The BusyEvent Blog

#eventprofs #tradeshow Are We Still Complaining About That?

The value of tradeshows, relative to their costs, was the topic of a recent blog post by Chris Valentine of the T3 Expo.

In it, Chris overviews an article written by Thomas Powers of the Chicago Tribune who looks at a survey of 210 exhibitors at the National Food Processors show and found that 58% considered not exhibiting the following year, while 25% had already decided to drop out of subsequent events because of costs.

Sound familiar? Ironically this article was written on July 18….1971!

To Chris’ point, “Since then, the options for marketing dollars have expanded exponentially and here we are 38 years later hearing the same comments“.  And, if you click through the link above, you’ll get to participate in a short survey that asks which items you’d like to see improved to make tradeshows more valuable.

If Chris had asked us, which he didn’t, we’d add another ‘answer’; “Create real ROI“.

The real question then becomes, “How?” . . . here’s an example:

Recently, along with our partners at the Creative Producer’s Group, we completed an event for 3,200 attendees.  As part of the checkin process, each attendee was provided a beLinker.  Throughout the 3 day event, attendees beLinked each other, the exhibitor booths and the products they were interested in, participated in audience response and were able to beLink the sessions and have access to the information presented without having to carry home big bags of printed documents or scribbled notes on the back of business cards.

Here are some numbers:

• 3200 total attendees, 3 day event, covered 500,000 sf of meetings space using 12 bantennas (see what a beLinker Bantenna is – see that little grey thing on top, that’s the wireless transceiver, 9 feet off the ground).
• Number of messages processed by the beLinker system during the event: ~265,000
  • That means on average, each attendee sent 83 separate messages using their beLinker, to beLink a person, a product/exhibitor booth/breakout session materials and participate in ARS.
• Total number of beLinks between people (making social networking connections, person-to-person): ~153,000
• Total number of beLinks to companies (attendees beLinking acompany to access their information) : ~90,000
• Total number of audience response question votes: ~17,000
• The average attendee beLinked:
  • ~45 other people
  • ~28 companies and their products
  • Interacted with 9 breakout sessions (to download or have access to the presentation materials) and
  • Answered 22 questions
• The attendee with the most beLinks made ~1200 people-to-people connections.
• The average company was beLinked to by 424 people (that equates to 424 active and qualified leads for each and every company at the event).
  • The company with the most beLinks had ~1500 qualified leads.
• The session that used audience response most effectively had ~2200 ‘answers’ during their ARS.
• The dozen members of the Executive Team each had more than ~1700 beLinks to their profiles.

Now, post event, all of this information is now being accessed online and for the past 3 weeks, the beLinker System has seen:

• ~24,000 individual logins by more than
• 2,200 attendees leading to more than
• 15,000 individual downloads and links to products, presentations and other marketing materials with
• More than 800 secure messages sent by people through the system, to each other.
• More than 6,200 additional connections (this is after the event has concluded) to people, products or other information using their virtual beLinker tools.

So, what’s the ROI?:

• More than $50,000 in savings relative to printed materials.
• A massive reduction in the carbon foot print of the event.
• A private social network has been created so that attendees can continue to connect, share and communicate.
• The opportunity for exhibitors to generate a real ROI for their efforts.
• Active information, rather than passive, available in real-time, that allows event producers to act and improve their event as it occurs.
• Capturing event information that can be monetized both currently and into the future.
• More revenues to the event venue owner without more costs to the producer or attendees.
  
• Interaction and activation.
• Fun, Fun and more fun!

Interested in learning how to maximize your event ROI, reduce cost by up to 50% and produce a better event?

Contact BusyEvent CEO David Schenberg
eMail: dschenberg -at- busyevent -dot- com
Direct Phone: 888.788.4896 x111