Tradeshows Are Back

Marketing vehicle scores high on ROI in annual study by GPJ and MPI

By Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 8/1/2005

Corporate marketers' opinion of tradeshows continues to improve, according to a recent study conducted by event marketing firm The George P. Johnson Co. and Meeting Professionals Intl. Foundation.

The fifth annual EventView report — formerly called the Global Event Trends Survey — found that 53.5 percent of the 700 corporate marketing professionals surveyed spend more on tradeshows than on other event types. That number is up from 38 percent in the 2004 study, which reflected a decline from the previous year.

Furthermore, one-third of those surveyed said they feel tradeshows provide the best ROI of all event types, with seminars second. Last year, tradeshows also came out on top in the ROI question, followed by conferences.

The findings back up results of Tradeshow Week's November 2004 corporate exhibitor survey. In that survey, 38 percent of respondents said their tradeshow results were better than in the previous year (compared with 27 percent in the 2003 survey), and 30 percent said they planned to increase their exhibiting budgets this year (up from 18 percent).

Michael Westcott, GPJ vice president of marketing, said many companies are restructuring their marketing programs to reach vertical markets, and vertical events help them do that. "There seems to be greater interest in doing smaller, vertical shows, and that seems to be driving a lot of the interest," he said.

David DuBois, executive vice president of the MPI Foundation, added that labor negotiations could be impacting exhibitors' approach to tradeshows. Unions, he said, are becoming, "more aware of the fact that they are part of winning a piece of (tradeshow) business, and that their behavior can drive up the cost of being an exhibitor, and thus the cost to attend."

The EventView study also noted that customer satisfaction has emerged as the top criterion marketers use to gauge an event's success. Survey participants were asked to rank several criteria on a scale of 1 to 5, and "enhancing the customer relationship" earned a score of 4.2.

Last year, "increasing brand awareness" was considered the most important, also with a score of 4.2.

Westcott believes the shift is in sync with a trend toward focusing on so-called return on customer. "In the marketing industry, across the board, people are focusing on being more customer-centric rather than media-centric," he explained. "They don't think first of doing a 30-second TV spot or magazine ad."

New to this year's EventView was a question on procurement. More than half of respondents reported that their purchasing departments have a say in which events they choose.

DuBois felt the combined findings of the study proved that, no matter who you are in the event world, you have to "be sure and get a place at the table. You need to be more assertive, ask questions, and make sure the marketing people have looked at all the ways they can maximize their investment."

That, added Westcott, will only work if everyone involved learns how to effectively measure and demonstrate the value of that investment. "If you spend money to measure, you'll get it back in spades," he said.