Trade Shows - Branding or Demand Gen or Waste of Time and Money? - Marketing WTF?
I attended a really impressive SiriusDecisions Summit about a year or so ago. At the time, I remember being baffled that the respected analysts advised B2B marketers to budget for trade shows in their Corporate brand awareness bucket instead of in Field demand generation because trade show leads just didn’t generate high ROI. I had always considered advertising and SEO to be key to brand awareness whereas trade shows were all about the leads.
Don’t get me wrong, I have become increasingly disillusioned with the quality of leads produced at most of the broad industry events. But, there are always very focused, high quality trade shows that produce very lucrative leads.
Late last year, Sirius posted the results of a survey of over 1,000 buyers and, once again, they rated trade show marketing as the least effective way of engaging with B2B buyers. Yet another Sirius report from last year indicated that trade show leads were among the costliest and least effective of all marketing tactics. Yet, new research shows that B2B Marketers are dividing their Field marketing budget as follows:
- Tradeshows: 16%
- Tele-prospecting: 13%
- Email: 13%
- Live events / seminars: 10%
- Webinars: 9%
- PPC Search Marketing: 5%
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): 4%
- Other (direct mail, associations, online, etc.): 30%
What this says to me is that Trade Shows have become a “necessary evil” for B2B Marketers. While none of us look forward to being on our feet for 3 solid days of insanity, we feel like we must have a presence at these events to keep visibility high and be there for those buyers who are shopping. And, there is nothing like a trade show to generate geographically targeted leads for the squeaky wheels who feel their Sales territory is in need of an influx. It keeps Sales happy whether or not the leads ever turn into revenue.
Unfortunately, with research data that shows Sales ignores as much as 74% of all leads from B2B Marketing and only follows up on 10% of trade show leads, this is an enormous waste of time and money. So how can B2B Marketers make the most of good trade show leads, or confidently say “no” to an event that may or may not produce qualified leads?
Making trade shows work in the marketing mix requires a commitment to actively engaging trade show attendees, encouraging word of mouth, capturing contact information, and systematically processing each and every qualified lead generated at these events. And, that means tenacious phone follow-up to identify other members of the B2B buying cycle.
Most importantly, it requires B2B Marketers to track the ROI of each event over the course of time. Only with objective evidence of trade show KPI, can Marketers invest their budget wisely and defend their decisions to exhibit or not to exhibit.
6 Responses to “Trade Shows - Branding or Demand Gen or Waste of Time and Money? - Marketing WTF?”
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February 13th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
I’ve seen that statistic before: “Sales ignores as much as 74% of all leads from B2B Marketing and only follows up on 10% of trade show leads.”
As incredible as that seems, it should come as no surprise to anyone who is familiar with B2B sales organizations. Depending on the industry, as many as 60 to 80% of companies have no documented, institutionalized sales methodology nor any of the processes that would comprise that methodology. That would mean that have no process for managing leads, whether they come from a trade show or any other source. (Many don’t even have a formal qualification process, for example, which results in all sorts of problems including missed forecasts, wasted time and money, and a sky high cost of sales.)
The sad (and regretfully old) news is that sales lags most other departments within companies when it comes to process, measurement and accountability. Accounting? Think GAAP. Manufacturing? Think just-in-time, or lean or the Toyota Production System (TPS). You get the idea, I’m sure.
Many of us on the research and analysis side (who have had careers in sales) see the root of the problem being the first line sales manager, who was most often promoted from the role of best sales rep. Not only aren’t many of them formally trained in how to manage sales people, but they often don’t have the correct DNA to transition from winning deals mostly due to their personalities and personal selling skills to the discipline and left-brained thinking required to be an effective manager.
And the executives that sit above sales and marketing are responsible as well. It’s their job to insist that sales and marketing are aligned in their purpose, strategies and delivery of results. It’s they who hire sales VPs that can’t get the job done.
There is a lot of work to do for all of us who work with sales and marketing teams.
Dave Stein, CEO, ES Research Group, Inc.
February 13th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Another point to consider is how these leads are segmented and defined by marketing before handed off to sales. If there is a disconnect, this can lead to a “perception” that certain type of leads are less valued then other.
Rather, does the company have the ability to qualify and score the A/B leads before handing off to sales? And if so, what nurturing program is in place to build the remaining leads before they are handed over to sales?
For example, my company segments webinar leads based on certain criteria on the registration form and post-event survey. One critical question is if the person is interested in hearing more about our solutions. Right there, we already know that 1) this person is qualified and 2) receptive to hearing about the solution - hence a top lead.
The same process can happen with tradeshows. It’s just setting up the criteria BEFORE you go to the show and getting buy-in from sales. When marketing and sales are speaking the same language and understand the process, this gulf will narrow.
And of course, truly measure the ROI of shows.
Note: my company is a webcasting company and helps companies with corporate and marketing program, such as lead gen.
February 14th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Thanks for your perspectives. I agree with your thoughts on Sales. Many Marketing organizations do not have the measurements in place either. I am one of the fortunate few Marketers with a Sales team that tracks their progress with leads. This was driven by our VP of Sales and has only improved the lives of both Sales and Marketing. We now know exactly how many leads it takes to drive meetings and sales.
As for leads segmenting, it’s a wonderful thing and should never be ignored. For NetQoS, we have automated the entire process of scoring and sorting leads so our Sales team knows they are getting the best of the best.
February 15th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
I have been consulting companies for years on their trade show programs and have heard that 70 something percent figure for even longer. The most common complaint I hear from marketing is how they spend all this money on their trade show program which generates hundreds or thousands of leads and sales never follows up. Then the sales department always follows with “none of the leads are qualified…they are just names and phone numbers of people who wanted our giveaway.”
Every one seems to find it easy to come up with excuses, pointing the finger of blame back and forth. Their only problem is laziness and ineptitude on both sides.
You need to have a clear plan in place with measurable goals and objectives if your show is going to be a success. You need to decide if you are there to collect marketing leads or sales leads. If you are collecting sales leads, both sales and marketing must sit down together and define exactly what a qualified lead is and then the booth staff must be trained on how to work in a booth.
If you are not getting good results from your trade show it is because you are lazy and/or inept. It is not because of your location in the hall, your budget, the size of your booth or any other excuse you can come up with. The only reason you are not getting results is because you don’t know what you are doing.
The responsibility for trade shows generally falls under the marketing department umbrella. Unfortunately when you received that marketing degree you probably had a total of four or five hours devoted to trade shows. If you are not an expert on this type of marketing you better be willing to bring in someone who is. I’m not talking about hiring a CME either…I’m talking about someone who understands how to strategically plan your trade shows and other proprietary events who understands sales, marketing and financial measurement. If they cannot talk in a language your CFO understands then they are not the right person.
Traci Browne
Red Cedar Marketing
www.red-cedar.com
April 25th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Any B2B company has visitors on its website.
These visitors can be identified by company name using specific web services.
This is much more cost effective and works 24 x 7 and whole year.
The search engines have turned the world wide web into a world wide trade show 24 x 7.
Anyone can find products or services on the Internet using a search engine, in a very convenient way: right from his desk.
Thus all B2B companies should look into their visitors on their website. Why else spend money on the website and the SEO ?
Implementing these web services is as simple as copy/paste a java script line provided by the vendor into the website (header page or all pages). Simple and easy.
Your website is part of the 24 x 7 year long trade show.
May 21st, 2008 at 10:03 am
TS², Total Solutions Marketing for the Exhibit & Event Professional is a conference that provides marketing professionals with information on, making trade shows work within your marketing mix, tracking trade show ROI, building the brand through events, how to engage sales in the trade show experience, etc. It’s also an exhibition with the latest technologies, booths, etc. for trade shows. It’s happening July 29-30th in Philadelphia. Here is a link to all the conference sessions relevant to what was discussed above: http://www.ts2show.com/face-to-face.html