For those marketing communication (marcomm), trade show managers, and event planners that are wondering how to segment their trade show budget an article by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (ceir) put out an article that showed how exhibitors spend their budgets.  This study was based on a four year average of the Trade Show Exhibitors Association Data (TSEA).

According to the data exhibiting companies almost spend $24 billion dollars on exhibiting annually.  Here is how the budgets were broken down.

31% of the budgets were spent on purchasing the Exhibit Space.

20.3% of the budgets were spent on Show Services.

15.3% was spent on Travel & Entertainment

11.2% was used on Exhibit Design

10.8% of the budget was spent on shipping

7.5%  of the budget was used towards promotions

and 4.9% of the budget was spent on other Miscellaneous expenses.

TIPS TO MAXIMIZE YOUR BUDGET:

What to keep in mind when spending your trade show budget is how to make sure you are getting a return on your investment.  Here are three valuable tips:  You are spending money 11.2% on exhibit design, so make sure that your design clearly conveys your important messages to your target audience.  The design should also work with your overall trade show marketing strategy.  Lastly, make sure the design shows how trade show traffic will easily flow through your exhibit.  Second Tip:  The promotional expenses (7.5% of your budget) should include promotions that provide quantitative results so that you can measure the return.  Also, these promotions should include some type of social media.  Social media is a great tool to extend the experience your potential clients had in your booth far into the future   The third and final tip is to use a portion of your budget toward training your staff.  Sales at a trade show is different than typical sales and all sales and marketing reps can substantially benefit from being trained on the objectives, best ways to stop and interact with perspective clients, and will typically increase your qualified leads from 40%-600%.  The trainings should also focus on getting the marketing and sales teams on the same page.  Often times there is a disconnect when it comes to trade shows between the sales and marketing teams, which prevents companies from maximizing their results.

When these tips are taken into consideration it can substantially increase your trade show results in measurable ways.  If you have any additional comments, tips, or questions please contact our strategy consultant at rhackenson@tmgexhibits.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 at 7:39 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.