Back in the crazy “dot com” days, one of the many (really wrong) prevailing wisdoms was that trade shows were going the way of the dinosaurs since there were these great new web meeting services around like WebEx.  The prevailing wisdom was that technology would eliminate the need to travel and actually meet face to face (heaven forbid) with other people.

As with most of the dot-com hyperbole, this was a very shortsited conclusion.  The fact is that meeting face-to-face with people is much more than a way to convey words, it’s actually a critical element to successful business relationships and creates something that no “virtual meeting” can accomplish.   Just a few of the advantages of “real” (vs. virtual) meetings are:

• face-to-face interactions build lasting relationships between people
• face-to-face interactions provide a much higher degree of credibility and comfort than virtual meetings
• face-to-face interactions show that your business partner has a strong interest in the relationship (i.e. activities that actually take some effort show committment!)
• face-to-face interactions are much better at selling tangible products

In addition, trade shows have many unique benefits that are uniquely powerful:

• They provide instant credibility to any business (if you do a professional job)
• They allow you to meet with many new prospects in a very small amount of time
• They allow you to meet with hundreds or thousands of exisiting customers face-to-face with only one roundtrip plane ticket
• They provide a venue for sales meetings,  new product trainings, and other company meetings
• They provide a great way to get feedback on new products and services in a very small amount of time
• They’re a great way to meet with trade press
• They provide a great networking opportunity with suppliers and other potential partners
• Just a few closed deals can usually pay for your trade shows and your ROI can be in the 300% ++ range if you carefully track leads all the way to closure.

These reasons, among others, are why the trade show industry has rebounded so strongly from the dot-com crash.  In fact, attendance at tradeshows continues to grow.  According to the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR), attendance at exhibitions increased 13.5% in 2Q07 compared with 2Q06. 

So don’t miss out on your next industry show.  Your customers are there and you should be too!

 p.s.  Interesting insider note:  WebEx, which was historically one of the better technology marketing companies out there,  actually exhibited at a lot of trade shows - which is probably one of the reasons they acheived market dominance in their sector.

Hello and welcome to my trade show marketing blog.  This blog is designed to share what I’ve learned in my 25+ years in various Marketing positions at companies both very large (HP, Xerox) and fairly small (OnTime software, Vibrance Networks).  Although the focus of this blog is trade show marketing, I’ll cover the complete marketing mix including product marketing, strategic marketing, and other areas of outbound marketing and lead generation.

I hope that by sharing my experiences I can help you avoid mistakes and do some things better than your competitors and maybe impress some customers and your boss (if applicable) along the way.

Best regards,

Mike Weimar
President
Impact Displays