Four
Simple Ways to cut your Tradeshow Marketing budget in half
- By Mitch Tarr
Many times when a trade
show is planned for there isn't someone who watches the budget and
tracks where the money goes. But, if you do want to know where your
trade show marketing dollar goes and want to do better, this article
is for you.
You should track each expense and when you show is over hold a quick
review to discover how much you spent. You might be surprised at
how things add up.
Here are four simple
ways to make your trade show marketing budget count. If you can
reduce your show spending a losing show might suddenly be worthwhile.
1.
Track your deadlines and discounts.
Look
at your show agreement and see where you get discounts for making
early commitments. A better way to look at this is the premium you
pay for not being well planned. You'll see a deadline and a price
before the date and an increased price after the date. You'll see
yet a higher premium for getting a service on the day of the show.
Keep
good records of the discount deadlines and don't miss any. That
will ensure you minimize your surcharges.
Keep
special track of your shipping costs and ensure you have time to
ship ground and still make your setup deadline.
Good
planning will really be worth your while and can save you easily
25%
2.
Review your booth size.
As your
company grows its trade show strategy you may be tempted to move
up to a larger booth. You may even be tempted to take the show discount
(see point number 1) and take a bigger space next year. Event managers
will encourage you to do this but beware!
Take
a look at your show results. Then consider what happens if you had
two times more space. Would you get twice the traffic to the booth?
Would there two times as many qualified prospects than if you had
a 10 x 10 space? If the bigger booth doesn't deliver a bigger result,
you could skip the expense and focus on the marketing program instead.
3.
Be ruthless on your giveaway budget.
Show
giveaways can really eat up a show budget is short order. Often
you will be focused on the item selection and not the role the item
plays in your sales process.
Consider
the difference in cost between a thousand items you give freely
to people passing by your booth and the cost of an item given to
your top one hundred prospects.
By focusing
in on giving quality to your prospects your will remove the risk
of overspending on your giveaway budget.
Make
it pay.
4.Skip
the expensive brochure or handout.
One common
error is to simply bring along a large quantity of your current
color brochure stock. There will be no loss of people willing to
take a $4.00 brochure from your hand as they walk by.
You see,
they are being polite. What happens if you meet a thousand polite
people?
Keep
your corporate brochure at home and work with a small product brochure
or a custom postcard with a show special and a reason for them to
keep it after the show.
(Custom access to a website or a product discount works pretty well)
You'll
spend less and get better results.
Bonus
tip.
Review
your shows.
If you attend more than one show in a year, list your shows, (with
your results) and look really hard at the lowest performer.
It's
possible that the show may not be as relevant but you stay in regardless.
If you are not getting the results from the show, you can let it
go. You're not giving anything up.
Spend
your time to replace this show with another, more targeted, higher
performing show or just use this trade show marketing money on another
marketing project.
None
of these concepts are revolutionary or will change the face of trade
show marketing. You will however do better by demanding a better
accounting of your trade show dollar.
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