How Much Should You Be Spending on San Diego Trade Show Booth Rentals?

Participating in a trade show in San Diego can turn out to be a costly affair. San Diego as a trade show destination typically has a heavy and active corporate presence in the industry verticals of tech and new age sciences, boasts of a fluid multimodal transport system that makes commuting fast and easy and is the home to several grand trade show centers that host some very reputed trade shows.

These factors not only make San Diego trade shows worth participating but also raise the costs of participation. The crucial question to ask is as follows.

What should be your approach to budgeting for the trade show and how much should your marketing team pay for the San Diego trade show booth rentals?

Understanding the Economics of San Diego Trade Show Booth Rentals

In order to simplify your financial planning and budgeting for booth rentals, let us apply the standard principles of cost and benefit analysis. The following particulars of costs and benefits should enable your marketing team to think through the decision on the pricing of your booth rentals:

1. Value (V)

2. Benefits (B)

3. Efforts (E)

4. Risk (R)

5. Price (P)

The relationship between these factors is as follows:

V+E+R- B= P

To make economic sense of the expenditure that your marketing team incurs on the San Diego trade show booth rentals, the price (P) has to equal the difference between the sum of value (V) to be derived from participating in a San Diego trade show and the sum of benefits, costs of efforts to be put across all stages of the trade show project in San Diego and risks minus the benefits of participating in the trade show.

Let us take a look at the factors that determine each of these variables so that your marketing team can put together a strategy for financial planning and budgeting for the trade show and finally, decide on what price it should be paying for San Diego trade show booth rentals.

Factors Determining the Value of the San Diego Trade Show Project

The starting point for the brainstorming sessions of your marketing team for budgeting and financial planning for a San Diego trade show should be the value that can be derived from participating in the event.

Following are the major factors that shall determine the value of the San Diego trade show:

Value created by the trade show within the domain of your company’s overall marketing communications operation

Location and facilities offered by the trade show center to the visitors.

Number of blue-chip corporations attending the San Diego trade show.

Number of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) participating in the trade show.

Total footfall at the San Diego trade show center and the expected number of visitors at your trade show booth

This shall determine the scope of work to be done by the marketing team and the economic potential that the trade show offers.

The key takeaways for your marketing team from the perspective of spending on booth rentals are as follows:

Inquire about the credentials of the San Diego trade show? How old is it? Did the editions of the trade show in the last five years attract the attention of your industry vertical? If yes, it is relevant to your business.

San Diego trade shows usually attract a lot of visitors. The city is a major trade show destination. Do not worry about the visitors not showing up. The city is a hotbed of corporate investments in science, tech and innovation and has an active trade show calendar.

Talk to the organizers of the trade show as soon as there is a notification of the event. Being first gives obvious advantages. Research on industry contemporaries participating or looking to participate in the San Diego trade show. Greater the number of blue-chip corporations participating in the San Diego trade show, greater shall be the total volume of business generated by the trade show and higher shall be the level of competition. Given that the demand for trade show space and trade show booths are demand-driven, expect to incur a higher expenditure on both of these, if there is cut-throat competition at the trade show, courtesy the presence of industry majors under one roof.

Higher the number of MSMEs participating in the trade show, the more holistic is the representation of the industry vertical. Participation by a higher number of MSMEs is generally good for new market entrants, start-up businesses and disruptors. If you are a start-up business and find competing start-up firms making a beeline, do not shy away from having to pay a 10-15% premium on the booth rentals.

Factors Determining the Efforts for Participating in the San Diego Trade Show

A trade show project consists of several stages. The effort that goes into making the participation in a San Diego trade show success is spread across each of these stages.

While arriving at an accurate valuation of your rental booths and the total outlay that your marketing team can work with include the following factors that affect the efforts that need to be put in:

Choice of designs for your trade show booth rentals

Custom construction of the trade show booths

Graphics production and synchronization with brand value proposition

End to end project management from registration to participation

Onsite support for installation, monitoring and dismantling of the trade show booths

Visitor engagement during the course of the trade show in San Diego, both onsite and online

The key takeaways for your marketing team from the perspective of spending on trade show booth rentals are as follows:

Engage with the designers and builders of your trade show rental booths to inquire about the choices of designs that they offer. Research on the prices for modular designs of booth rentals.

Do not pay above the industry average in lieu of modular designs for trade show rental Make sure that you get brand graphics that are not only aesthetically appealing but deliver the message of your brand on the floor of the trade show.

If, asking for add-on feature integration and customized designs for your booth rentals. It is likely that the trade show booth designer and builder shall resort to add-on billing for feature integration and customization. Ask for segregation of all the custom features and items of furniture in the invoice.

Ask for a cost estimate from the designer and builder of your trade show booth rentals. The cost estimate submitted by the trade show rental booth designer and builder should serve as the basis of your financial planning.

Inquire with the vendors if they are willing to provide on ground support for the installation, supervision and dismantling of your trade show booth rentals. If yes, do bear in mind the man hours that your team can redirect towards visitor engagement.

Conduct TAT (thematic apperception tests) to assess the visitor engagement potential of your booth rentals. Assemble a group of respondents from the ranks of your business enterprise and ask them to respond to a questionnaire or even better record the visuals of their first reactions on seeing the trade show rental booth. It can serve as a possible underwriting for your investments in the San Diego trade show booth rentals.

Factors that Affect the Benefits Accruing from the San Diego Trade Show Booth Rentals

While counting the many benefits accruing from the trade show booth rentals that can easily be listed, pause for a moment. Ask your trade show marketing team to figure out the unique customer benefits (UCB) offered by the designers and builders of your San Diego trade show rental booth.

This should enable them to think through the outlay incurred on the booth rentals. The following two scenarios and responses are plausible in this context:

San Diego trade show booth rentals usually make for 35-40% of the total outlay incurred on participating in the trade show event. If the trade show rental booth on offer has a very strong UCB (unique customer benefit) for your marketing team to leverage and can be used as a key brand differentiator on the floor of the trade show, it shall make sense to pay a premium of 10-15% on the prices of the San Diego booth rentals.

Make sure that your marketing team does its research thoroughly to study the designs of trade show rental booths used at the recent editions of trade shows in San Diego. The trade show profile of the city is competitive. Watch out for having to pay an above-average price for modular designs of rental booths that offer no unique customer benefits.

Factors Affecting the Risks Associated with San Diego Trade Show Booth Rentals

Despite the best efforts and intentions of your marketing team and the vendor providing your San Diego trade show booth rentals, it is likely that there may be certain deviations from the projected costs.

These deviations from the projected cost estimates amount to hidden costs associated with the following factors:

Winding Up After the Trade Show

Customization of the Rental Booth

Logistics and Accommodation of the Team

Wear and Tear of the Booth Rentals

These factors may affect your total outlay on San Diego trade show booth rentals in the following ways:

A delay in winding up after the trade show is over, may just lead to waiting charges being added to your outlay. This could include extra costs for both the booth rentals or the trade show space or both.

Highy customized features and functionalities may come at a higher price. Platforms for deployment of high-end technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and apps for lead management may require significantly more than the average outlay.

Get your arithmetic right on the number of visitors per hour and the number of visitors that a trade show booth staffer can handle to arrive at the total team strength you need for the San Diego trade show. A larger team size shall require you to pay more on the transport and accommodation for the marketing team, raise the total outlay and thus reduce the effective value creation derived from every dollar spent on trade show booth rentals.

Make sure that the maintenance of your trade show rental booth is in safe hands. A reusable San Diego trade show rental booth that can be used across multiple trade show events evens out the costs and thus effectively pushes the costs downwards.

The takeaway for your marketing team for budgeting the amount to be paid for San Diego trade show booth rentals is that the cost and benefit analyses have to encompass not just the quantitative but also the qualitative aspects.

No price for booth rentals in the city is too high if it justifies the achievement of the goals that your marketing team has set. Conversely, no price for trade show booths is too low, if it does not serve the agenda that your marketing team has.