Cost justification: Trade shows can be expensive, from booth rental to travel expenses. Measuring the return helps justify these costs and ensures the investment is worthwhile.
Performance evaluation: By tracking metrics such as leads generated, sales closed, or brand exposure, companies can evaluate the effectiveness of their trade show participation and identify areas for improvement in their trade show tactics.
Budget allocation: Understanding ROI allows companies to assess the profitability of their participation in trade shows compared to other marketing strategies, which helps in allocating resources efficiently.
How to measure ROI from trade shows
Calculating ROI isn’t too difficult, but gathering data on all philippines mobile number your revenue and expenses can take some time. This is especially true if your business has a long sales cycle, which means it may be a while before you actually see the revenue from your latest trade show.
The formula for calculating trade show ROI is shown below:
In this section, we’ll discuss this calculation in more detail and provide step-by-step instructions for measuring your trade show ROI.
1. Determine your goals
Before you start calculating your ROI (and before you attend a trade show), you need to define your goals for the event. This will determine if you use ROI, ROO, or both.
Decide which key performance indicators (KPIs) you’ll use to measure your success, whether that’s revenue, sales, leads, social media followers, or website visitors.
To set better goals, use the SMART framework, which says you should create specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals. In particular, it’s important to assign specific numbers to your goals, such as revenue amount earned or leads generated.
2. Add up revenue
To calculate your ROI, you’ll start by adding up all your revenue from the trade show.
This is relatively simple if you only have on-site sales and purchase orders. Simply look at the sales or orders you received at the event and add up the total sale amount. Retail and other direct-to-consumer companies often fall into this bucket.
Adding up your revenue may be a little more complex for other exhibitors, such as those in the business-to-business