Are Trade Shows a Waste of Time?
If you were like many lenders in 2007 and 2008, a large portion of your marketing dollars were spent attending and exhibiting at trade shows 
throughout the country. Ocean Capital was one of these lenders. In 2008 alone we exhibited at 20 trade shows from Maine to California. Here’s just a quick summary of the costs incurred to send 2 commercial loan officers to a trade show in Chicago:
Exhibit Fee: $3,000
Flight Fee: $965
Hotel Fee (Our CLO’s were kind enough to share a room): $580 for a 2-night stay
Material Shipment Fee: $500
Grand Total: $5,045
As you can imagine attending 20 shows puts quite a dent in the marketing budget. After analyzing our trade show expenses for 2008 and 2009, and the amount of leads we took away from the show, we knew there had to be a better way to attract customers. Of course there are benefits to the shows such as the opportunity to take some classes, see what your competitors are doing, face-to-face networking, and not to mention the added perks of free stuff and sponsored cocktail hours.
But when it comes down to it, are trade shows really worth it? I don’t know about your company, but we just don’t have the same budget as we did back then. That $5,045 has to be stretched a lot further now and drum up more leads. Not to mention the trade shows aren’t packing them in like they used to. Companies are finding faster, cheaper, more viral means to attract business.
With the explosion of social media, web technology and networking sites, there are many more cost effective approaches to finding customers, and more importantly being found by your customers.
In order to do this, you need to set up your website and networking pages to provide a plethora of information and establish yourselves as thought leaders in the mortgage industry to attract visitors naturally through search engines such as Google, through the blogosphere, and through social media sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook.
Creating fresh content on your website, blog and facebook page will be a bit more time consuming than a 2-day trip to Chicago, but over time you will begin to set yourself apart from your competitors, and for a lot less money.
