Home and Garden shows

[oldugly]

I have tried alot of different marketing schemes and found some of my best results come from doing things a little differently. I have actually done very well at county fairs, small home and garden shows, and business expos. Recently I signed up for a huge home and garden show, and invested alot of money (at least by my standards) to enter a new service area by "storm". Anyone else had good luck, or bad, with this type of advertising?
Since my hand injury I need to concentrate on the PHC end of my business, and this was the quickest way I could refocus my efforts and introduce myself to a new area at the same time. I know this doesn't really fall in the "climbing" end of this forum, but I thought it fell under the commercial treecare title. Besides I need to generate enough work to hire a climber to replace me, and i refuse to hire or pay cheap..so I got to have the work lined up to get, pay, and keep a good man happy.
Any advice or experience with this would be appreciated.

 

[tree md]

They call me every year here and try to get me to buy a booth. I haven't done so yet but would be interested in hearing if it does anything to increase your volume.

 

[Pelorus]

They call me every year here and try to get me to buy a booth. I haven't done so yet but would be interested in hearing if it does anything to increase your volume.

Been there & done that a couple of times.
It represented a TON of work to create a cool booth. (Complete with rope hanging from arena ceiling, a "real" tree, hollow/decayed wood sections, photos, moniter with slideshow, stump grinder with chips and a half-chewed stump, custom drapes, wood cross-section tables, promotional literature, etc, etc, etc,)
Ended up winning first or 2nd place awards for best booth in show awards, a photo in local paper, and once even a 15 to 20 second blip on a local TV newscast. Wonderful. Great for ego.......except:

the equation of money & effort spent : new clients acquired was dismal. Lousy return on investment. I think the era of home shows (in my neck of the woods) has pretty much had it's day anyway, and large volumes of folks can't be bothered going anymore.

 

[Zale]

Don't just hand out cards and smile. If you can, set up appointments right then. The company I worked for did this for several years and the results were mixed. The best years were when we were able to schedule appointments on the show floor. A lot of people will want free advice, don't give it! Make a appointment with that person so your on the property. Good luck and get a good pair of comfortable shoes since you will be standing all day.

 

[Toddppm]

I did it once, spent alot of time and money getting everything together. Maybe I needed to do more, definitely didn't get any awards, haha. but my results were not good at all. Don't think I'll ever do it again. The show I did is actually going on right now, decent size show for this area. Much better ways to spend a few grand that it cost to do.

 

[Pelorus]

The local small indoor mall used to host a "home show" where exhibitors could set up booths in the aisle. Complete joke.
I made the mistake of getting suckered into that one once. Aside from a bunch of older guys that dropped around to **** chat (while their wives shopped), the one and only meaningful contact made was a lady that accidently stopped by. Accidently too, because she was only going to the grocery store in the mall, and just stopped by. Still do work for her every year or two, and she has become a good client, but it was fluke encounter. There was also an older fellow who gave me the owner's manual to some ancient saw (Mall) that his father or grandfather had once bought back in the day.

 

[oldugly]

Wow..I'm not doing a climbing demonstration or anything like that, just some insect damaged samples a few brochures, and a few posters. I've done okay in the past at some of these events, but this one is over 10 times the size of any event I've done before. I got way too much invested in it to not do it now, but we'll see.
I do always have an appointment book with me, when I do these shows, and yes it really secures alot of work for me when I can get them to commit to a "consultation" or estimate. Could be a good jump start to the season.
At least it is the most interactive form of advertising I know of, other than beating doors...and I hate doing door to door sales like some kind of ragamuffin hobo lookin for a handout.

 

[sgreanbeans]

I think that has to do with your market. We have done a few shows and have had mixed outcomes. The best one was hosted by one of our big time real estate company's, the CEO, a chick, got wasted and was trying to french kiss everyone, shes older and not very pretty. Although I didn't get much action out of the show, it was worth it to see that action, she started making her way towards us, Dana (my wife) stopped her before she got to far, whispered "your making a ass of yourself" in her ear, sobered her up real quick and she left. It was awesome, she seen us a few months later in a store, very apologetic to us. I called BS, as if she was really that drunk, how would she remember? Maybe she was just putting on a show so she could go around a kiss guys!