[Stonehenge]

I'm interested to find out why people choose to have a booth in a local landscape show, as well as why they choose not to.

I know some of you do more commercial than residential, but I'm interested to know if people tried booths and they didn't work, or if they tried them, what parts worked really well?

Did you employ any tricks or techniques to pull in more people, or get them to schedule appointments with you?

[grlandscaping]

I would be very interested in this topic as well, I will be in my first Home Show next week. I'm having a pretty interesting booth i'm going to set up, 20'x25'. I'll post some pics after the show is out. What would be some good ideas to offer to people who come in during the show? 10% off? free tree planting? an apple pie?

[Stonehenge]

Offer them nothing.

The thing I've seen that seems to work well is to have a drawing for a free design. Have them fill out their name, address and phone on a card and put it into a box. When you're done, you have a nice set of leads to call on, and one design that may lead to work.

But don't give away freebies just for the sake of freebies.

[diginahole]

Me too... I'll be involved with my first show next week as well. It's not my booth, but I'll be building the interlocking paver display. I may or may not man the booth for part of the show, I haven't decided yet.

[Stonehenge]

I may write an article in the Gold Oak section about the things I've seen at booths that work, things that don't. But I'm interested in getting alittle input here, first.

[diginahole]

I think my dad may have soured my perception of home shows. He always said they cost WAY to much for the return. I have no real experience to confirm nor deny that. Things may have changed since he last did a show, or maybe not.

[chesie]

We presently are not interested in doing them because they tend to be held out of our market area. This is not a bad thing but we are a small company that keeps busy locally. When we are ready to spread out a little i think we will be very interested.

[dan deutekom]

Been a long time since I have been involved in Home shows but I have found that they are very expensive and time consuming for the return.

When I was involved in the interior landscape business we did several shows per year. These were the big name shopping mall shows where architects and land developers as well as the big management companies were trying to court each other. These shows were very successful but that was a different ball game than exterior residential clients. The home show always had a lot of tire kickers with absolutely no intention of buying.

[Bill Schwab]

Two reasons we do not have one...Time, and Money. With supplies, labor to run the Del Mar Fair would go over $23,000.00.

Just a small weeekend homeshow at the Del Mar fairgrounds with supplies will run over $4K. We are getting too much work other ways to enter in that market at this time.

[jwholden]

I called about a local home show in a ritzy town and they wanted 850 for an OUTDOOR space. It is a big event and there would be a ton of people. However, the expense of setting up for the show and chasing my tail on leads can't justify it for me.
I do believe that you have to advertise and keep your client list fresh. Beside referral work I have yet to nail down the best way to get QUALITY leads. However, I have some ideas...

[Stonehenge]

Depending on the size of the booth, $850 might not be too bad. We paid around $600 for four booths, totalling 400 sqft. But if the throughput at the show is good, and you can gather some solid leads, it may be worthwhile.

The show we did a few weeks ago was not, but it had more to do with the promotion of the show. We may look to do a different show next spring.

[jwholden]

Jeff,

Did you say the show was no good? How many leads did you gather? What was the attendance for the show?

[Stonehenge]

I was able to get about 5 good leads, which is not a good return on the investment of time and money. The show ran 3 days, and there were 1300 people that came through. For comparison, when I was in the same show 2 years ago, the show ran 2 days and had 2800 people go through it. And I got an equivalent number of good leads.

I found myself abandoning my booth early to go home, because there was literally nobody there in the evening, except us landscapers.

So yeah, it was a disappointment. I had expected better results than the first time, but we were far from that. I was able to make some observations that I'll put into an article later today in the Private Garden section. I think that just like everything else, there are some tools that can be used to help get the results you want from a show (provided you an ample supply of visitors).