Over the past ten years, we’ve attended many Dynamics-focused trade shows, and each year we see lots of the same exhibitors placed within massive exhibit halls, lost in a sea of other sponsors. They get mixed ROI results at best, and more often than not don’t even know their ROI in terms of high-quality sales leads.
Why do vendors continue to make the enormous investments required of trade show sponsorships? We spoke with over a dozen companies at a recent conference, and the overriding force driving them toward repeated trade show investment was…fear. Three fears in particular.
Before we describe them, here is a key question ask yourself: When was the last time fear helped you make the best possible investment decision? Or, put another way, is there a better way to make Dynamics marketing decisions? We think so.
As for the three fears:
Fear #1: If I don’t exhibit at these trade shows, then people in the Dynamics community will think my company is having financial issues and is in some kind of disarray.
Which begs a follow-up question: If not a lot of people are visiting your exhibit booth—and that’s the way it is for many ISV sponsors— then does it really matter if you have a presence at those shows? In other words, if you were to suddenly vanish, not many would notice because not many people are visiting your booth anyways.
Fear #2: Everyone in the Dynamics community primarily goes to trade shows, so I need to be there.
Did you know that last year there were a dozen Dynamics-focused in-person trade shows, and that combined, those trade shows had about 12,000 attendees? That’s a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of executives at about 250,000 companies using Dynamics around the world. An efficient way of reaching Dynamics users these shows are not.
Fear #3: Partners and end users primarily use trade shows as a way to research solutions, and if I’m not exhibiting, then partners and end users won’t get to see our demos.
To appreciate the reality, think about trade show setups like this: If the conference is dinner, then the exhibit hall is the desert. It’s a guilty pleasure. Most conference attendees are there for the main courses—to attend educational sessions—and are on a desert-free diet.
So, what’s the alternative to a fear-based marketing strategy overly focused on conferences? Quite simply, a rational investment strategy tied to documented ROI, based on marketing diversification and real buyer patterns.
2018 is your opportunity to break the fear-based marketing cycle, and reach an entire world of prospects who don’t attend in-person trade shows.
