How to Maximise Trade Show ROI Before, During & After the Event

Exhibition stands are one of the most powerful marketing tools. When used to their full advantage, they deliver outstanding return on investment for businesses by increasing brand awareness, fostering community, and driving sales. However, they are a significant investment, with costs such as stand space, exhibition stands, staff, and travel to account for, so it is important to understand how to maximise their impact and measure their success.

In this guide, we help you understand event ROI before, during and after the event.

ROI stands for return on investment, and it’s essentially a measure of value gained from an activation, relative to the amount spent.

The formula: ROI = (Net Income / Cost of Investment) x 100

Marketers use this to gauge the success of a particular event and often use it to justify the expansion of event calendars, budgets and resources.

Before the event, ROI is created by defining goals, crafting a strategy, designing the marketing materials/ stand, and building demand. Let’s get into the details:

Exhibitors who go into an event with a clear idea of goals and objectives usually see much better return on investment. This is because your objectives should shape the event strategy from the get-go, influencing the exhibition stand design, staff training, interactive features and giveaways.

For example, those who want to see increased brand awareness from the event might focus on brand-first designs that lend themselves to brand recall, while those seeking direct sales might focus on integrated product showcasing to place products front and centre.

Start by considering whether you want to make sales, build brand awareness, foster a community or generate leads?

Each event is unique and can provide different results, so it’s worth investigating which ones are most suited to your goals. Smaller events, for example, can be useful for building strong, convertible leads, while larger events can be good for building brand awareness and fostering a community. This is why selecting events that align with your goals is crucial for maximising return on investment.

It might seem obvious, but an important stage in boosting return on investment is nailing the pre-show marketing and building demand. Utilise a range of channels, such as email marketing, your home site and social media to reach your customer base and spread the word about what you’re doing at the show.

Some good examples of pre-show marketing that can boost your trade show ROI include:

• Promote your attendance and your stand number on your social media
• Send out a direct mail campaign to your database
• Run a competition with the winner being selected at the show
• Put the show logo on your marketing
• Offer a free or discounted product or service exclusively for those attending the show
• Create an event calendar landing page on your website, with details on each

Exhibition halls are filled with hundreds of businesses, many of which are your direct competitors, so you have to design strategically to stand out from the crowd. This means creating a professional, cohesive design that reflects your company and garners attention. Consider adding interactive features to increase engagement, using height to maximise visibility and lighting to stand out and catch eyes.

In our Ultimate Guide to Exhibition Stand Design, you can catch our expert tips on exhibition stand design!

One of the best ways to increase your return on investment is by investing in a high-quality modular exhibition stand, which allows you to spread your stand investment across an entire events calendar rather than just a single show.

Not all modular stands are equal in capability, so if you do invest, select a high-quality stand provider so that you don’t sacrifice impact. Otherwise, you won’t receive the same return benefits.

Look for a stand contractor with a large portfolio of examples of high-quality stand designs. It’s a good idea to view reconfigurations in practice. This helps you see how well the stands uphold the quality and understand the versatility of the system.

Quadrant2Design exhibition stands utilise a modular setup, but they are truly distinct from other systems, as every inch is custom-designed. The stands can integrate custom features and showcases, incorporate mounted products, and host a wealth of moving and lighting features that create a standout display.

Below is a price illustration of one Quadrant2Design stand, reused in different setups across various events.

Staff training is a significant and often neglected aspect of exhibitions. Your staff are the face of your company at an event, and you want them to represent you well.

Don’t skimp on training before the event, as this will ensure your team is prepared to man the stand and help you meet your objectives.

While your exhibition stand will draw in guests, it is not a substitute for literature and pamphlets, which provide additional information about your products and services. These marketing materials are valuable for brand recall. To maximise their effect, make sure the colours, branding and style resemble the brand and stand.

Most marketers measure return on investment using attribution models; a framework for assigning credit to different marketing touchpoints, such as ads, emails and social media, that influence a customer’s journey and lead to a conversion. This should be implemented before the event.

In general, multi-touch weighted models, like the W-shaped model, are most popular for events, as they offer a fuller picture of the different factors at play over a long-sale cycle, rather than attributing credit to just one element.

If you want to use an attribution model to measure your success, there is some preparation to do pre-show, specifically, connecting your “offline” event data to “online CRM” data.

It saves a lot of time in the follow-up stage if you integrate your lead capture with your CRM system and tag accounts based on the event they were sourced from. By doing this, you can track performance across the entire sales funnel, analyse conversion rates, average deal sizes and time to close for trade show leads compared to other channels. Over time, this data helps determine which events are worth reinvesting in. Not to mention, it prevents any data from getting lost or misplaced in the event.

During the event, you can maximise return by driving engagement and gathering leads!

When planning the event, pay attention to staff positioning and demeanour, along with content experiences and interactive games that can enhance engagement.

An important part of return on investment is making sure that staff look friendly and professional, as this makes them much more approachable.  Consider the positioning of staff so that all major walkways are covered to make sure you make the most of high-traffic areas. Leverage interactive content experiences and games where possible. They can be a great way of breaking tensions, increasing engagement and sparking conversation.

Exhibitions can be quite tiring, so it’s important to include enough team members to allow staff to take regular breaks and keep the energy up.

During the event, make sure you are taking the time to log and qualify leads thoroughly.

It is always a good idea to add personal anecdotes or notes from the conversation to your lead capture forms, as this will make the follow-up process much easier. Using a tagging or qualifying system can help you avoid wasting time on junk leads down the line, placing your effort where it is most valuable.

We always recommend tagging by accounts rather than contacts to ensure data is not fragmented or distorted when looking back at ROI.

After the event, you have one major opportunity to charge your ROI: follow-up.

For many businesses, the leads they gain from exhibiting represent a significant aspect of their return on investment. Follow-up can be the last thing you want to do after a long event. However, to translate these leads into sales and revenue, they must be contacted promptly.

Wait too long, and you risk giving the impression that their custom is not important to you or that your business is unorganised. Instead, follow up quickly and reference something personal from the event. This shows that you valued the conversation and will differentiate you from competitors.

We hope this guide has helped you to feel more confident in maximising ROI at your event. With just simple changes, such as employing strategic design, investing in team training, and including features to boost engagement, you can significantly increase your return on investment.

However, employing these tips is only half the battle; you also have to understand how to measure your return on investment. In our next guide, we give you all of the tools and information to effectively measure trade show ROI.

If you’re feeling inspired and would like to get the ball rolling with a modular exhibition stand design, get in contact with our design consultants on 01202 723 500 or email us at design@quadrant2design.com.