Connecting Trade Show Objectives With Your Trade Show Metrics

This table below provides you with a guideline of how to connect the objectives with the metrics.

Remember you can’t manage what you don’t measure.

Primary Objective	Associated Metrics
Introduce a new product or service	Number of demos given Number of visitors to booth Number of samples ordered Number of press mentions Number of qualified leads generated by product Number of RFP’s requested
Generate Sales Leads	Number of qualified leads Cost per qualified lead
Gather new prospects	Number of prospects gathered Cost per new prospect contact Number of new accounts added to the database
Enter new market	Number of prospects gathered by industry Number of qualified leads generated by industry Number of RFP’s requested
Sales	Revenue Number of transactions closed Number of purchase orders signed Expense to revenue ratio (E:R) Return on Investment (ROI) Number of new accounts/customers
Awareness	Number of visitors to booth Number of demos given Number of flyers distributed Number of attendees to pass by booth Number of visibility opportunities (sessions, events, press conferences, etc.) or number of resulting impressions Pre-post show awareness levels Number of press mentions
Recruit channel partners	Number of partners recruited Cost per recruited partner Geographic penetration of recruited partners
Recruit new employees	Number of employees recruited Cost per new employee Employees recruited by skill category
Competitive research	Number of competitors at the show Competitive analyses completed
Market research	Customer surveys completed Focus groups conducted
ROI	Return on investment ratio Expense to revenue ratio
Retain current customers	Number of customer appointments scheduled and held Number of new product demos to current customers Revenue closed from current customers
Support your industry	Number of association functions attended Dollars invested in association function sponsorships

A word of warning - Calculate realistic goals

Make sure that if you are connecting the goals to the metrics, that the metrics actually do reflect the reality.

First you need to research the exhibitors guide and talk to show management and other exhibitors.

Lets say you find out that:

3000 visitors attended the trade show last year
10 % were from your niche
Of those 300 the show management estimates that 30 – 40 % would be passing your stand during the entire exhibition

Say you’ve got a product you’d like to demonstrate to as many visitors as possible, and the demos takes 10 minutes each, and it takes 2 sales people to man the demo station over 25 hours of back to back demonstration during the show.

Here is how you calculate this out:

300 : 6:2 = 25 hours of demonstration is needed

So the above scenario shows that you can actually do it.

If you only had 20 hours of expo time you would have to make some amendments, e.g. increase the number of sales people doing the demonstration, or reducing the number of demonstrations etc.