Do you do trade shows or are you thinking about them?

Before you decide to go and do any trade shows take a look at this blog entry on the Small Business CEO site. The author makes several good points that doing trade shows may not be the best use of your resources.

If you are doing trade shows, how do you know if you are spending that money in the right area? First of all the best way is to keep track of everyone you talk to during the trade show. One way to do this is to have people leave their business cards and see how many of those people end up buying from you.

Now if you do see sales coming through that is great but it still doesn't mean your spending your money in the right places. Figure out all the expenses for the trade show including cost to be in it, travel expenses, supplies, everything. Next, how would you have spent your time if you did not go to the trade show? Would you have actually made more money staying home? If you made more money at the trade show than staying home and it paid for itself then that is the right direction for you.

If you cannot track any sales directly coming from the trade shows or you not enough to justify the cost, then look to other alternatives to market yourself.