How To Evaluate Trade Shows and Expos Before You Participate

Participating in a Trade Show or Expo for your industry is a great way to market and promote your products and services so you can get new customers. Just make sure that the event meets at least the minimum standards, otherwise your involvement could end in being a waste of your time, money, effort and even worse, result in your failure.

The first priority is to make sure that you are participating in an Expo that has a large enough number of attendees who are in your target market. You have to make sure that the people attending would be interested in buying your products or services.

You have to get the statistics from the past Expos. The number of attendees must be sufficient for you to make a profit. Find out if in the past expos they had hundreds, thousands, several thousands or if they just had a few dozen people scattered around the place. Focus on expos that have at least a few thousand people attend.

If it is the first time the company is sponsoring the expo, you would need to find out if the company is well known for other things and if they have been successful. If a large well known Fortune 500 company sponsors an expo for the first time, it would not be as big of a risk for you as some company that is unknown to the general public.

No matter what type of company is sponsoring the expo, you always need to find out their plans and the type of budget they are investing for advertising and promotion of the expo.

Ask for testimonials from both past attendees and other past exhibitors. Many expos take a survey to determine the attendees' ages, gender and household income levels.

This information is important because you do not just want people who are interested, but who are also financially qualified, and they can afford your products and services for you to close the sale.

Having a celebrity or several big name celebrities will not automatically guarantee you success, but it is a good positive sign because most celebrities will not want to ruin their good name or their reputation fooling around with an expo that is not legitimate or a scam. You will still have to do your homework, but chances are that the celebrities have already done the background research or they probably would not be there themselves. Celebrities draw large crowds. These crowds can translate into new customers and more money for you.

In summary, you may never get any new customers if: 1. the Expo attendance is too low, or 2. the people who attend are not your target or niche market, or 3. they are not financially qualified and cannot afford your products and services. However, if you stay on top of things and know ahead of time what you are getting into and be prepared, it could be a very fun, successful and profitable experience for you.