Conventions and Tradeshows...Worth it?

Here's an interesting article I came across on my Facebook feed.

http://comicbookwife.com/2014/09/20/the-hidden-truth-about-comic-book-convention-earnings-for-creators-have-comic-book-conventions-jumped-the-shark/

I see this at conventions for all industries, not just comic book conventions.  Instructors, featured artists, and vendors are usually sacrificing income they could be earning at home or even going well into debt to attend conventions these days.  I used to attend 8 - 12 conventions per year.  Now I attend 2-3 at the most.

I'm looking at this from the convention/ tradeshow standpoint, but it also applies to any festival or event where you pay a booth fee.  You have to measure the potential impact of your marketing dollars.  How many attendees are going to be there?  How many are potential customers?  How many vendor hours are available?  How much in sales do you have to earn per hour just to break even? How much does it cost you (per potential customer) to attend the event?  Remember to include cost of goods when you do your math.  If your booth fee is $2000, your hotel $1000, your travel expenses $1000, and staffing costs $2000....You might think that $6000 is break-even, but how much did it cost you to buy the $6000 worth of product that you sold?  Your break even might actually be closer to $10,000. If you're at an event with 10 vendor hours, you'd have to have $1000 in sales per hour just to break even.  Unless you have products with a very high price point, that level of sales may not even be possible.   And let's assume that many of those sales at the show were actually to current customers, who would have purchased from you online if you had not been at the show.  You could have stayed home and made money instead of going through the stresses of traveling and working a tradeshow, hoping to break even.

The best way to reach customers yesterday may not be the best strategy for today.  The marketplace is evolving and customers are more savvy than ever.  Instead of buying the first thing they see, customers wait to go home and read reviews and compare prices.  I'm not saying that conventions and tradeshows aren't worth doing, especially if you have a new product or the show attendees are mostly unfamiliar with your product.  But be sure that you do your homework on the event and make sure that you are getting as much marketing impact as you can from the event.  I see far too many new products debuted at shows before they are ready to launch.  By the time the creator gets their act together, either the moment has passed, or competitors have already gotten their version of the product out there.  Have your product in stock and ready to sell.  Polish up your website.  Make sure you have plenty of advertising material to hand out.  When given the choice between getting your company name and logo in front of customers or spending that same amount of money to get your actual product into actual customers' hands, which do you think will have more impact?

My cousin works for a large international professional hair product company.  I know they can spend upwards of $30,000 to attend a tradeshow where they are pretty much just meeting with current customers, supporting vendors, and maybe gaining a handful of new customers.  I can't help but think that they could have sent out $100 worth of free product to 300 good customers or potential new customers and have gotten much more value for their investment.  An online competition with $30,000 going to help somebody start a new salon would have gotten them incredible amounts of publicity.  But some old dogs take a while to learn new tricks.

It may be tough love, but sometimes you have to remove emotion from the equation and do what makes business sense.  As my favorite money guru, Dave Ramsey likes to say, "It's math, not magic."