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	<title>Specialize in helping clients maximize their exhibit marketing potential through consultations, workshops and keynotes.  Author of six best selling business books including Powerful Exhibit Marketing and his latest, Selling From the Inside Out.</title>
	<link>http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/author/index/1440/Barry--Siskind.php</link>
	<description>Specialize in helping clients maximize their exhibit marketing potential through consultations, workshops and keynotes.  Author of six best selling business books including Powerful Exhibit Marketing and his latest, Selling From the Inside Out. - Latest business
news &amp; management advice on how best to build your own business -
Free, independent business articles on Strategy, eBusiness, Change
Management &amp; much, much more.</description>
	<language>en</language>
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	<pubDate>Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:31:16 +0000</pubDate>
	<managingEditor>admin@buildyourownbusiness.biz</managingEditor>
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	<item>
      <title><strong>A Paperless Exhibit</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Within five years trade shows will be completely paperless is  a prediction I heard at a recent conference. When I passed this idea along to some of my clients, they balked, saying, 

“How will we get our information to our customers if we don’t have literature at the booth?” 

“Visitors want to take away literature.

” What impression am I making by not having literature to hand-out?”

If this is starting to sound familiar then perhaps its time to re-think the purpose of your exhibition and look at a different strategy for execution.

Firstly, an exhibit at a trade show is not simply a means to disseminate literature. A trade show display is a physical environment where you, your customers and prospective customers get together to find solutions. 

As your customer base gets younger (Gen X’s), the need to talk about the features of your products and services at the booth decreases. This audience is comfortable receiving their information on-line. They belong to social groups where they discuss products and services. They have likely already seen your information when they visited your web-site and most likely saved, bookmarked or downloaded what they need.  It is futile to give out further printed information at your booth.
 
Secondly, there is the cost consideration of excess literature at your booth. This can be measured two ways: the fiscal cost to create and print the piece and the space it takes for storage.

The fiscal cost can be a major investment ranging from a few cents to many dollars. In order to get the maximum R.O.I. on your literature investment you need readership. Yet, studies have proven that nearly ninety-five percent of all literature taken from a trade show booth goes unread. This lack of readership makes the investment incredibly difficult to justify. I am not implying there is no need for literature, but the savvy marketer needs to find other methods of distribution that guarantees the most number of readers, and ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Keep your Display Simple; Really Simple</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[A dilemma many exhibitors face is how much information to include in their trade show display. For small exhibitors with one or two product offerings the answer can be difficult. For larger exhibitors with a multitude of products and services which might also include several departments, the answer can become a nightmare. There is often so much to tell and the exhibitor wants to make sure the visitors get the right message. The solution starts by taking a step back and looking at the display from the visitor’s perspective. 

Show visitors begin with the best of intentions. They have walked the show and seen dozens of exhibitors displaying a myriad of products. If there is a technical program at the conference or event, they will have also sat through a number of seminars and workshops. These visitors are only human. There is only so much information the human mind can absorb. So, the lesson to be learned is that creating a display that tells too much is self-defeating. The last thing these attendees want is more information.

Another consideration is that in many cases, visitors already know the details about your product or service. They learned about it on the internet. They visited your web-site, read reviews in trade magazines and heard from their community through social media. Once again a display that attempts to tell people what they already know is futile.

The solution is to ensure that the attraction efficiency is maximized when you are creating your display. This means that a good display will grab your visitor’s interest quickly without adding to the confusion they may already be experiencing. 

This simple lesson may be easier stated than implemented. The trick is to look at the world of marketing.  We are inundated with marketing messages everywhere: billboards, radio, television, newspapers, magazines, the back of ticket stubs, across the outside (and sometimes inside) of subways and buses, elevator doors, the computer you are using at th ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>The Power of Appearance</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[I recently read a news article about Debrahlee Lorenzo, an attractive woman who worked at Citibank. The story stated that she was dismissed because the clothes she wore were too provocative and not appropriate to the financial industry image.. She fired back with a gender-discrimination suit saying she couldn’t help the way she looks. The case will probably go on for years.

The issue that this raises is what is the appropriate dress for people who work on the front line engaged in face-to-face marketing and selling to customers?

Years ago the answer was simple. People who met customers should look professional; men in ties and women in dresses. One need look no further than the popular television show Mad Men to see how people dressed in the 60’s. But all that has changed. The definition of professional dress has changed.  In the 80’s and 90’s the CEO’s of dot com companies in the Silicon Valley, went barefoot, in jeans and tee shirts . Then someone invented dress-down Fridays where regardless of the industry people took one day each work week to look like dot-com executives. 

Now when I attend a face to face marketing event I never know what I will see.

Some people are over dressed and don’t seem to fit into the industry they represent while others opt for personal comfort in their choice of wardrobe. 

In the 60’s psychologist Albert Mehrabrian wrote an interesting thesis titled Communication without Words. Mehrabrian studied thousands of workers and found that 55% of their customers’ perception of these people - whether they liked them or trusted them – was passed on through their non-verbal; the way they looked, their body language and how they dressed. Mehrabrian’s work is just as relevant today as it was a half century ago.

The dilemma  companies face at face to face marketing events is a definition of what is professional and therefore appropriate for their staff to wear. I think there are two answers to this:

1.	Dress  ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Measure the Intensity of your Exhibit Traffic</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[E-advertising is often measured as a Cost Per Impression (CPI) or Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM). This is not a new technique, traditional marketers have been using something similar for ages. Whether you advertise on television, radio, magazines, newspapers or billboards you will often look to CPI as your justification for the cost.

For example if you know that your advertisement will be seen by one million people and you are quoted a CPM of $ 10.00 your total advertising cost will be $ 10,000. The CPI then divides this number by 1,000 so that a $10.00 CPM equates to a $ .01 CPI.

At a trade show we have a similar method of measurement called Visitor Intensity (VI). This measures the number of visitors you can expect over the life of the show. The calculation is simple enough, take the number of square feet of your exhibit and multiply it by the number of show hours and divide that by the cost. For example if you took 200 square feet for a trade show that was 18 hours long and your costs were $12,000, your Visitor Intensity ratio would be $3.33.

On first glance you might conclude that the intensity cost is higher than the CPI you are used to paying for – this can be explained easily when you look closely at your audience.

1.	Targeted audience

While the audience at an exhibition might be smaller than what you might expect in other marketing forms, the focus of that audience is greater. Exhibitions are highly targeted affairs focused on a theme or an industry. The people who attend have to have a pretty compelling interest before they make the decision to invest a day or two walking the show.

2.	Quality of the audience

There is some truth to the observation that audiences at exhibitions are smaller than they were years ago. But, the good news is that those who choose to walk the exhibit halls are of higher quality. They directly affect the buying decision, they are prepared to make quicker decisions and they are further along in the selling ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Find the Joy in Exhibiting</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Are you happy with your trade show efforts? I am not asking if you are satisfied with your results but rather if your efforts bring you satisfaction. Exhibiting takes a lot of time, requires a tremendous amount of energy and puts you under a considerable amount of pressure to perform. Exhibiting requires a herculean effort to be the best you can when you are meeting clients face to face.  Are you happy doing what you do?

There is more to happiness than an occasional smile and a good belly laugh. We live in a culture that continually bombards us with the promise of instant happiness. If we drink the right beer, take the right pill, drive the right car, or land a new account, happiness can be ours. Yet, how many of us are truly happy? 

Many people have grown cynical and see no reason to be happy. They may be in a bad relationship, disappointed with the cards that life has dealt them, concerned about the environment, or unhappy with their political leaders … the list is endless. 

Then there are those who grumble that they feel stuck in a daily routine that has grown as predictable as the punch line to a bad joke. 

Happiness is not universal. You can be happy at work and yet remain an unhappy person. We don’t have to look far to see examples of unhappiness; it’s everywhere we turn. 

Happiness makes your work more satisfying; it is the underlying element to a healthy life. Sometimes early passions form the direction of your life and work from the get-go, while, in other cases, you may need to go through a process of self-discovery to get in touch with your happiness.

Finding happiness does not mean you have to quit your job or abandon your daily routine. On the contrary, it often doesn’t require such drastic action. Often, you can find happiness by taking small steps.

According to University of Illinois psychologist Ed Diener, editor of the Journal of Happiness Studies, “There is no one key to happiness, but there are several important elem ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Measuring the non-monetary value of your exhibition program</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Looking at the return on your exhibit investment often has to do with monetary gains. But what if you are among the many exhibitors whose objective has nothing to do with sales? 

Are these exhibitors doomed to a life of never knowing whether their exhibit program is yielding value? The answer is “no”. Corporate and not-for-profit exhibitors can enjoy a non-monetary value of their exhibition program if they know where to look.

The 2009 Center for Exhibition Industry Research study called “The Cost Effectiveness of Exhibition Participation reported that over two thirds of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed with the following three statements:

•	Exhibitions increase corporate and/or brand recognition,

•	Exhibitions assist in gaining/retaining market share,  

•	Fewer sales calls are needed with an exhibition lead because the decision maker was able to meet with staff at the exhibition.

The conclusion was that there is additional value to a show beyond the ability to generate leads. Exhibitors who focus on lead generation alone look for a return on investment (ROI). Exhibitors who focus on non-monetary objectives look for a return on objectives (ROO)

Calculating ROO is a matter of taking the following steps.

1.	Articulate your objective

	Non-monetary objectives include such things as your ability to reinforce relationships with existing customers, introduce a brand message or create awareness.  The trick is to think carefully about what is the primary focus of your exhibit.

2.	Identify who the message is for

	Except in the case of a highly focused show, rarely will one message be of interest to all the attendees at a show. It is important to create a profile of the person who will most likely respond positively to your messages.

3.	Quantify

	Putting a number to the objective is simplified once you have completed the first two steps. Your quantified objective now reads, “I want to introduce three key messages  ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Do Promotional Products add value to your exhibit plan?</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Last month I posted a question on the TSEA (Trade Show Exhibitors Association) Group/Linkedin about the use of promotional products. Forty-five comments later and the discussion is still going strong. Comments ranged from those who thought promotional products were a waste of time and resources to those at the other end of the spectrum who found them very useful.

Tote bags, pens, mouse pads, lanyards, CD’s, note pads, candy, gizmo’s for your computer, stress balls,  luggage tags, buttons, pins, card holders, golf tees, sweat bands, mugs… don’t you just love it? Lots of people do. Ask visitors why then attend certain shows or what they remember best and they say - “all those cool giveaways.”  

Ask them what they remembered more, the give away or the exhibitor, and nine time out of ten the answer is the give away.  So, does the investment in promotional products at a show make sense?  Sure it does. But there is more to making a promotional product work.  It’s serious business and requires some serious thought. 

A study by the Promotional Products Association International reported some interesting findings:

Of the people who received a promotional product in the last 12 months, 

•	76% could recall the adversities’ name
•	52% did business with the advertiser
•	52% had a more favorable impression of the advertiser after receiving the item.
•	34% had the item on their person

The advertising specialty people like to use cost per impression as their method of measurement. A study by the Advertising Specialty Institute found that bags topped the list with a staggering 1,038 impressions per month per bag given away. Caps were next with 476 per month followed in descending order by shirts (365), writing instruments (363), Business accessories (294), Glassware (251) and Calendars (227).

The other noteworthy response was that in terms of wearables. The average respondent usually kept the article for seven months, bags were nine mo ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Create a lasting memory for your customers</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Create a lasting memory for your customers


By

Barry Siskind

One of my favorite places to buy books is Amazon.com. If you are one of millions of book buyers like me, you are familiar with the typical Amazon.com listing. Their history is noteworthy. Amazon started selling books on the internet in 1995. Over the past decade they have grown to the point that they sell more books, DVD’s, CD’s M3P’s software, videogames, electronics, apparel, furniture and toys on-line than anyone – anywhere in the world. Why? Becasue they have a formula that works.  

Picture an Amazon.com listings and think of it as above and below the line. 

Above the line you find the title, price, shipping dates, inventory levels, number of pages, publisher, language, ISBN number, and the details about what’s inside the book. There’s no fault here. Everything you need to know is clearly spelled out. But that’s not why people buy books particularly if it is an author they hadn’t heard about before. They need more than details which bring the discussion to those things that are below the line. These include information about the author, citations, customer rated reviews and a section called, “What do customers ultimately buy after viewing this page?” Above the line points the purchaser to the details and below the line reveals the experience. Which do you think is more important?

This same analogy applies to an exhibit program. What do your signs and graphics say? Are they filled with information about products and services? What about your literature? Is it teeming with enough information to sink a supertanker? And what about your booth staff? Do they fill hours at the show telling people all about the features and benefits of your products and services?

If you answered yes to any of these then it’s time to stand back and re-think your approach.

It all comes down to understanding the difference between remembering and knowing. Remembering, which is prone  ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Pushy sales people have no business at a trade show</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Pushy sales people have no business at a trade show
By
Barry Siskind
One of the things that drive trade show visitors crazy is pushy sales people. When visiting a show, the last thing visitors want to encounter are sales people who do not take the time to learn about their visitor’s unique situation before embarking on an over whelming spiel that includes information that has very little to do with their needs.   It’s called the pitch.
Think back to a time when you were a customer. You could have been shopping for anything: a new car, a winter jacket or something for dinner. Now pretend that you asked whoever was serving you for some information and that person took your question as a signal that you wanted to hear everything. What would your reaction have been ? My guess is that while you may have tolerated the pitch, you were probably thinking about ways to end the conversation. Am I right?
	Visitors to a trade show feel exactly the same.  Their defense against pushy sales people is to avoid eye contact. Studies have shown that as many as ninety five percent of visitors walking a show avoid eye contact. Can you blame them?
	The solution then is an attitude adjustment. When you are preparing your staff for a show or an event, you want to help them change their approach from one of a sales person to one of a host. A host is a friendlier role to play and takes the emphasis away from pure selling.
	The role of host is usually played out in social settings. Here is an example. Let’s suppose for a moment that you and your family have moved to a new home. The moving trucks have long gone, your boxes have been unpacked and everything has been placed where it belongs. It has been an exhausting experience. Now you and your partner are sitting on a couch realizing that while your new home looks great you are strangers in the neighborhood. To rectify the problem you decide to have an open house for the neighbors. You set the time for next Sunday between two and f ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Optimists and Pessimists</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Optimists and Pessimists

By

Barry Siskind

Two groups stare at the same half-filled glass of water and reach different conclusions. It’s always been that way as the optimists and pessimists wage their war of opinions. But lately, I have to admit, in the current world of exhibitions, the pessimists seem to be winning.

All the major indicators point to a clear pessimist’s victory: reduction in net square feet of exhibit space, a decline in professional attendance, a decrease in the number of exhibiting organizations, fallen revenue, lower consumer spending, reductions in travel and the GDP has plummeted, The only two indicators that have increased are  show cancellations and unemployment.  It’s been so gloomy in the economy that even the die-hard optimists are having trouble keeping a straight face.

Has this new world fueled by the pessimists left any expectation for hope? The answer is yes. Even those die hard pessimists have to admit that there is still a future for exhibitions. It’s just that we may have to wait for a year or two and see where the dust settles. 

So, what can we do in the mean time. Sitting on our hands and waiting won’t help. Recession or not, companies still have some basic needs: profit, brand, production and shareholder equity. We can’t improve on any of these by taking a back-seat approach to face to face marketing.

So, while we wait to see where the world of exhibitions will unfold, here are a few things to consider doing.

1.	Use the time to re-think your approach – Is face to face marketing important to the health of your corporation?

Face-to-face is probably the number one benefit of exhibit marketing. While social networking sites have grown in importance, the question you need to ask is whether there is still a need to meet your clients and customers in person. 

2.	Is measurement important?

Forget for a moment your perceived difficulty in measuring your success. If you could measure, would it b ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Watch the Masters and Improve</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Watch the masters and improve

By

Barry Siskind

If you want to improve your golf game watch and learn from Tiger Wood as he drives, pitches and putts. Re-run each swing in slow motion and when you are ready practice…. practice…. practice. While the chances of you or I ever being as good as the master is next to zero, the chances of improving our game, even a little bit, is pretty good.

Modeling the techniques of those who excel at what they do applies to all pursuits. Let’s say you want to improve your exhibit. Find to a guru then watch and learn. The problem is that that amongst organizations that choose exhibit marketing there is no one superstar. Many are pretty good, but those who consistently tower above the rest, year after year, are hard to find.  Does this mean improving your exhibit is a lost cause - not at all? In fact watching what other people do – both the good and the not so good – can be a fantastic method of gathering information that will make a powerful difference in your exhibit program.

Where you start is by searching out those places where company’s and organizations like yours exhibit; trade shows, special events, malls, lobbies, or conferences. Then once you have identified a few likely prospects arrange to take a few hours away from the office to attend. Begin looking at exhibits from an exhibitor’s perspective. This is not as easy as it sounds.  Go back to the basics and separate the theatrics of what you observe from the substance. The goal of a display is to attract attention; the right attention.  Attracting the right attention then becomes the substance. The theatrics are the tool and techniques you use to accomplish the displays purpose. When you become overwhelmed with cool ideas and interesting technologies at face value the result can often lead you in the wrong direction. Often interesting ideas can be a distraction rather than a benefit so look and learn.   A better approach is keeping the substance in f ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Social Networking and Face-to-Face Marketing</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Social networking and face-to-face marketing
By
Barry Siskind

In a recent issue of Trade Show Executive, I read an interesting article about Magic Stick, the winner of the TSE 2009 Innovation Award. Magic Stick is a small gadget, about the size of a computer memory stick that you carry with you. When you see someone also carrying a Magic Stick you can electronically exchange contact information. You each aim, push a button and voila you are networked.
Welcome to the age of High-Tec social networking whose first victims may very well be the handshake and a business card.

Twitter, Facebook, Web 2.0, SecondLife, LinkedIn, Flickr, LibraryThing, Ning, Jaiku, EventPeeps, are here to stay. There is nothing we can do about it nor should we for fear of being labeled Luddites. We should embrace social networking as a positive technology to help us build our personal networks.

This discussion is reminiscent of a time – a decade ago – when the world was a twitter (oops) about something called a virtual trade show and how this heralded the death of face-to-face marketing as we knew it. What happened to virtual exhibitions was that they became an integral part of larger face-to-face events providing year round exposure to products, services and education. What was feared to be an enemy became a powerful ally. The same, I am guessing, will happen to social networking sites.

	Face to face marketing needs all the help it can get to maximize its potential and if technology can help, then all the better. But technology cannot replace the power of meeting a vendor or customer and talking about issues eye-ball to eye-ball. Meeting face to face is how we form opinions of people and the institutions that employ them. When we can integrate the technology to enhance our interpersonal contacts then we become winners in this brand new – very old game of networking. Here are a few thoughts as you go about building a productive and profitable network.
•	Networks are not  ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>How to Measure Exhibit Staff Training</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[How to Measure Exhibit Staff Training

By

Barry Siskind

It’s an age old problem. Managers intuitively know that providing staff with specialized training makes them more proficient, helps increase confidence and improves the bottom line. So, you might ask, what is the problem? The answer is simply they can’t prove it. And, proof is what’s needed in order to justify the time and cost of providing training.

The challenge of creating a ROI for training is that it needs something to be compared to and without the ability to know what the training investment is being compared to, calculating the ROI is next to impossible. The root of the issue is the establishment of benchmarks. Here is where many exhibit managers fall down in their ability to collect meaningful data from their exhibit experiences and to use that data to establish a benchmark from which future performance is compared.

Here is an example of a few of the bits of data that should be included in a post-show statistical analysis:

Sales cycle 
This calculation of the average time it takes once your sales folks have met someone to the time it takes that contact to make a decision. This is an important number because once it is defined, it helps your booth staff focus on the right people.

Average time to convert a visitor to a lead
This is important because it helps your booth staff determine the length of a booth presentation and helps them manage their time. 

Audience profile
You need to have a breakdown of the audience at any event to determine if there is a match between who is attending and the profile of your target contact (that is the person most likely to turn into a high quality lead)
that  you should have created ahead of time.
 
Success ratio
Success ratio answers the question “If you gave one of your staff 10 good quality leads, how many of these leads will be converted into a sale in the next 12 to 18 months?” The challenge is that when you measure ROI the nu ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>A Case for Face to Face Marketing</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[A Case for Face-to-face Marketing

The most important single ingredient

in the formula of success is knowing

how to get along with people”

                                                                        —Theodore Roosevelt

      Think back to the people you feel comfortable with. It could be your spouse, other members of your family, colleagues, business associates, customers, and even the mail carrier. What is it about these people that make you feel comfortable?  Where does this comfort come from?

      It may have been a common experience you had with a particular person—a movie you both appreciated, mutual friends and acquaintances, or a similar outlook on life. If you have the same experience with the people you do business with, the results can be the same. The people we like to do business with are people we like, respect, and trust – people we feel comfortable with. But where does this comfort come from?

      In the 1960s, psychologist Albert Mehrabrian conducted a groundbreaking experiment. He found that people judge other people based on three observable clues: words, the para-verbal, and the nonverbal. 

Words

Think about someone you met for the first time. You may have thought to your self, “What an interesting person. I really liked the way he or she answered that question. That is exactly what I would have said.” Or you may have thought, “This person is a real jerk. I never would have said that.” Either reaction would have been based on what the person said—the words—but words are only one part of the equation. 

Para-verbal

Para-verbal is not what you say but how you say it. It is the tone, pace, tempo, speed, or volume of your voice. We all listen to people and create impressions of them based on how they use their voices. This is the second part of the equation. But there is one more element.

Nonverbal

Yes, we do judge a book by its cover. We are all guilty of judging people by how the ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Marketing Optics can Cloak Reality</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Marketing optics can cloak reality
By
Barry Siskind

When I was young my parents told me to study hard, I would sit at my desk with a pile of books on one side, an open workbook book in front of me. When my parents would peak into my room they would say ”It’s nice to see you so busy.” That’s optics. 

Making decisions based on optics alone can catch up with you sooner or later resulting in bad grades, foiled campaigns and lost opportunities.

One of the concerns that many marketers face in these troubled times is a reduction in marketing budgets. The knee jerk reaction is to chop the number of   shows and events. Other marketers are reluctant to reduce their face-to-face marketing exposure, continue their program, albeit with a reduced budget, for fear of creating a negative impression on potential buyers.  

During the past few years there has been much talk about the value of face-to-face marketing. Industry experts, including myself, have detailed the process that will help exhibitors calculate a return on investment and return on objectives. Yet, surprisingly few have adopted this basic business tenant and integrated the practice into their exhibit plans.  Some opt out when they learn that their efforts have not been as good as they would have imagined, other stay because they are led by the mistaken idea that the calculation of results are only for those who sell products. 

If more marketers would take the time to calculate their results, they would have the crucial answer on their return of their exhibiting investment. But the issue of optics involves one more criteria. You also have to look at the cost of not exhibiting. This may seem a more difficult number to calculate, but there is enough industry data around to help. For example the CEIR recently (Spring 2009) found that the cost of obtaining a high value lead at an exhibit was about half the cost of obtaining a similar lead without a trade show. The cost of an initial visit with a hi ..]]></description>
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