Our Start-Up's First Trade Show: A Data-Driven Recap

We attended a small scientific research conference that allowed booths. At these conferences researchers often set up posters that can take up quite a bit of room. The organizers didn't account for this correctly and we ended up being pushed off the main floor down a hallway. This hallway happened to be where most people entered and thought we were the registration desk, which worked out really well as a softer introduction...

'We are actually a sponsor of the conference that sells research products and chemicals. The registration desk is right ahead...'

People appreciated the help and returned to talk or took a moment right then to learn more...

Lesson learned - location matters and may not be where you think.

Your experience is very similar to ours. We ended up spending about 100K on trade shows in the first 2 years. We learned a lot from speaking with that volume of target customers, but once the learning rate tapered so did the value. The number of customers we were able to acquire was disappointingly small.

At the show, they love your product, call them later, and they're too busy.

Think of what that 8k of spend can do with web marketing.

If I had to do it again... less shows.

I've found that conferences are never ever worth it by themselves. The only way we've been able to justify the cost of travel+time was by scheduling 15-20 meetings with customers in the area of the conference, so that the actual conference itself is just a side-show.

Great post guys, also great to meet you in person at IRCE. We collected a fair amount of data as well (not much as you guys)-- but we'll try to get another IRCE post out there :-)