Wednesday, March 12, 2008

At the Exhibitor's Show, Day 3: Selecting the Right Shows

If I come away from this show with nothing else, it will be Ian Sequeira's recommendation to use the ROI Toolkit. Cool stuff, Ian. Thanks. To quote Ian:

"Go to www.iaee.com and about halfway down the page, sign in to use the calculator."

Can't wait to try it out. My colleague has some numbers we can plug in from her trade show program and try this out. It was the key point in Ian's explanation of his process of how to choose shows.

Basically, his process is 5 steps:
  1. Put together a full understanding of your company's markets, products, strategies, marketing goals and objectives
  2. Get customer and prospect feedback
  3. Search trade show industry sources and develop a universe of shows
  4. Interview organizers and exhibitors at your target shows (there's that word again)
  5. Do your analysis and make your decisions (like that's easy--he did say this was the hard part)

There's obviously more to it that this, but these steps are a beginning.

One more thing: traffic density is a really key element in deciding. Look over his formulas and let me know what you think.

Lesson learned: you can never collect enough data.

TTSG

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