksheet” and “Budget Rules of Thumb”. Use the contact form below, to request a copy.

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CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, and the term is self-explanatory because all companies & organizations strive to meet customer needs and expectations. CRMs have been in use by organizations for years, but the actual term came into use during the advent of technology in business. Implementing a CRM system is the best way an organization has a chance at succeeding in this competitive era.

At trade shows, businesses get a chance to gain new leads, make new contacts and even sell their products & services to actual buyers. 86% of the people attending a trade show have the authority to purchase, according to a survey from CEIR.org. Additionally, they have found that 79% of trade show leads are never followed-up afterwards. This means that if you pitch yourself in the right way using a CRM system following a trade show, there is a high possibility that you will generate even more leads and sales.

Using the technology of a CRM system, to follow-up on leads can help you attain your long-term goals. Trade show leads can help you retain profitable customers & also find new customers. To follow-up on these leads, you need to incorporate a CRM system. Some CRM applications scan business cards and input contact information right from the trade show. This gives a company the chance to establish adequate customer retention strategies and communicate easily with new contacts. A cloud-based CRM system is especially helpful because it allows the entire team/company to connect on a single platform, enabling efficient exchange of company and customer data, from anywhere in the world, even at a trade show.

CRM systems convert your leads into sales through effective marketing plans. Pre or post marketing for a trade show can be easily planned by your CRM software using Campaign features. With just a few clicks, you are able to create effective marketing, easily communicate with prospects and stay top of mind to continue nurturing more opportunities.

If you are still using traditional means to follow-up on trade show leads, consider implementing a CRM system to help organize information, quickly follow-up with prospects and increase the potential of more opportunities for your business.

 

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It’s been 7 years since Skyline published the pre-cursor to this book, calledCreating Effective Trade Show Promotions. At the time, it was perhaps the most complete book ever made about how to boost trade show results through pre-show and at-show promotions. Yet now it’s become horribly out of date.

That’s because, during those intervening years, came along a little thing called social media. And trade show promotions would never again be the same.

Social media, once thought the potential death of trade shows, has become a powerful tool to reach, engage, invite, and inspire attendees to visit exhibitor’s booths. Exhibitors that once only had to mail, call, and advertise, now know they must also tweet, connect, and post, in order to reach trade show attendees who now exert far greater control over the media they consume.

This book contains 28 articles that have been published on the Skyline Trade Show Tips blog. Half are geared to trade show promotions, including areas such as selecting promotions, creating an invite list, pitfalls to avoid, details to watch for, and more. But in this era of established social media, there are also 14 articles about integrating social media with your trade show program. These articles give you guidance over how to tailor your messages, what social media sites to use, how to use specific sites like YouTube and Twitter, and more.

There are also three worksheets from Marc Goldberg, of Marketech, Inc., to provide more ideas on determining which promotions to choose, and how to execute your plan.

And while social media has changed how to do trade show promotions, it has not changed the strong need to do promotions overall. With about 400 exhibitors at an average trade show, and visitors only spending quality time at about 5% of them, exhibitors still need to excel at promotions in order to get those valuable visitors to move out of the aisle and into their booth.

Use the ideas in this book to your advantage, and get more brand awareness, attendees, leads, and sales from trade shows.

Get more of the right people into your trade show booth.  Request your free copy of the new book, Using Promotions & Social Media To Get More Trade Show Visitors, by clicking here.

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The goal of this new book is to provide booth staffers — and the people who manage them — better insights, tools, and ideas to increase their trade show results.

It’s a valuable and a much-needed goal, because there is a surprising disconnect between what exhibitors think about their booth staffing skills and the reality of what happens in their booths.

When we have surveyed exhibitors about what trade show topics they want to learn most, they usually put booth staffing way down the list, feeling that they’ve already mastered staffing.  At the same time, they offer lots of quick tips about how to staff a trade show booth.  Too bad most of their own staffers don’t follow their advice!

It’s possible to walk down the aisle of any trade show and see booth staffers that are desperate to be doing anything other than engage with prospects.  Too many exhibitors waste the lion share of their trade show investment by bringing staffers who don’t want to be there, bringing the wrong staffers, or by not providing adequate training and tools to help them succeed.

This 56-page book contains 34 articles that have been published on the Skyline Trade Show Tips blog.  Half are geared to increasing skills and perspectives of individual booth staffers.  The other half are for the trade show manager and trainer who must prepare their booth staff.   Some articles are broad views of what is involved in booth staffing, while others are deeper dives into key skills, such as engaging attendees, listening better, how staffers can better manage leads, how to measure booth staffers, and more.

We also have included two excellent worksheets useful for managing booth staffers, provided by Marc Goldberg of Marketech, Inc.

This may seem like a lot of info to digest “just” about booth staffing.  But there is so much riding on your booth staffers, as 85% of what attendees remember is based on them, and trade shows are still the top marketing spend for business-to-business marketers.

So make a commitment to excellence.  Read and implement the ideas in this book, and really improve the performance of your trade show program.

Improve your booth staffing skills and your booth staff team.  Request your free copy of the new book, Better Booth Staffing For Greater Trade Show Results, by clicking here.

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Welcome to The Big Time.

When you exhibit in an island trade show exhibit, you’re making a major marketing commitment. The costs are larger, the expectations higher, and the risks greater. But so is the potential.

As an island exhibitor you need to bring your A-game to fully realize your marketing investment. You’ve got a bigger booth to fill with an exhibit potentially as large as a house. You have a team of booth staffers to select and train that rivals a professional sports team. You have a budget large enough to catch the eye of your CFO. All eyes are on you, both at the show and in your company.

Make Bigger Better

Therefore, this book contains our most advanced insights and proven methods for all the key aspects of trade show marketing. We go deeper on areas such as booth staffing, exhibit design, measurement, lead management, and logistics. There are even articles written especially for the unique challenges faced by island exhibitors like you.

This book contains 26 articles previously published in the Skyline Trade Show Tips blog, and three worksheets from Marc Goldberg of Marketech. This book is one of three books in a series for exhibitors at different levels of trade show marketing skills. The three books are:

Trade Show Tips for New Exhibitors

Trade Show Tips for Inline Exhibitors

Trade Show Tips for Island Exhibitors

Get more results from your island exhibit. Request your free copy of the new book, Trade Show Tips For Island Exhibitors, by clicking here.

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The Versatile Inline Exhibit

As an exhibitor in an inline exhibit space, you have a lot of company. Almost all exhibitors exhibit in 10 or 20 foot inline spaces. For many exhibitors, a 10 x 10 backwall is the only space they take, and they want to get as much out of this square box as they can. Some exhibitors use 10 x 20 spaces when they want to stand out at their largest shows.

And for the largest companies in our economy, the inline booth space is what they use at their smaller shows, where they exhibit in regional shows or key vertical market shows.

But just because you exhibit in an inline exhibit doesn’t mean you can’t stand out, and it also doesn’t mean that you get a free pass, either. You have to do your part to succeed, and if you do, success is within your grasp.

Getting Big Results From Small Booths

This book provides includes articles to give you, the small booth exhibitors, the necessary knowledge and skills to execute key trade show functions, such as exhibit design, booth staffing, trade show promotions, lead management, and measurement.

This book contains 24 articles previously published in the Skyline Trade Show Tips blog, plus one worksheet from Marc Goldberg of Marketech. It’s one of three books in a series for exhibitors at different levels of trade show marketing skills. The three books are:

Trade Show Tips for New Exhibitors

Trade Show Tips for Inline Exhibitors

Trade Show Tips for Island Exhibitors

Are you an inline exhibitor? Then get your free copy of the new book, Trade Show Tips For Inline Exhibitors, by clicking here.

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Each year, the trade show industry seeks to find trends and more information about attendees. Several groups, such as The Center for Exhibition Industry Research, Exhibit Surveys Inc. and more, research & compile this information. The most recent stats have been published in Trade Show Executive Magazine.

Here are the most important to consider:

1.) 86% of attendees use face-to-face at exhibitions to become aware of new products, evaluate vendors for future purchase and/or narrow their choices to preferred vendors.(Source: CEIR) If trade shows attendees do not want to be at an exhibition, they would not attend. Therefore, most are there in search of a solution to a problem or an opportunity to gain. You have a captive audience and a limited amount of time to take advantage of this opportunity. Bring your “A” game.

2.) Executives cited conference & trade show participation returns ranging from $4.00 to $5.99 per dollar invested.(Source: Oxford Economics Business Travel Study; Oxford Economics, 2009) A return-on-investment of 4 or 5 to 1 is great in my book!

3.) To identify a potential custom at an exhibition, the average cost is $96.00; to identify a prospect by any other means, the average cost is $443.00. (Source: CEIR, 2009) There is an economic value to trade show exhibiting in addition to all of the marketing & brand benefits. The opportunity to quality or disqualify a potential customer by over 4x less is music to any accountant’s ears!

4.) 45% of attendees develop an emotional connection with a brand after interacting with it at a trade show. (Source: Exhibit Surveys, Inc., 2007) It can take years for consumers to develop emotional connections with brands. How often do you hear a colleague talk about an emotion connection with another business in the B2B world? Why not take advantage of a face-to-face opportunity at a trade show to elevate this process?

5.) It takes an average of 3.5 sales calls to close a sale with a lead from an exhibition, compared to 4.5 sales calls without a lead from an exhibition. (Source: CEIR, 2009)  A goal for any business is to find new business quicker and close the opportunity sooner. The result of trade show exhibiting is an opportunity to close business quicker and cheaper.

Many sales & marketing professionals underestimate the value of trade show exhibiting. I hope these stats will help you or your colleagues understand the potential benefits.

According to the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (ceir.org), 79% of leads generated at trade shows are not followed-up. This is a statistic you’d want to share with your CEO or CFO, so I’m challenging you to change this for your company.

Here are 3 things you can do to handle trade show follow-up:

1.) Create a closed-loop follow-up system. Once the show closes, who’s responsible for the leads generated at your trade show? The follow-up should be a joint effort between both the sales & marketing teams. Separate leads into categories, such as A, B & C. The A leads, maybe 10% of those generated, should be the priority of sale reps. The B & C leads can be matured by the marketing team through continued communication from your company. You can tailor this system to your needs, but regardless, all information should be tracked in a CRM system.

2.) Customize your lead card and combine it with electronic systems or badge scanners. Have you ever received a business card that said “Call this person on Tuesday.” or “Hot! Hot! Hot!”. A follow-up on this “lead” isn’t much more than a cold call. Therefore, be proactive and customize your lead card, so that booth staffers can gain the proper information for your sales staff. Knowing important information such as the prospect’s personality, buying cycle, pain-points, etc. will dramatically improve lead follow-up effectiveness.

3.) Do something different and stand-out from the crowd. Is it reasonable to think that all leads generated at your show will close into sales? No, probably not. At least not immediately. Take your group of A leads and do something different. If your prospect requested a brochure or catalog, invest in Priority Mail or FedEx overnight. This will capture attention and allow you to track the package, so you can touch-base accordingly. Perhaps you’ve invested in a premium promotional product which you send as a result of viewing a product demo or scheduling a meeting. Regardless your preference, make sure you do something different — how many e-mails or postcards will your prospect get after the show, remember and act upon the call-to-action? Don’t run with the pack, instead stand out from the crowd!