Ever been on a trip to a new city, walked the streets, ate at what you qualified as wonderful restaurants, took pictures, and came back delighted?
Then you talked to a friend of yours who grew up there. And he asked you if you tasted the specialty locals love, if you saw the market that only opens Tuesday mornings, the collection at this special museum, and the festival on Thursday night. But you didn't.
Because you had no idea they even existed.
Now let me ask you:
Was your friend a party pooper, an estraga-prazeres like they say in Brazil (means a person who ruins the fun, spoils the mood, or kills the vibe), or did you wish he'd tell you all that before you went?
Now picture this: at the end of a show, everyone seats for a debrief.
One person reads out the badge scan total. Someone else mentions the competitor had a smaller booth this year. And the marketing director says the brand visibility was excellent (don’t worry no one knows what it means). Then everyone gives each other a pat on the back, and goes to have a drink while the next show goes on the calendar.
Now did you notice?
Nobody said the show was a failure.
Do you know why?
Because they have no idea if it’s the case. And they don't know if they should call that a success either. But if someone asks, they have a story to tell. The booth, the giveaways, the conversations, the smiles, the handshakes, and a spreadsheet!
The story holds: it went “great”!
You don't buy it? Me neither.
You know why? Because I know companies leave on average 80,000 euros on the table
at a given show.
And this scene… doesn't reflect it!
But that scene is just the symptom. The debrief never surfaced that number, 80,000 left on the table. And you know why it was invisible to the team?
Because to see it, they needed a show strategy.
Why do most exhibitors show up without a strategy?
As someone who spent his years on trade shows, I will tell you the first reason is because they don't know what to measure, what to look for, much like the city trip above. Companies go. They build a booth, they talk, they scan badges and call it a success. But much like our group of friends, who spent, visited, and collected memories, they came back with the tourist version of the show.
The problem is that when measurement is not defined before the show opens, anything becomes a result afterward. But would you take a blood test without asking your doctor to interpret it? The same goes for a show, otherwise badge scans can be mistaken for leads, long conversations for interest, and the numbers in the spreadsheet for the ROI. And like a sick patient who ignores his illness, or like tourists who will never know what they missed, these exhibitors will never know how good the show could have been, or how bad they did.
Are you following me on this?
Now, why don't most exhibitors do anything about it? Because it gives them somewhere comfortable to hide. How often do we get to spend money or spend 3 days abroad on a company's expenses, without having to report hard on it? With no way to tell if they did right or wrong, they can say "trade shows are for branding, visibility".
And no one can call it bullshit, because no one can prove a show did not build the brand. And that is exactly why that answer survives every budget conversation.
And so the measurement gap stays open. The question of trade show R.O.I. stays open.
The branding argument keeps it there. But that gap would close quickly if someone decided to close it. But most decide not to, because branding is more comfortable.
Nobody has ever been held accountable or punished for brand visibility at a trade show, because you cannot measure something you never defined.
Denial? Pain avoidance.
Not many people go take an MRI, because no one likes to be in front of a doctor looking at the results.
It's frightening. They wait until the pain never lets them go to dare risk the "is it serious doctor?".
Pain is the biggest agent for change, right?
But if no pain, no change needed, right?
So most people wait until it becomes painful.
Is it the right approach to business?
You tell me.
What I know, as a trade show performance coach, is that it doesn't have to be painful. If you approach your shows, not the way sick people approach their health, but the way smart people approach theirs. Not to fix what broke, but to make sure it never does. Consider it health care not sick care.
Now I'm not naive, and neither are you. Do you know why most people wait until it's
too late to act? Because they are comfortable with their problem.
Not improving their health, like not improving their trade shows, is not something people do because they want to. But because they believe the price of change is higher than the price of staying where they are.
In most companies, marketing books the show. Sales executes it.
And they try not to get in each other's hair.
A show in October? Marketers book it in May, get the booth designed in August and order the branded tote bags in September. Job done. Sales found out that they are going two weeks before.
They show up, look at the stand design, eventually ask why there is no product demo planned, but don't push their luck. If they don't step on marketing's territory, marketing won't step on theirs and ask for R.O.I. Peace in the office is worth more than unpleasant conversations about shows. Plus everyone's got other priorities.
Add on top of this FOMO and you know why most exhibitors will skip the show strategy step. The competition is going. The sector is going. If they are not there, questions get asked. It's easier to go than to answer the question: why not?
But unfortunately these are habits that keep them stuck in underperformance or
unhealthy shows.
One last thing, if you're considering improving your trade show R.O.I. that is (you wouldn't be reading this otherwise I guess, but who knows with doom scrolling these days).
Habits are structures (like habitat).
And teams live inside that structure.
Imagine a team that has done this show eight times already. They've been exhibiting for 8 years. They're not newbies. They know everything about the show. Which direction the foot traffic flows, which corner goes dead by Thursday afternoon, which neighbors give away backpacks and where to snatch a drink for free at 7pm.
They know about the show. And that knowledge feeds their ego. Because knowledge is
power. But what they know doesn't explain why the pipeline stays empty. And when someone suggests a different approach exists, the response is not always curiosity. Quite the opposite. When you ask a team about their R.O.I. after they've been doing shows for years, and they can't answer the question, because they lack a show strategy, they don't thank you.
Like the friend who told them what they missed during their city trip, most exhibitors don't like it. No one wants to hear they have been doing something badly, for years.
No one, who is immature that is.
Because it takes maturity to admit that they have been doing it badly.
But to admit that they didn't know. They didn't know there was a better way to do it.
They didn't know there is a method, they didn't know about, to help them build their trade show strategy.
That is the last reason and the one that requires proper honesty: they simply don't know trade show performance is a professional discipline. They hire a stand designer and a logistics company for their shows, and assume those are the only professionals available.
Like seeing a GP for a herniated disc. He'll give you something for the pain. But herniated discs aren't his job, and you'll leave with a prescription, not a solution.
They cover the logistics. But a trade show strategy is a totally different animal.
What does winging trade shows actually cost exhibitors?
The math nobody runs before a show
Trade shows represent on average 31% of marketing budgets for companies that use them. That's a lot. But 64% of exhibitors say they do not have a satisfying ROI when they look at the numbers afterward. So 31% of a company's marketing budget and more than 50% of the time, they're not happy with the outcomes?
Crazy, right?
And think about what that means in practice. A company spending 5 figures on a show (stand design, logistics, accommodation, team time, materials, follow-up) that produces no measurable pipeline?
They didn't just lose 5 figures. They spent 5 figures to reinforce an unhealthy pattern. Like we all spend part of our supermarket cart for things we shouldn't eat in the first place (chocolate, refined sugars, low nutrient carbs).
The cost is not only financial. It is managerial.
Teams get used to doing things that are irrational.
They build a false sense of confidence on a show and take it to the next.
Until this becomes so ingrained, so built into them, that it's hard to change it.
And that is how the relationship with a channel that, used well, produces results that very few other formats can match, becomes unhealthy.
Because according to industry data, 91% of visitors say trade shows are the best place to get information to make a purchase decision. So the channel works for them. But 64% of exhibitors are not happy with their show's R.O.I.
Why the unhealthy show practices perpetuate themselves
The problem with what I described above is that it rarely looks like a disaster from the outside. The booth looks great. The team shows up and smiles. Conversations do happen. They even got pictures of the booth full. And there is something to report. The spreadsheet. The few contacts that converted into clients. A competitor that stops coming.
Like a patient who is sick but still alive, those breadcrumbs make it easy to avoid the real question: compared to the potential the show and the team could have produced, are we doing good?
Again, companies leave on average 80,000 euros on the table at a given show.
How about your shows?
What is a good trade show strategy?
Strategy is not planning
Planning is "we will have three people at the booth, they will wear branded shirts, we will collect badge scans, and on Wednesday we will have a demo at 2pm." That is logistics. But not strategy. It is necessary, but not enough.
Strategy is what happens before logistics. It is the level above it.
It answers the questions that planning never asks: why going to shows? Why this show? Why now? What specific business objective does this show participation serve? Who exactly are we trying to reach? What does a successful three days look like? In numbers. And the reverse. What does a failed show look like? And at what point on day one do we know which trajectory we are on and how to correct it? What do we need to know if we should go again after that?
Without answers to those questions, planning is just filling in blank spaces around a decision that was never consciously made. Like taking vitamins without a blood test before. This could all be for nothing.
How the M.A.G.I.C. Exhibiting™ Formula fixes that
My clients when they train with me, learn all about the M.A.G.I.C. Exhibiting™ Formula. And the first letter, the M, is where we answer all these questions. M stands for MAP a show strategy. It exists precisely because what most companies call show preparation skips directly to logistics, bypassing the only step that gives those logistics a direction, and the show a reason to attend.
It stops them from arriving at a show they should not have booked, with a team that
has no clear mission, carrying a budget that has no way of proving its own worth.
You can explore how the full formula works in the article on the How to be successful at trade show.
The MAP ingredient has 5 layers, or five sequences if you prefer, each one complementing the previous one, until the reason why, the what and the how of a show is settled. Together they turn an emotional, irrational decision into a rational one. And what used to be a hope into a weapon.
How is a trade show strategy built?
The strategy is what comes before anything else. Before the show is even selected. Before the budget is locked.
It starts with the question that sounds obvious but almost never gets an answer: should shows be part of our business strategy? Why? What can they help us accomplish?
And all the other questions that follow: which shows match our strategy? Which to pick? When? With what specific targets attached? If no one can answer that without hiding behind habits or a show calendar that was already decided, the virtuous circle just started.
From there everything will follow. The past show analysis almost no team ever extracts. Which contacts converted? Which booth positions drew traffic? Which team members produced twice the conversations of their colleagues? Which shows, if you've been going to several, produced the best money for value?
If you want to know more about it, you can read How to choose the right trade shows.
With that data in hand, each show candidate goes through a structured evaluation.
No reputation matters, no attending habits either. But real probability numbers.
What results can we expect from this show? Is it worth it?
And that allows for two things: resource allocation. That means not only the budget and personnel ("we have a budget of X and three people") but deeper questions like: is this better than launching a cold-call campaign, a LinkedIn one, or an ads one? Or does it combine with them? How? If this goes exactly as planned, is there actually capacity to follow through?
Most companies never ask these questions. Most never worry about it because they're either comfortable losing money, or don't want to risk management mayhem by asking them. But in case they got lucky (because when your strategy is hope, your success is luck) and their pipeline is full, avoiding these questions would have created a bottleneck (when the team is back to work and didn't anticipate the follow-up workload) that will ruin everything they've done.
The last piece of this first ingredient of the method, called the S.L.I.C.K. Game Plan™, locks down the logistics. Early enough so decisions can be made with intent, not reactions. This is how no strategic piece of the puzzle gets missed or turns itself into a bottleneck.
What does it cost to keep going without a strategy?
For most exhibitors who will never read this article, nothing they're aware of.
But for you and me, we know that for some that is 80,000 euros left on the table, for 64% of them a sense of confusion, a budget wasted, a team demotivated, one more irrational management decision that keeps repeating.
An opportunity cost. A performance issue. And philosophically, a loss of meaning.
Without a show strategy, you're building on sand.
Marketing, sales, follow-ups, won't be as efficient as they should be.
Make the calculations. Or let me help you do it.
Like I did with Aurelien, who was caught in a show selection vicious circle for years. His budget was spent, with no R.O.I. within reach and no framework to make adjustments. His stand dimensions were discussed before the mission was even defined, and more often than not, there wasn't one, they were winging it.
But luckily for him, that's a thing of the past and now he makes twice his investment, minimum, every time. You can watch How to avoid selecting the wrong shows here.
Or like I did with Marc, another client of mine, whose investor was not happy with his show's bad R.O.I. In the absence of proper show K.P.I.s, the ones you learn through the S.L.I.C.K. Game Plan™, he was losing money on shows, even though he was sure he was doing everything right. But he wasn't. But now he does. Because he learned How to choose the right shows with trade show KPIs. And now his shows generate profits.
That is what happens when, like a tourist who accepts to take a guided tour of a new city, you accept to get the help of a trade show performance coach. It helps quickly go from amateur to professional. From tourist to owning the city, or the trade show floor.
But it's up to everyone to stay in their comfort zone, or decide to leave it.
When being prepared and ready is a decision
Most exhibitors reading this will do nothing. Their next show is probably already booked anyway. Its budget approved. So why poke the management bear? If you leave no trace, you can't be traced, right.
But if you're tired of running from show to show like a chicken without a head.
If you are done throwing money at shows but never seeing it come back multiplied.
If you are done being ashamed of your results, or hiding them.
If you are done closing an eye on all these conversations, years after years, that went absolutely nowhere.
If you are done making up a story about how good the show went on the flight back home.
And if you've had enough of hearing this nonsense about shows being for branding,
cause who really believes anyone remembers a random booth in a sea of thousands?
Then building a trade show strategy is more than a preparation exercise.
It is a decision to be made.
So if your intention is to change your trade show game. To end the corporately correct and finally squeeze the show lemon to the max, then this is your lucky day: the Exhibitor's Edge masterclass is one click away. Follow the white rabbit.