There were more than 15,000 tradeshows held throughout the United States in 2013. Tradeshows themselves are opportunities for businesses, companies, individual entrepreneurs and others to show off wares, describe products and attract customers, sign up clients and increase awareness. There are also a host of reasons why business professionals participate in tradeshows as well as consistently attend them, too.

Why Attend Tradeshows?

Some tradeshows are strictly industry affairs, attracting attendees already participating in the industry associated with this or that tradeshow, while other tradeshows are more publicly oriented, seeking to attract outsiders or new customers to the industry exhibiting its products, goods and services. A large international auto show held in Detroit, Michigan, say, is both an industry insider tradeshow as well as a public exhibition. For auto industry insiders, including makers, designers, suppliers and dealers, the auto show is an intimate affair, and business professionals in the industry always make sure to attend at least the most notable tradeshows on the year’s calendar. The same can be said for most any industry, though.

Simply put, if you’re seeking a way to make a mark for yourself as well as your business you should seriously consider setting up an exhibition booth at relevant tradeshows in your market or area, at minimum. For example, a businesswoman that’s proprietor of a computer supply and parts distributor, or “jobber,” interested in broadening her clientele might line up exhibition space at a relevant tradeshow within her market area, local if she’s only a local jobber, regional for larger service areas and national or international if her client base is national or global.

Another reason many business professionals set up exhibitions and displays at tradeshows, as well as attend them is the fact that there’s still no better way to network than in a face-to-face manner. While teleconferencing, or communicating over an Internet interface, is fine, “gripping and grinning” at a tradeshow, especially the ones catering to industry insiders, is an excellent way to broaden a client base. People are social beings, after all, and they generally like to interact with others in a more personal manner than just over the phone, through a video conference or something similarly electronic.


Are Tradeshows Overrated or a Waste of Time?

While attending a tradeshow or operating an exhibition booth at one, or even many, is usually beneficial for business professionals wanting to broaden clientele lists and the like there are times when they really don’t make much sense. For example, businessmen running a firm with a very select clientele that’s mainly grown through word of mouth or selective reputation may have no need for a tradeshow.

Many artisans and craftsmen or other artists, for example, don’t generally participate in tradeshows because their business activities aren’t based on such events. If you’re engaged in a business not normally relevant to the tradeshow environment you may ask yourself whether it’s worth the time and expense of setting up a booth or display at a tradeshow that may only have a very tenuous connection to such events. In this regard, tradeshows may be overrated or a waste of time for business professionals to either participate in or simply attend, as there’s little point for them in doing so.

There’s also little argument that a tradeshow can be a quite-expensive proposition with little real return on investment for some businesses, especially if they’re not in a B2B, or “business-to-business” supplier-client or vendor-client industry. A business needing fresh customers from the public also may not find an insider-only tradeshow very useful or profitable in both the short and long terms, at least on its face. A business with standard vendor or supplier relationships and not needing industry insider information or contacts, then, could be reasonably assured of not really needing a booth, or some level of attendance at relevant tradeshows.

Some businesses, though, may choose to sponsor certain events at a relevant tradeshow, sharing expenses with other event sponsors. In the end, whether a business professional should either set up an exhibition booth at or simply attend a tradeshow depends on what he or she wants and needs from the experience. For many businesses, tradeshows offer benefits that should not be missed.