Holy cow, which Cannabis Industry trade show, seminar, conference, meeting, networking event  should I attend or exhibit at this year to get the biggest bang for my buck?

If you are having difficulty answering this question, so am I, and so are hundreds of other marketing and sales directors, not to mention owners, partners and presidents at the thousands of Producers, Processors, Retailers (PPRs), investors and ancillary businesses buying and selling their wares as they are bombarded with an onslaught of solicitations touting the biggest and best attended events ever being held in the industry.

While we applaud the entrepreneurial efforts and the mass promotion to help make sure these events make money, or at least break-even so that they live to fight another day, we wonder — how much is too much?

Don’t get me wrong; event marketers have always been willing to spend a higher cost per thousand to have the opportunity to speak to potential clients, either via being part of the conference agenda or by taking booth space, sponsoring lanyards, cocktail receptions goodie bags, or anything else that you have to take home with you from the event.

Are you getting what you pay for?

But the key question should always be this: Are you getting what you pay for? And after seeing millions of dollars wasted during the infancy of the Internet, during the dotcom boom, on event marketing and advertising, I’m not sure that we aren’t seeing a repeat of past mistakes.

Last year, as we were preparing to roll out Cannabis Business Executive, we researched the available trade shows and decided to go to two that appeared to be “don’t miss” opportunities. In my former roles as Publisher, Advertising Director, and Director of Sales and Marketing at well-known B-to-C media companies like Financial World Partners, Ziff Davis and B-to-B companies like the Newspaper Association of America and the Society for Human Resource Management,  I have always taken the approach that the best course of action is to walk any new event the first time around and decide if it is worthwhile to invest valuable capital resources in until I am sure that my target market is present in enough volume at the conference to make the expense worthwhile.

We decided on two events in 2014 — the NCIA Annual Summit in Denver last June, and the November Marijuana Business Conference & Expo in Las Vegas. So far in 2015, we attended the recent ArcView Group event in San Francisco. We would attend all of them again. We also attended a couple of other events I won’t name, on media passes, and I can tell you that from an ROI perspective, we won’t be going back to those (and they were free!).

The difficulty with many industry events, if you are a Chief Marketing Officer, is the lack of third-party audited data to determine who is telling the truth in terms of attendance (and I mean actual tickets sold to your potential buyers), because the number of attendees that are actually there to sell to can be a very small pool of qualified buyers, indeed.

Do the math on the ROI from trade shows

For instance, if a B-to-B trade show promoter is claiming that they will have 1,000 attendees and 100 exhibitors, you should know from the start that your actual attendee base is probably made up of at least 50 percent exhibitors. Then, throw out another 50-100 attendees who are part of the media, as well as a couple of hundred non-decision-makers from your target companies who are also there.

So, if you are one of those exhibitors who decided to attend, you are likely spending at least $10,000 on a 2-3 day event for 200 potential buyers based on the cost of:

• Your 10×10 booth (it generally costs $5,000 plus for a 10×10 booth);
• Your booth design costs (but at least you can spread this expense over all of the events you exhibit at during the year);
• The cost of travel and expenses (airfare, hotel rooms, rental cars or taxis, food, and ancillary expenses); and,
• Shipping and on-site union expenses to set-up/tear-down your exhibit.

Media costs are typically evaluated on a cost per thousand (CPM) bodies or sets of eyeballs reached, so using the math and costs above, the target audience you actually reach at one of these events comes out to approximately a $50,000 CPM ( 200 attendees worth reaching which is one-fifth of a thousand, then multiply the $10,000 out-of-pocket cost for exhibiting by 5) and voila, you just spent an inordinate amount of your marketing dollars to build awareness and create a sales lead — which is absurd, and a foolish way to spend your money.

Spend wisely — and be selective

The typical rule of thumb in B-to-B publishing/marketing (and trade show marketing is one of the channels publishers use to deliver our content and your brand and product messaging) is that you shouldn’t have to spend more than $150-$200 per thousand to deliver a targeted rifle shot message to potential buyers with email or web-based marketing.

That said, marketers are more than willing to spend 10-20 times that amount to personally touch their prospects, and trade shows CAN be an effective place to do just that, but a CPM of $3,000-4,000 is a far cry from the numbers illustrated above.

Also, keep in mind the CPM you spend should be influenced by the cost of acquiring a certifiable lead. An Apeks Supercritical may be willing to accept a higher cost per lead since that lead may translate into a $100,000 sale, versus a marketer of lower margin items.

There are additional benefits if you are part of the trade show content mix. Speaking at an event can get you lots of exposure, both pre and post show, and helps position your company as an industry leader, which can ultimately make the efficiency of your participation more palatable.

So, my word of advice is this: Be selective, spend wisely, research the events you are going to participate in, and remember, in order to reach your target market effectively, create the optimum marketing mix to maximize your dollars to generate awareness among as many potential buyers as possible, with enough frequency of your benefits messaging to get invited to the dance to present your best proposal.

Dig into best practices first

But, don’t just take my word for it. Marketo, a preferred media and marketing lead generation and fulfillment service, sponsored the following research report by Marketing Sherpa that reviewed best practices of B-to-B marketers in 2012.

The 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report provide insight to media mix and lead generation tools used by these marketers and you should find the executive summary useful in your efforts to assure your investors that you are prudently utilizing best practices to select the best events and media mix to grow your company’s revenues.