Decline and Fall of Live Trade Shows and Rise in Digital Events - Top-10 Reasons Why

Virtual Events Deliver 99.999% Larger Audiences than Live Shows and No Lines, No Crowds and No Infections along with increased customer and safety, dramatically lower costs and ease of use.

For those who can't go, don't want to go, worry about going, can't afford to go, don't have the time to go, on vacation/personal/school time conflict, have too much work to go, on deadline or cutover conflict, too far away to go, don't see any benefit, simply prefer not to go. Exhibitors forget that 99.999% more people do not go to live trade shows for all kinds of reasons. Here are 10 other reasons why live trade shows are on the decline regardless of the pandemic crisis for both the exhibitor and the attendee:

1 - Boondoggle - bosses are rarely convinced of anything that is not their idea much less sending you to an event in Florida in March or anywhere else that is fun. The cost, downtime, uncertain results and benefits to the company.

2 - Basics - travel is not going to get any easier, safe concerns remains, hotel and uncertain convention center sanitation and disinfection procedures for attendees, exhibitors, food service, maintenance, security, social distancing enforcement along with mask requirements enforcement change daily but infection rates remain high even with a vaccine unlikely until 2021.

3 - Business - one of the key focal points of any trade shows is meetings with vendors to drill down the details. Often it is the case of the wrong vendor staff being there who are unable to answer the questions you have taking your business card for virtual concall later.

4 - Buying cycle - live trade shows are rarely in sync with the buying cycle. This is critical for both as trade show schedules along with new and current product releases and upgrades are not matching when customers need new solutions.

5 - Boring - most conferences offer hundreds of panel discussions, keynote presentations, inspirational/motivation leaders and sports stars. Of course, there is the occasional off-the-charts great presentation and case study but most sessions are just vendors with their standard sales pitches arguing with one another with more "hot air" than real answers.  

6 - Back-breaking - live trade shows encompass large convention centers where it can take all day to get from one end to the other and bathrooms are in the wrong places.

7 - Bag - no more paper, even presentations on flash drives, all the flyers, presentations and schedules are online yet the bag comes back filled with swag for the kiddies and friends. All of this can be shipped to potential customers rather than worry about contamination.

8 - Boss - as bosses go they rarely see staffers going to trade shows as a real benefit to the company because they were once in the same situation going to useless trade shows themselves. They know that playing golf, going to the beach and often doing anything other than spending time at the trade show takes place. One of the best ideas that one company did instead of going to trade shows was sending their private jet to fly customers to HQ for private dining, meetings with all the key executives and private demonstration.

9 - Bonding - indeed meeting old friends and making new ones comes from any event. Gaining insights from trusted colleagues is critical to not screwing up with your own project. Finding new career opportunities and interviews let's people "size up" each other as finding the right person for the increasingly complex position is really hard.

10 - Bottom-line - live trade shows in most forms except for RV, camping, gun, spa and shows where really seeing something is important are likely going, going and gone. Since you can't see tech, cloud, AI, IoT, software and thousands of other intangible items don't need a trade show they need better demos by audience type such as by business role, job title, research topic, customer size, industry and so on. Exhibitors need to specialize their content along these lines and train sales people for these audience types along with new digital presentation skills, live streaming, product demos and too many other things for this short briefing.  

And, if you haven't noticed so far I have not talked about the enormous real cost, staff time, marketing meetings, travel, booth selection installation and tear down, meals, hotel, lost company time and much more devoted to doing one or more or even like one company said 300 events. In my humble opinion, the cost of trade shows and business networking has gone off the charts and now is a great time to assess the real ROI.

Summary - What role do trade shows have in the marketing portfolio, some say none and other CMO's love them. Like great cooking chefs, CMO's are fans and many not. Whatever you prefer, the new post-crisis CMO will be looking at how digital transformation will change the sales-marketing-support mix in maximizing effort and budget as the world is changing and now it is changing faster. 

Strategically, the faster you can communicate, the faster you can change and those that change the fastest will be the most successful.

Or if you prefer Churchill in Winston's War "I never ‘worry’ about action, but only about inaction” by Max Hastings.

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