While nothing can match the reach of SEO for helping people find your business and services, there are other marketing techniques your company should explore from time to time as well. Especially if your product or service is something that benefits from a ‘hands on’ sales approach.

Exhibiting in Trade Shows is one such ‘hands on’ marketing technique I highly recommend as it is an exceptional way to significantly increase business and grow your company’s market share. But, even seasoned marketing managers and event producers are often blindsided by Trade Show budget blow-outs after ‘signing on the dotted line’.

In this article I’ll help shine a light on the many hidden costs associated with exhibiting at a Trade Show, to ensure your budget doesn’t keep rising like a deckchair on the Titanic!

There are dozens of ways to spend money when exhibiting at a Trade Show - maybe hundreds - but the first cheque you’re going to have to cut is to the Trade Show organizer. This cheque will cover one of two things:

1. Real estate in the Trade Show hall.
   
2. Sponsorship at the Trade Show and / or at any associated conferences.
   

Trade Show organizers rent out real estate at their events by the ‘square meter’ (or in the US, by the ‘square foot’). This real estate comes in two distinct varieties:

• ‘Space Only’ (where you pay for empty floor space and build your stand from scratch)
  
• ‘Shell Scheme’ (where you pay for floor space that comes with carpet, fascia, power point, name-board and prefabricated walls). 

‘Space Only’ is by far the best option for companies with a budget, as you start with an empty patch of floor, and can built a suitably impressive (and unique) stand from scratch, to ‘wow’ the great unwashed as they pass on by.

‘Shell Scheme’ is a significantly cheaper option however, but when going with this, be aware that your stand will look practically identical to hundreds of other stands around you (so grabbing the attention of people walking by is that much harder).

In this article I’ll assume that you’ve decided to go with the ‘Space Only’ option (and are going to build your stand from scratch), and are going to be an exhibitor only, rather than an exhibitor and a sponsor.

So, the next cost you’ll be hit with after forking out the deposit (a third to a half of the total cost is normal) to the organizer for your floor space, is the actual cost of designing, building and fitting out your Trade Show stand. (Note: you’ll want to split these into multiple individual lines in your Trade Show budget, but for ease of explanation here I’ll bundle them together, as there’s a large amount of budgetary crossover).

Be warned though, the cost of designing, building and fitting out your stand can easily double or triple the cost of the actual floor space itself. Yes, you read that correctly! The cost of designing, building and fitting out your Trade Show stand can easily DOUBLE or TRIPLE the cost of the actual floor space itself.

The reason this part of your show budget has the propensity to become a financial black hole, is because it includes such disparate elements as: the design and manufacture of all signage and marketing literature, the design and manufacture of the physical stand itself (including walls, carpeting, displays, et al), labour, (including installation and dismantling of your stand), utilities, furniture rental, freight, transportation, shipping, drayage, third party forcing, storage, insurance, audiovisual, photography, phone, internet and security (to name just a few!).

The final line in your Trade Show budget can best be labelled (broadly) as ‘Sales and Marketing Expenses’.  These can realistically be understood to fall under three basic headers:

1. Attracting visitors to your stand at the Trade Show. Think: Marketing, Advertising and PR activities.
   
2. Standing out from the crowd while actually being at the Trade Show. Think: sales staff, promotional staff, etc.
3. Following up the leads gathered at the Trade Show to ensure adequate post show R.O.I. (Think: sales 101…calling back the people who’ve demonstrated an interest in your product or service!)

These three elements (which of course in a full budget are split into dozens of individual line items) include, but are not limited to, through-the-line pre-show advertising, pre-show telemarketing, face to face sales calls to promote your presence at the Trade Show, on-site promotions, gimmicks and giveaways, staffing your stand with trained sales professionals, on-site entertainment, post show promotions and post show sales follow up.

Other ‘Miscellaneous Costs’ to take into account include: staff travel, hotel accommodations, meals, out-of-pocket expenses and an entertainment budget to wine and dine VIP clients (an often overlooked but excellent way to ‘stand out from the crowd’ and close the deals before the Trade Show is finished).

Want to master SEO? Then book in yourself or your staff for some SEO Training Sydney today! Sydney's #1 SEO Trainer Brian M Logan shows you everything you need to get your company website on the first page of Google. SEO Training can be in-house (we come to you) or classroom based (you come to us).

Enjoy this free article? Great! Don't forget to Like it, Tweet it and LINK to it.Your sharing of the page with your friends is greatly appreciated! :)

OTHER ARTICLES YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN:

• The Four Quadrants of Trade Show Selling.
• Benefits of Exhibiting at a Trade Show.
• SEO Explained. SEM Defined. SMO Uncovered.

SEO, as defined by the industry, refers to the search results that appear on the left of your computer screen when you perform a Google search. These searches are ‘organic’ and are separate from paid or sponsored adverts.

There are two main facets to SEO: one is known as ON PAGE SEO and the other is known as OFF PAGE SEO. Both are complicated endeavours (though for different reasons). But as you can see in the SEO ICEBERG diagram I’ve put together above, the amount of effort that goes into getting your website optimized in a way Google will value, is only 25% of the total iceberg. With the vast majority of the SEO that matters happening AFTER the site itself is optimized. And, like on-page SEO, the off-page optimization is never ending, with its matrix by necessity getting bigger and more complicated over time.

Search Engine Marketing is an umbrella term that originally encompassed SEO, but is now associated and identified exclusively with PAID SEARCH. This can take the form of Google Pay Per Click advertising, Facebook advertising, Google adwords and adsense, banner ads, button ads or any other form of paid on-line advertising used to promote a product, service or website.

It’s important to note however that PAID LINKS (as opposed to PAID SEARCH) does not fall under SEM. Paid links are classified by Google as a Black Hat SEO technique and will result in a ‘Google Slap’ that will cause the website to be de-indexed from Google’s search results altogether. So never, ever do this. And if a so called ‘SEO Expert’ tells you otherwise (and there are many that still do) - hang up on them. Because the key, as always, to getting people to link to you (especially in the post Panda and Penguin Google world) is to AUTHOR GREAT ORIGINAL CONTENT that engages with your community and prompts them to ‘Like’ and ‘Share’ the content with their friends. But great content that exists in a vacuum won't get read. Which is where SMO comes in...

Utilizing an on-going social media strategy that connects with your audience via web 2.0 platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Google + etc) helps generate traffic to your website. But it does not traditionally help with your SEO, because - post web 2.0 - links from social media sites such as those mentioned above do not carry any ‘Google Juice’, so Google largely ignores them. 

Links from web 2.0 sites (which became classified by the industry as 'rel=”nofollow' links) take the user from site A to site B, but are not followed by the Google spider (and thus are not factored into your site’s organic page rankings). However, post Panda and Penguin (Google algorithmic updates that radically altered how search works) this landscape is changing. Links from these web 2.0 sites still do not carry any Google juice, but Google have now admitted that 'Social Markers' such as the amount of likes, re-tweets, etc, are being factored into their organic search results. Google is doing this because it now believes that people don’t just search any more, they search, socialize and share. And that a 'Social Marker' is another indicator of 'Quality Content'. In other words, thinks Google, why would someone 'like' or 'share' something if the content was rubbish? They wouldn't. Ergo the content they 'liked' or shared must be of value.

This factoring in of 'Social Markers' by Google is set to radically change search as we know it. Sure, the organic search landscape hasn’t changed all that dramatically yet for the end user, but trust me when I tell you that it is changing and that if you want to future-proof your business against the winds of change, you'd better get aggressive with an SMO strategy...and fast.

Allow me explain what I mean: in years gone by, Google followed a link from point A to point B, and classified it as ‘a link from website A to website B’. In other words, from one ‘entity’ (site) to another. But now, with the launch of Google + and their Authorship algorithm, Google are looking to follow a link from one PERSON to another. This is a very important and seismic shift in the way Google are looking to handle search. Done well, it will make your search results different to my search results because we each ‘trust’ authors (of web content), differently. Which means that, even if we’re sitting next to each other and type in the exact same Google search on identical computers, we will get slightly different first page search results.

That said, Google + can hardly be viewed as a success, so far. Sure, millions of people have signed up for Google +, but – unlike Facebook – only a small percentage of people actually use the site regularly. Whereas people spend more time on Facebook than they do on search, youtube and Google + put together. But given Google has spent untold millions on R&D to make these changes work, expect them to iron out the bugs sooner rather than later.

Want to master SEO? Then book in yourself or your staff for some SEO Training Sydney today! Sydney's #1 SEO Trainer Brian M Logan shows you everything you need to get your company website on the first page of Google. SEO Training can be in-house (we come to you) or classroom based (you come to us).

Enjoy this free article? Great! Don't forget to Like it, Tweet it and LINK to it..Your sharing of the page with your friends is greatly appreciated! :)

OTHER ARTICLES YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN:

• Top 20 Ways to Get Google’s Panda to Love Your Content – The Definitive Panda Proof SEO Guide
• Online Advertising v Print Advertising. 
  
• Top 10 Reasons Why Small Businesses Need a Community Engagement Manager.