Capturing Franchisees at the Right Show

Industry shows, by contrast, often draw a national or even an international audience. Since they will often be held during the week, attendees are eager to go home following the show, so seminars, receptions or other activities scheduled for the day after the show will meet with a lukewarm response at best. Instead, such events must be hosted during the show itself.

Likewise, savvy franchisors know not to invite their pre-existing prospects to a franchise show, as this will only have the effect of exposing those prospects to their competition. With perhaps 300 or so franchisors exhibiting, if your prospects go to the show, they should find you.

Industry shows, by contrast, can be significantly larger and more difficult to navigate. The NRA show, for example, has over 2,000 exhibitors, and your prospects will need to be in good shape to see everyone even if they spend all four days there.

Moreover, because these shows attract such a geographically diverse audience, they afford a great opportunity to meet face-to-face with prospects from around the world. And since industry professionals will invariably know about industry shows in any event, franchisors often promote these shows to their prospects.

Not Right for Everybody

As with most marketing strategies, trade shows and expos are not right for every franchise concept. And even if trade shows are appropriate, you must also answer the concept of which trade show is right for you.

In determining if a particular trade show is a good fit for your franchise concept, you need to start by understanding the particular buyer you are looking to reach. Virtually all trade shows track this kind of information, so it then becomes a matter of evaluating your target vs. these statistics.

For example, franchise shows do not tend to be a great match for franchise concepts that require a larger initial investment. The IFE, for example, reports that 12% of their attendees have more than $500,000 to invest and only 6% have more than $1 million to invest.

If you are looking for an experienced restaurant operator for a franchise who can support a $1 million buildout, you can apply the show's own numbers and your own estimate of restaurateurs in the crowd to guesstimate at the number of qualified prospects that might walk by, and make your decision based on that. Based on our experience, franchise shows seem to be most effective for franchisors with an investment requirement of $250,000 or less.

In addition to looking at the statistics from past shows, you should talk to past exhibitors to determine just how effective particular shows are. The fact is, some shows are better than others. Given the expense of time and money involved, it's important to focus only on the shows that will generate positive returns for you. Most shows will pre-publish exhibitor lists, making a quick survey of exhibitors relatively easy even if references are not provided.