By Paul Mathers.
One of the most common questions I’m asked at my exhibitions (perhaps the most common), is “What are the numbers?”. They are of course asking about exhibitor numbers, to which I reply, “What’s a good number?”
I’m not trying to be glib with that response, but it redirects the conversation around personal perception of success rather than an inaccurate metric that is not truly tied to success at all.
Exhibitions are all about bringing together an audience that is relevant to the brands exhibiting. Unless you are a big brand who wants to get in front of as many people as you possibly can regardless of conversion to sales, then visitor numbers are a poor proxy for exhibitor ROI. There are so many other ways to measure the value of your investment.
1. The uncounted cost of not exhibiting – and this is a big one. If your competitors are exhibiting and you are not, they gain invaluable access to a pool of potential buyers that you have no access to. Forgetting sales on the day, what is the ongoing cost to your business, of losing customers to your exhibitors for the long term?
2. Audience quality – the higher the quality, the more engaged they are, the more likely they are to convert into customers in the mid-long term
3. Lead Capture – it’s an obvious one these days, but what is the value of those leads? They certainly will be targeted, so if you were to obtain these another way, what would that cost? And once you have them, what are you doing to follow up with them and keep them engaged? How do you keep the conversation going?
4. Access to the customers of other brands – an expo gives you access to the already engaged customers of other aligned and non-competitive brands. Exhibitions bring an entire industry together, and only by exhibiting, can you reach that expanded audience.
5. Attributed ROI Vs influenced ROI – Say you generated $20,000 in sales at the show. Don’t stop measuring your success there. What about the $100k pipeline? The 15,000 product interactions? The 3 media stories? The 5,000 social media engagements? The 200 new qualified prospects? All that can be used to convert further sales over the next 6 months or more.
6. Brand awareness – did people know about your brand before? Do substantially more people know about it now? Did you have engaging conversations? Did you build connections and trust?
So, perhaps the better question isn’t “How many people came?”, but “What did those people do for your business?”.
What other measure do you use to determine whether an exhibition delivered a worthwhile return?
Paul Mathers
Paul is a highly experienced commercial event executive with more than 30 years’ experience building, launching and growing successful consumer event brands across Australia, the United States, United Kingdom and Southeast Asia. His career spans business leadership, P&L accountability, strategic partnerships, sponsorship, revenue growth, brand development and team leadership. Paul has led multidisciplinary teams across sales, marketing, operations and event delivery, while developing commercially successful events in the automotive, lifestyle and pet sectors.
His achievements include leading some of Australia’s foremost consumer events, delivering multiple EEAA Award-winning exhibitions and building internationally recognised brands in highly competitive and diverse markets globally. Connect with Paul through LinkedIn HERE
