Margins are tight, the cheaper is cold as ice and you have restricted budgets to worry about - accounting for every last cent is now vital if you are to speak or heighten on your return on investment (Roi) from exhibiting at trade shows. Watching the money and budgeting appropriately has never been more important than it is today in the current economic climate, so here are some ideas to cut your costs and heighten your Roi.
Negotiate a Deal with Trade Show Management
This applies no matter what the economic climate, but is very apt for driving down exhibition costs right now. Event administration want to sell space and the supplementary extras and remember, they are sales habitancy too - so let them sell you a deal you can't refuse!
Typically, trade shows are booked up a year in progress in many situations but that is not a universal constant and times have been hard across the board. Do your explore on which events are still open for applications to exhibit and see what the event sales team can come up with to get you onboard. Look to leverage taking space, or even taking more space against the cost of a sponsorship package, or a Vip presentation deal, sitting on a Q&A panel while the numerous seminars and presentations which are given.
Remember there is more to the cost of a show than plainly renting the space.
Share the Space, Share the Costs
You may not be able to cover the total cost of renting space, any way if you look for a partner who is in allied, but non-competing market, then you can feed off of each other in terms of dealing with leads but most importantly, in reducing the costs.
Taking on an exhibition partner involves more planning and greater organization, any way you are effectively halving the cost of exhibiting and yet will still gain entrance to as many attendees as if you had the whole stand to yourself. This will dramatically heighten your Roi if handled right.
Forget the Paper!
Most of the paper marketing collateral is not going to make it to the office of the attendee because they will plainly drop it in the trash. As much as 90% of marketing brochures are destined for the local landfill and yet they relate a primary cost item.
Prepare your marketing collateral as an email box or an online download and use this as a surmise for taking email addresses and opt the attendee into your marketing program.
Similarly, trade shows are replete with promotional giveaways which are utterly worthless and fail to accomplish basal sales and marketing goals. Instead of ordering more pens, t-shirts, baseball caps and stress balls, as a matter of fact think about how you are using your promotional giveaways and use less of them but in a more targeted fashion.
Cancellations
Many fellowships have booked space for the current exhibition season which was made over a year ago, any way economic fortunes have changed for many, many companies. This means some fellowships are finding to get out of the arrangement they made as they suffer from cutbacks and conclude to cut their losses by not attending the trade show.
Approaching trade show administration to see if there are cancellations will let you recognize opportunities which may be open but not widely publicized - after all, who wants to advertise that their enterprise is experiencing financial issues?
Trade Show Money recovery Ideas