I was feeling a little at a loss about what I was going to do all day but somewhat incredibly I was actually busier than past years. I met with more people and worked on bigger more interesting deals that ever before. Here’s what I did…

I sent out an email to a bunch of people I wanted to talk to about 3 weeks before the show. Most of them replied and I set up a bunch of meetings. It was pretty casual for the most part, the coffee shop, a restaurant, a bar, some party that we were both going to…but the reality is that I had uninterrupted conversations with the people I wanted to talk to.

I often feel that standing in a trade show booth is one of the most boring and soul destroying activities on the planet. Most of the time one of three things happens…1) you stare at your booth mates wondering if anyone is going to stop and visit the booth 2) people visit who have no intention of remembering what we told them (the “just scan me” crowd) or 3) people come and try and sell you their stuff. Occasionally you have a good conversation with someone but I’d say from past experience you get around 5 of those per day. 5 good chats in a day is not terrible but the big question is how do you increase that number and get rid of all the other nonsense.

So I decided to do it differently this year and it worked better…but I still think we haven’t found the right solutions and that there has to be a better way to do trade shows.

The traditional trade show format make sense if your going to have a huge booth and a large staff managing the booth. That way you can actually get EVERYONE who comes to the show to stop by the booth and engage with your company. When you are smaller you don’t really have the resources (we’re talking 100K+ to do it right) to connect with thousands of people.

There has to be a better model for the smaller company to engage people at a trade show. Maybe something like setting appointments in some sort of meeting room on the floor. That way each person who comes to the “booth” would be somewhat qualified in advance, committed to listening to the sales pitch and feel like they got something out of the experience. If anyone has more thoughts on this topic I’d love to hear them…we’re definitely looking for better ways to get our message across without acting like the human version of SPAM.

1) We’re Lost in the Chaos

There are over 1,200 exhibitors on two floor in Vegas.  While the idea of 13,000 potential customers is attractive, the reality is that most people have time to visit somewhere around 75 exhibitors.  Since everyone stops by the big guys and their friends that eliminates around 50 or so…which leave us fighting for traffic with 1,150 other exhibitors to be one of the remaining 25 booths they visit.  Statistically speaking we have about a 2% chance of you visiting our booth which translates into about 250 new visitors. The reality from past years would suggest these numbers are high.

2) We Get A Poor Return on Our Investment

With our 250 projected visitors we start to look at the ROI.  For us to go to Vegas costs around $10,000.  Between booth space, pre-show marketing, collateral, hotels and other stuff it all adds up quick.  So for our projected 250 new leads we will spend around $10,000…which gives us a cost of $40 per lead.  The reality is most of those leads are unqualified so the true cost is closer to something between $80 and $100 per lead.  This a VERY expensive was to generate unqualified interest in our product.  Email marketing for example is closer to $50 per lead and those leads are from qualified distributors who are interested in learning more about and evaluating our product.

3) Exiled to Siberia

PPAI puts all the business service companies way up in the back of the second floor exhibit hall. By the time a distributors makes it back to see us they have already used up a lot of their ability to take in information.  Most of the interactions we engage in are with tired people who are looking forward to the end of their day.  When we try to have a conversation about eCommerce and Internet strategy they look at us with a kind smile and eyes that say “I agree this is important but I’m just not going to understand it right now.”

I wanted to explain why we’re not exhibiting in a public and honest format – I hope our reasons make sense and that no one feels slighted or unimportant because we’re not on the floor this year.  I’ll be in Vegas and I have a ton of fun and exciting meetings with suppliers and distributors who really want to learn more about Buttonwood.  If you want to meet up in person for any reason shoot me an email and we’ll try and figure something out.

Good luck and have fun!