3 Ways Trade Show Exhibitors Can Quantify Awareness

Exhibitors across industries often report that one of their top trade show goals is to increase awareness; however, in my experience, not a lot of exhibitors can clearly articulate what they mean by that or how they’d plan to quantify it.

I get it: awareness is commonly accepted as a “fuzzy” concept and, as a result, many exhibitors seem to think of awareness as something they can only judge by “gut feeling” or the feedback they get from their teams, especially their executives.

The problem is… while those warm, fuzzy feelings are nice to hope for, they are not so easy to accurately understand, let alone intentionally produce.

So, in order to make trade shows pay off from an awareness perspective, it’s time to take a step back and figure out exactly what impact you’d like your trade show participation to have… in other words, before you complete any other preparations, you’ll need to determine what “awareness” means to you and how you’ll quantify it, as an exhibitor.

In this article, let’s quickly review three options to address the latter point.

Option 1: Count impressions.

“How many “eyeballs” did you get on your company/offerings during your trade show?”

Whether you’ve invested in beacons that automatically track the volume of traffic around your booth or you literally stand in the corner and count the number of people who walk by your booth one-by-one (or any other method in between), most exhibitors could reasonably determine a number to represent the impressions you generate during a trade show, if it’s important to you.

Aside from weighing the options and selecting the appropriate tracking method for you, the biggest challenge with this method is that all you’ll have at the end of your show is the number of impressions. You won’t be able to tell why those professionals were near your booth or if they even actually noticed that you were there.

It’s kind of like when you place a banner ad on a website and you get a report that says how ever many people “viewed” your ad – you don’t know whether they were actually looking at your ad and soaking in all of your thoughtfully crafted messaging or if they were just reading the article next to your ad while it happened to be displayed on their screen.

To remedy this, you may want to also seek out other data (like dwell time, activity/interaction, etc.) that can be gathered alongside your overall impressions count (with the original method you’ve selected or by adding other method(s) to it).

And, to take this a step further, technically beyond “awareness” (as an action would be required as well)…

You might also track the online visits to your show-specific landing page, interactions with your social media posts/profiles, and even targeted internet searches for your company, offerings, etc. that occur during your trade show.

The process of gathering this data should be familiar to your team and, if you compare these impressions to those generated at other times throughout the year, they should paint a nice picture of the impact your trade show participation is likely to be having even beyond the event itself.

Option 2: Survey the audience.

How many professionals are aware of you after your trade show (and to what extent) who were not aware of you prior to it (or at least not to the same extent)?

In this case, you’d set up the same survey to be sent to the same audience before and after your trade show, asking questions like “which companies can you think of who offer [category] products/services?” “of this list of companies who offer [category] products/services, which ones are you familiar with?” and “what, specifically, do you know about [your specific company] and/or how would you explain [your specific company]/its offerings to others?” so you can compare the answers before to the answers after – noting how many more professionals can recall, recognize, and/or describe your company/offerings (as a likely result of your trade show participation and related efforts).

The biggest challenge with this method is ensuring you reach a good sample of your audience (vs. getting biased answers from only the small segment of your overall audience that you regularly communicate with and you’ve, intentionally or unintentionally, primed to answer in your favor).

To remedy this, you can partner with other companies that serve the same audience to send these questions (ensuring each partner is properly represented) to all of your contacts together… or, you can partner with your show management team to ask these questions of their (likely much larger) audience, often after paying a (sometimes hefty) sponsorship fee.

To take this a step further, technically beyond “awareness” (as some interaction is expected as well)…

You could also survey your audience on-site, during your trade show.

In this case, you would hire temporary staff to stop attendees leaving your booth (or lingering near your booth for some time) to ask them about their impressions of your company/offerings. After processing, this feedback can provide a general idea of the percentage of attendees your message resonated with to course-correct your team in real time or influence your designs/messaging for the future.

Option 3: Track progress through the “five stages of awareness.”

How many stages closer to completing the five stages of awareness are your individual audience members by the end of your trade show, compared to where they started before it?

** In full transparency, this is my favorite of the three options. I like this one because you don’t need any extra technology, connections, or other major resources to get started – you can assess this through your conversation(s) within your booth, just by asking the right questions and listening to the answers.

Now, in case you aren’t familiar – the “five stages of awareness” is a concept introduced by Eugene Schwartz in his book, “Breakthrough Advertising,” many years ago. It empowers professionals to label the progress their audience is making from unaware to problem aware to solution aware to product aware to fully aware. The way I think of it is that it’s, essentially, the steps that come before your sales process for your audience, potentially overlapping in some areas, for you.

The biggest challenge with this option is that you have to know what each stage looks like for your audience (so you can recognize it, label it, and track it)… and, it may be tough to distance yourself enough from your company/offerings to imagine what it’s like to not know what you know so well. Each stage is a potential “light bulb moment” for your audience and one step closer to what you really want: relevant professionals who are fully aware and can make a smart decision, via your sales cycle, as to their best next steps… hopefully, with you.

Now, the good news is, once you understand these stages, your marketing team should be able to tell you what it costs for them to lead audience members from one stage to another “in the real world” so you can calculate what you’re saving your company at your trade show, rather than just noting your (AKA your audience’s) progress in “number of stages” – cost or time savings is a much more compelling data point, especially for executives!

To take this a step further, technically beyond “awareness” (as it’d actually be up to your team to take an action as well)…

You could also use the insights you collect from attendees (based on how they describe your company/offerings and what seems to contribute to their transition from one stage to the next) to optimize your marketing (and, in some cases, sales) process.

The market research you’ll collect by actively engaging with your audience through the early stages could be invaluable to your team – not only quantified by actually improving your efficiency, but also in avoiding the cost required to complete this valuable “early stage” research (via polling or focus groups) otherwise.

Ultimately, this article is barely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to quantifying your trade show value…

Awareness (although super popular) is just one of 10+ value types exhibitors can achieve at trade shows and we’ve only quickly listed a few options for how you can quantify it here today…

My hope is that you'll use this as a good jumping off point to continue learning and applying new ways to make all of those commonly “fuzzy” opportunities much more clear :)

Speaking of… maybe this will help:

** Exhibitors – if you’d like to learn more about quantifying the value available to you through trade shows, please click here to register for our upcoming webinar on “How to Justify Exhibiting (Hint: ROI is Barely the Beginning)” – it’s on November 14 at 2pm ET and everyone’s invited.

** Exhibition organizers – if you would like to help your exhibitors justify their participation in your trade show, specifically, we’ve got a webinar for you too – it’s on October 24 at 2pm ET. Click here to learn more and register today!