Trade Show Marketing Blog

How many times have you found yourself bored out of your mind listening to a speaker at a conference? If so, you’re not alone. Over the past 5 - 10 years, more and more speaking positions at conferences have been given to “sponsors” (exhibitors who pay a premium to have time in front of visitors and attendees to the show). This is a great way for trade show organizers to make an extra buck, but it detracts from the overall experience for attendees. In the long run, I would argue that this practice will drastically decrease attendance and devalue the primary focus of any trade show, which is the marketing efforts of exhibitors put into their trade show booths and literature.

Event sponsors may pay $1,000 - $10,000 for the opportunity to speak to attendees, and they will certainly be looking for a return on that investment. As a result, speeches look more and more like live commercials. Attendees are interested in hearing informative speeches that relay information about the health of the industry, current industry trends, and what to expect in the near future. If you subject attendees to sponsor after sponsor who are relentlessly pushing their own products and/or services, they will quickly become bored and annoyed.

In order to solve this problem and keep attendees interested in hearing the speeches at conferences, it will take a concerted, collective effort on the part of show organizers to prohibit exhibitors from buying their way up to the podium. Speakers should be chosen on the basis of merit alone, not on the basis of how much money they are willing to shell out for a 10 minute long commercial. When speakers are chosen in this way, trade shows will be much more interesting for attendees. This may upset a few exhibitors out there who were used to buying an audience for their company, but they’ll get over it.