Events and awareness for a small business, costed honestly

3 days ago
3 min read

Updated: 18 hours ago

Introduction

Events are the marketing activity most likely to be evaluated on the wrong measure and abandoned for the wrong reason. A business attends a trade show, collects nineteen business cards, converts one, and concludes that events do not work. The stand cost two thousand and three days of two people's time, and one customer did not cover it.

Sometimes that is the correct conclusion. Frequently the event was doing something else — putting you in front of people who now recognise your name, starting relationships with suppliers and adjacent businesses, and giving you a reason to contact people afterwards — and none of that appeared in the calculation. Deciding what you are attending for, in advance, is what makes the judgement meaningful.

1. Events and awareness for a small business should be judged on conversations, not cards

The measure that fits.

How many real conversations with people who match your customer profile. Twelve substantial ones beats ninety scanned badges, and the number is knowable on the day. Set a target for it before you go, because it changes how the day is spent.

2. Cost it properly before deciding

The calculation that changes the answer.

Stand or ticket, travel, accommodation, materials, and the days of your time at a realistic rate. The time is usually the largest component and it is almost always omitted. Two people for three days is most of a working week that produced nothing else.

3. Decide what the event is for

The step that determines everything else.

Meeting potential customers, meeting potential partners, being seen by an industry, or learning what competitors are doing. These require different behaviour on the day and different measures afterwards. An event attended for all four purposes at once usually achieves none of them.

4. Speaking beats exhibiting for credibility

The format comparison.

A short talk demonstrates competence to a room. A stand waits for people to approach it. For a service business where trust is the constraint, speaking is usually the better use of the same day.

5. Small and specific outperforms large and general

The selection rule.

A local trade association meeting with forty of exactly the right people is frequently worth more than a national show with four thousand of the wrong ones, and it costs a fraction as much.

6. Plan the follow-up before you go

Where the value is realised or lost.

Most of the return comes from contact afterwards, and most businesses do it late, generically or not at all. Decide who does it, within what period, and what it says, before the event.

7. Follow up within days, individually

The execution detail.

A specific message referring to the actual conversation, within a week. A generic mailing to everyone collected performs so poorly that it is barely worth the effort of collecting them.

8. Expect a long tail rather than immediate business

Setting expectations.

People met at events convert over months and years, and frequently through a route that never mentions the event. Judging on same-quarter revenue will condemn an activity that is working.

9. Attend the same ones repeatedly

The compounding effect.

Familiarity accumulates. The third year at the same event, where people recognise you and know what you do, is worth considerably more than the first, and businesses that rotate never reach it.

Be careful about attending events because competitors do. Presence justified by absence-anxiety is the most expensive form of this activity, and it produces the outcome that gives events their poor reputation.

Conclusion

Decide the purpose, cost it including your time, and judge it on conversations.

Count substantial conversations with the right people rather than cards collected, choose speaking over exhibiting where credibility is the constraint, prefer small specific gatherings to large general ones, plan who follows up and when before you attend, contact people individually within a week referring to the actual conversation, expect returns over years rather than in the same quarter, and attend the same events repeatedly so familiarity accumulates.