Trade Shows and Conferences Are Back-- and So Are the Swag
Collectors
If you still think free
trinkets are going to create great sales leads, it's time for a refresh. But
there is one group of companies that can still benefit.
EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @HOWARDTULLMAN1
MAY 7, 2024
Business travel is close
to pre-pandemic levels and with it comes the return of trade show and
conference season, with thousands of eager lemmings making their annual
pilgrimages to Las Vegas, San Francisco or Orlando where they will live large,
liquor up, and learn very little (except that the house always wins).
Meanwhile, exhibitors
and vendors will be engaged in their own quest for this year's best swag (as
in, "stuff we all get"), which will be indiscriminately handed out to
random visitors to their booths and exhibits. Whether it's USB drives, pens and
pencils, t-shirts and foam hats, all manner of chocolates, or squeezy stress
balls, everyone passing by the abundant displays will clamor for whatever
goodies they can grab. One thing you can count on: none of these freeloaders is
a qualified anything, in terms of potential leads or sales. The pros never walk
the floor.
The smartest players
learned long ago that the most helpful, cost-effective, and recipient-retained
gift is simply a decent-sized, well-branded bag to dump all the other collected
junk into, as they walk listlessly and try to navigate their way around the
convention floor. It's been clear for years that the maze-like layouts and the
numbering and marking systems were designed by sadists whose sole objective
(much like the casino guys) was to keep you in the building for as long a time
as humanly possible. Guides and way finders could make a nice steady living
simply by leading the lost to the nearest restrooms and exits.
Real clients, serious
buyers, and touted prospects are all, of course, whisked away for offsite
meetings in private suites, or comfortably ensconced in enclosed and hidden
conference rooms so they don't have to deal with the hoi polloi.
They couldn't give a rat's ass about the bubble gum, bangles, and other baubles
being tossed around like the beads at Mardi Gras albeit without the
accompanying pulchritude displays, which are handled separately by show models,
booth babes, former playmates and retired LPWA wrestlers.
Frankly, I've also come
to believe that the entire exercise is basically an antiquated but sadly
recurring ritual, and a waste of a fairly significant amount of marketing money
with virtually no demonstrable return. No feedback mechanism, no CRM tracking,
and no prospect of any timely or actionable follow-up seems like the kind of
marcom strategy that no one with a brain and a finite budget ever asked for.
But it's apparently an unavoidable cost of doing convention business because
everyone else is doing it as well.
And so, year after year,
no one learns the most basic lesson of Marketing 101, which is that, if you
can't give something of value to your targets, then at least make a plan that
gets you something of value in return for going through all the pain and costs
of the exercise. As an example, a prospect's name and address might be a handy
thing to have post-show. Just sayin'.
There is one group of
players who seem to have missed the boat entirely and, unlike most of the other
clowns, they have an easy way to make the whole situation work for them. If UPS
or FedEx (or even Amazon) wanted to painlessly acquire several thousand new
contacts at businesses all across the country from every one of these
conventions, they could set up a booth or two at each of the major events and
offer to ship a box of everyone's accumulated crap back to their home or office
for free or for some embarrassingly modest fee.
They could also sell
courtesy cards to other exhibitors to give away as a perk to visitors to their
booths, which would pay for the shipment home. And, in fact, I suppose that any
given exhibitor could provide a bag to a visitor and let them know that, if
they returned the bag full at the end of their visit with the necessary
shipping information, the contents would be shipped back to the office for
them. They would handle packing the stuff up and getting it to FedEx or UPS.
Because 100% of these
shipments would originate from a fixed and single location, the big guys'
expenses would likely be a fraction of what a standard transaction cost. And
the overall costs of acquiring the new names and leads would also be lower than
their typical CAC, even before adding in the benefit of exposing the customer
to their service. I've seen this done at specific smaller gatherings, but never
at scale in any of the major events.
The moral of the story
is pretty simple. If you want to make an impression and create at least some
kind of modest connection, don't simply toss me another tchotchke for the pile.
Do me a solid and ship the stuff home for me - one way or another. Instead of a
burden, make your business into a buddy.
