One of the toughest things to determine when you are exhibiting at a trade show is just how effective or efficient you were at your trade show exhibit. Usually, you can get a feel for how successful you were in promoting your company and your products that comes from the general reception and the amount of attention that you received at your exhibit booths. However, a gut feeling isn’t a great way to objectively quantify your return on what can be a significant investment.
So, it’s a good idea to develop metrics that you can use to measure your success (or lack thereof) when exhibiting at a trade show. You may want to measure things like the number and quality of sales leads that you gather, the number of important professional connections you make and the number of people that stop by your trade show exhibit booths.
But, to get an even deeper understanding of how people perceive your company, your trade show exhibit and your exhibition at the show, it is a really good idea to integrate a survey into your exhibit booths. A survey can allow you to gain much deeper insight into what people liked, what they didn’t like, what drew them to your trade show exhibit, what they are most interested in and a little bit about their own background as well.
You could go the old-fashioned route and do a paper survey, but it may be a better idea to put a survey up on your website and then give attendees that stop by your exhibit booths an incentive to fill it out. You could offer a chance to win one of your products or another giveaway to get people to fill out the survey. This can give you valuable insight into what people think of your company and its products. It will also get them on your website so that they can learn more.
Surveys are an excellent way to help gauge the general perception of your brand and your products or services, as well as to determine how effective you trade show presence was at your last expo. They can also provide insight into who is most interested in your products and thereby allow you to fine tune your marketing and advertising to your target audience. They should be utilized in many different situations (not just at trade shows) in order to get the best and most useful feedback.