(Originally posted September 25, 2010)

 

I just returned from the better part of a week in San Francisco at Java One.   It was a good week in many ways; I met many of the Sonatype team for the first time, connected some voices and emails with faces, spoke to many potential customers, got great product feedback, and caught up with old friends and co-workers.

 I was also reminded how much I hate tradeshows.  It’s not that I hate the experience (though at times I do), it’s that I really hate their inefficiency as a marketing vehicle.

 

  • They’re expensive.  By the time you add exhibition fees, the costs of having a booth (and of getting it there), signage, electricity, Internet, and the myriad of incidental costs, your average show looks pretty expensive.
  • They’re more expensive than you think.  When you add the cost of travel, and the opportunity cost of having key people out of the office, you can easily add 40% to the cost of a show.
  • They don’t generate nearly the number of leads that you’d hoped.  I’ve often seen marketers return from a show with 400 “leads” and feel really great about the event.  In reality, most of these are badge scans that will never materialize as an opportunity.
  • The real leads you get are less real than you think.  Time after time, I’ve seen really hot leads from a tradeshow inexplicably go cold as soon as a sales rep calls.  Somehow the product they desperately needed at your booth isn’t so important.

Once you do the math, the inefficiency becomes painfully obvious.  When compared to other vehicles, the cost per lead is way out of bounds.


When you take it to the next level and examine lead/opportunity conversion, the math gets worse.  If you’re normally converting 10% of qualified leads to benefited opportunities (which would be a very good rate), then you’re paying $9,066 per opportunity.    Anyway, you get the point.

I am, of course, overstating the case against tradeshows.  They have a place in the marketing mix because they are a great way to get face-to-face with prospects, to see firsthand how competitors are positioning, and to establish thought leadership position for your company.