Conventions. Are They Worth It?

January is a good time to think about your marketing plan for the year. As a jack-of-all-trades, your services will be applicable to having a booth at many a convention and you may be considering this. It can sound very appealing…all that traffic and all the “potential” clients checking out your booth. Often they don’t cost very much either. However, before you look at having a booth at conventions in your area, here are some things to think about:

Preparation - To get people to visit your booth, you’ll have to be doing something impressive as having some videos/pictures, a raffle, and a brochure isn’t going to cut it. Your service is too complicated for a quick passerby so you’ll need to put a fair amount of time and money into creating something that will appeal to the audience of that particular convention.

Data Collection - Once you get people to visit your booth, you’ll need to have a way to collect their information so you can follow-up with them later. This usually means offering some sweet raffle. More money.

Turning Data into Paying Clients - So you end up with a fishbowl full of business cards. Now what? Even if you personally call every card in that bowl, most won’t remember who you are and the few that do probably won’t be interested. You may be able to add them to your newsletter list and, over time, some of them who don’t unsubscribe may learn enough about you to consider your service…but the statistics are low.

The Stress - It’s frankly not fun to sit at a booth and try to sell yourself. You may get your employees to do it, but they’ll likely feel demoralized by the end of the day as well. It won’t give you a warm, fuzzy feeling – I can promise you that.

Paying for Everything - The preparation, decor, raffle prize, employee hours, convention fee, and all the hours you’ll spend on being part of one convention will add up to more than you expect.

Can you tell I’m biased? I really don’t think conventions are a good marketing tool for personal concierge businesses. That said, if you have read my post and think there is a convention in your area that is worth going to, be sure to have some goals of what you want to get out of it and how you intend to reach your intended goal. Also just consider attending the convention and see what you can do with a little guerrilla marketing in the crowds…

Image adapted from the WonderCon exhibition floor by PopCultureGeek.com.