Tips for Predicting the Value of Visitors

Trade shows are thought of as critical to a business's marketing and sales plans. Still, they are the first events on the chopping block if a company decides they need to compensate for losses in revenue or other budget restrictions. Trade shows are the scapegoats, but that's only because there are no traditional ways to determine if the products at the show and the marketing methods on display are persuading any new leads to join a company's plans moving forward.

What if you could determine the value of a lead at a show by some sort of mathematical calculation? You can certainly try ways that may lead to your higher-ups approving of continued trade show efforts.

Not All Leads Are Built the Same

The customers at trade shows come in a variety of fields and occupations.

For example, let's say you are a tech company selling computers and software to both single end-users and corporations. Are the people who visit your booth potential direct-sales customers thinking about buying, say, a single computer for their family's living room?

That person would be a less valuable lead than a buyer who plans on purchasing dozens of pieces of technology for their office or start-up company and wants to sign a deal with you as the distributor for all their computer needs from here on out.

The same thing applies to comparing different business leads by the equity or potential of their buying power. Maybe another company comes along and says they want to buy hundreds of computers instead of the dozens that were previously asked about from the last hypothetical start-up.

You can divide these leads up into three tiers. You would rank the biggest lead in the first tier of potential leads, the smaller company in the second tier, and the customers who are casual consumers, not commercial leads, would be on the third tier because they present the least amount of potential value.

Calculating a Formula or Mathematical Algorithm

There is no perfect way to assign value to these leads, but one thing you should do is take the total number of leads that came from a trade show in each of the tiered categories and calculate their value combined. Once you have added everything up, divide by the number of leads to get the average value of a lead in each tiered category.

This will help you bring information to your supervisors that will prove the worth of a trade show beyond the money they are already spending for TV advertisements, social media publicity, and the like.

You might be thinking that this leaves the smaller consumer tier out to dry. There is obviously no way that the average amount of money per client is going to top the higher commercial tiers. However, if your booth is an effective advertisement and catches hundreds of eyes at an event, this tier still has the potential to make more total money than the higher tiers.

Are These Measuring Sticks Good Enough for Trade Show Existence?

The final question to answer after coming up with these types of mathematical deductions is to decide whether it is good enough in the long run or whether you are going to need even more data and evidence to justify a trade show's attendance.

The answer is that it definitely is the best thing that can be done. You can do no other calculations for a marketing method on the vaguer end of the sales spectrum. If these numbers are not conducive enough for further trade shows, that is an unfortunate byproduct of the medium.

But that doesn't mean stop trying trade shows altogether! Keep in mind that your presence alone builds the know, like, and trust factor with your leads and creates familiarity if they see your branding elsewhere, like the internet or on billboards. That, on its own, is worth the money invested in trade show appearances!