Trade Show Reporting

Throughout the business world, companies are scrutinizing marketing budgets more than ever. However more and more, they are doing so with a broader value perspective – not by simply looking at numbers. They are looking at things like the total lifetime value of a client, and they are paying more attention to non-tangible value items such as brand awareness.

In order to keep your trade show budget in tact (and maybe even expand it in years to come), it's important to follow up your trade show with a Trade Show Report. Trade Show Reports should be multi-faceted, and contain hard numbers, observations, recommendations, and estimated lifetime values.

Each company will have a different set of values for their customers, but here's an example of items that a business-to-business company might report.

	Trade Show ROI in Dollars (estimated if no orders were taken at show)
	Trade Show ROI in New Customers (number of new clients as result of show)
	Estimated Annual Value (consider referral ratio, repeat sales annually)
	Internal Observations (include feedback from booth visitors about your booth, products, services, pricing, overall impression of your company)
	External Observations (include feedback about competitors, new or competing products, overall business climate)
	Show Observations (include feedback about the show itself – number of qualified attendees, show flow, booth traffic)
	Recommendations (would you do this show again and why?, if highly valuable, would you look for other similar shows to add?, new/improved product recommendations, booth and staffing recommendations, etc.)

Taking a step back and getting all of these important items on paper is invaluable come budget time and when it comes time to plan for next year's shows.