Recently an exhibitor told me that he would be happy with his show investment if he recouped his expenses.

Why would anyone undertake an activity that cost time and money with the hope of breaking even?

Exhibitors are often short sighted. They measure results on what they walked away with rather than the potential that may develop from their show activities.

In some cases the difficulty in measuring results is due to a lack of clearly stated objectives. Show objectives give your exhibit purpose. It has been reported that nearly 70% of all exhibitors do not state clear, purposeful objectives.

Another problem is that shows are often viewed as business anomalies. For many marketers, when it comes to shows, all great business principles go out the window. To calculate your ROSI - the return on your show investment you need the answers these three questions 1. How do you establish your ROSI? 2. How do you track information? 3. How do you calculate your ROSI?

Establishing your ROSI

Every exhibitor is different, so choosing the right approach means stepping back and seeing the big picture. How does a show fit into your overall marketing plan?. Marketing options are chosen with the company’s mandate, the product life cycle, budget and availability in mind. Exhibiting should stand out in the marketing mix as something special.

Weigh shows against all the marketing events your company uses and you will find that shows shorten your sales cycle and therefore deserve an important place in your overall marketing mix. How much, depends on how you plan to measure your ROSI.

Here are three common methods: 1. Percentage increase in booth activity from previous show.

One method many experienced exhibitors use to measure ROSI is the actual increase over the previous year’s results. This could be direct sales, qualified leads, attendance at in-booth activities, or customer inquiries. For example, if your last show cost $10,000 and you obtained 100 quality leads, then your cost per lead is $10.00. If you spent that same $10,000 at the next show, you could reasonably expect to receive similar results. However, you should be looking at some improvement. Will each new lead cost an additional $10.00 to get? Probably not, since you can take advantage of economies of scale. You might say that next year you want to get 200 leads and will invest $15,000. You will accomplish this by better booth hardware, increased promotion, new products and so forth. Your average lead cost has now dropped to $7.50.

2. The number of existing or new prospects who actually stop by the booth

Booth traffic may be a reasonable way to measure your ROSI, but not any traffic. It’s no feat creating a booth that attracts every visitor that passes by. The real talent is creating a booth that attracts the people you identified as your target. It is a rare exhibitor who wants to talk to everyone. Your booth people can then track the visitors as a measure of ROSI.

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