On Tuesday October 20th I was a webinar co-presenter with Skip Cox of Exhibit Surveys.  The webinar was hosted by The International Center for Exhibitor and Event Marketing (www.iceem.net) and the topic:  The Spend Decision Part II – Work Smart, Spend Well.

Skip is a wealth of knowledge especially on the topic of trade show ROI.  For those of you who do not know, Skip along with a IAEE Task Force, CEIR and funding from the PCMA Foundation created the free ROI Tool Kit.

The webinar is available via an archive if you are interested.  There is a modest fee and you can check it out here.

In the presentation there is a statistic I want to review.  He had a slide entitled -  Exhibitions Are Down…. But Not Out.  The key metric for me on that slide was the measure of “audience quality”.   Exhibit Surveys benchmarks this on a regular basis.

Let’s look at these numbers which show the “Attendee Value” for a trade show.  This is the perception of the survey respondent and their view of trade show attendance.  In the questionnaire, Exhibit Surveys had fields of 1) extremely valuable or 2) very valuable for respondents to check.  These numbers below reflect those top 2 categories.

Attendee Value

• 2006   63%
• 2007   67%
• 2008   70%

The numbers have increased over a three years period, even though 2008 we were in a recession!  Skip states:

As is typical for recessions, attendance is hit hardest and as expected industry-wide there are meaningful reductions in attendance volume that will likely continue.

More important, however, Exhibit Surveys’ audience quality benchmarks in the recession year of 2008 generally remained at high 2006-2007 levels and the perceived value to attendees of exhibitions actually increased to an all time high of 70 percent in the recession year of 2008.

The research shows that the audiences who attend trade shows deem them to be important and a valuable step in the selling process.  From his White Paper, Looking Past the Recession, he states:

This data suggests that while budgetary pressures within organizations will naturally reduce travel (and also defer buying plans) the reductions so far would appear to affect mostly lower tier attendees. Key people in the purchasing and specifying process who truly value and utilize trade shows are still being sent to them, a finding that as 2009 opened, bode well for the industry.

To obtain a copy of this valuable White Paper, go to www.exhibitsurveys.com.

We are in the fall trade show season and my question to you – are you prepared for the buyers who are walking down those aisles?  They have check book authority and are looking for solutions.

By: Joyce McKee for Let's Talk Tradeshows.