Booth at the Home and Garden show?

[Executivecleaning]

Has anyone tried a booth at your local Home and Garden show?
I am thinking about doing this in the spring. It brings in 7000 people in 2 days. Cost is $300 Any idea of a typical ROI on something like this? Thanks for the help. Kevin

 

[fresh1]

I did a home show here in so cal about a year ago and it was a total bust. Be wary of the numbers the promoters give you regarding attendance. The one we did was quoted at 5-4 k per weekend but when you looked down the aisle all you saw where other vendors looking down the aisle saying WTF it was a ghost town. When the Promoter finally showed up there was a near mutiny on hand with vendors saying there was no advertising no radio spots all of wich were said to have been promoted.
It might be the economy, or maybe i just got conned I dont know. For $950 I expected more. The price for the show your thinking about sounds pretty good, just do your research on the company doing the promoting.

 

[Charlie Lyman]

I have heard very FEW people say they have had a good return.

 

[Greg Cole]

waste of money! great for the ego, but you spend a ton of time and money and get little out of it.
Spend the money elsewhere

 

[adamh]

I did one and broke even. Not worth the time if you ask me.

 

[Captain Morgan]

Bill Bane claimed Home Shows were a gold mine and put them on the map.. but that was 50 years ago. Time have changed. I don't think a lot of people go there to purchase.. I think they go to get ideas, collect brochures, get estimates so they know how much their project will eventually cost them next year after they've saved the money.

On paper... carpet, tile & grout cleaning/sealing, hardwood revitalization seems to be a perfect marriage but in reality I have doubts. I considered it 2 years ago but held off when I saw the economy tanking. I don't think much has changed in most peoples minds regarding the economy.

 

[fresh1]

here in So cal they combine so much other crap into the shows that it becomes somewhat of a carnival. It seems that people are just collecting the free things some vendors give out, T shirts, bags, candy ect. If I wanted to blindly pass out brochures i could do it for free standing on the corner.

 

[Mark Saiger]

They are actually a big attraction for us around here. People start sensing Spring is on the way and start moving. I actually do very well at my couple of shows I do and it is a great place to meet your clients and let them know you are still in business and alive and well. It also tends to attract new clients that you get to introduce your self and your cleaning system, ect. I have also given away a flat screen tv just to come by and visit the booth. We end up having a very hot booth for people to stop by. Year before I gave away a portable DVD player. Just playing cartoon type shows on those types of systems as well as slide shows of your work on your computer draw people in. Well worth the time and money for us if you do your booth right.

Mark Saiger

 

[mattorbabs]

This is something I posted on ICS back in 2005.

Thanks for all the tips for the home and garden show. I gleaned these ideas from previous posts and put it together for our company.

Last weekend we were at the home and garden show for the first time. We had the space of three booths.

We had a large banner on the back wall behind us and three banquet tables in front of us.

On the tables we had two large TV sets, one on each end. One playing a continuous loop demonstrating the Rotovac system and the other a Viper duct cleaning video. Real attention grabbers. Then in the middle, two boxes for our hourly drawings, one for a free electrostatic air filter and one for a free recliner cleaning. Also plenty of free pens with our name on them.

Between the TVs and the drawing boxes we had a couple of LARGE candy bowls filled with good candy, and appropriate printed info on both air duct cleaning and carpet cleaning. Near the TV playing the Viper video we had a ten-gallon aquarium partially filled with debris from someone’s recent duct cleaning with a sign over the aquarium saying, “LOOK” and people looked, thinking there was something living in that mess. Excellent visual aid.

We also had on the table a video inspection camera and monitor that we use for air duct cleaning with the camera facing people when they came up to the table. Great with the kids, another excellent visual aid.

We stood right behind the table and passed out coupons good for $20.00 off air duct cleaning or carpet cleaning. We said to the people “Let me give you $20.00 it is good anywhere except Wal-Mart” Then kind of laughed. We passed out thousands. (Thank you, Steve Toburen, we worked the crowd!)

Behind us we had the Rotovac, blowers, negative air machine and other equipment with eye appeal.

The really cool thing was we were able to park two of our brand new vans one on each side of the entrance that people came through on their way to the booths. We had both of them opened up. One showing the Butler and one showing Abatement equipment. WE COULD NOT HAVE HAD BETTER EXPOSURE!

We had three technicians manning the booths passing out coupons, info and answering questions about our services. At times we had so many people gathered around it reminded me of those old movies with the snake oil salesman in the traveling wagon, step right up, step right up. They were two and three people deep listening to us as we answered questions and shared how the cleaning procedures worked.

We had a couple of live radio interviews because of dominating that part of the show. The interviewer asked what people were breathing if they had dirty air ducts. “I said it was a highly technical term called GKWs, God Knows What! (Thank you, Jeff Bishop!) The interviewer laughed so hard he snorted!

Now we have over 1,500 names that we have started to market and we are BUSY. We have been carpet cleaning in this area for 23 years and we have that end covered up. We started cleaning air ducts two years ago and this show has been a blast off, we now have mega work.

On another side of this event. It was FUN. We all had a great time. We barely had time to eat a bite but it was super time.
We prepared for it a couple of months in advance. Little by little we got things ready so it was not a big rush to throw it together.

I can't hardly wait until next year, we have so many more ideas to put into use.

But there real credit goes to the ability to share information on these bulletin boards. None of this came as an original thought of mine but from other professionals sharing their experiences with others.

Again thanks for all the tips from previous postings.

Matt Middleton
Cherokee Carpet and Air Duct Cleaning

PS
There was another carpet cleaner present. He simply had a box for a drawing of $50.00 worth of carpet cleaning. No action at the booth and there was no interest. People just walked right by. I kind of felt bad for him.

 

[Executivecleaning]

Mark,

You are always soo helpfull. I still remember your vans from a posting a couple weeks ago.

Matt,

Thanks for the VERY imformative post. If I do this, I will listen to all your experiences and try to impliment what I can.

Thank,

Kevin

 

[Mark Saiger]

I hope it works well for you too. I know every area and community are different, but with the info given, you might find a way to make it very successful for you too. I just did a resort show a couple of weeks ago. I had also done it last year. It gets very low turn out, but they are very loyal to who shows up. I did over $10,000 worth of business last year from just being there and have already had about $1200 worth of business from resorts just this past week. What I discovered is that they network via emails and boy do they talk. There was a very poor turn out this year, but it only took 2 more people talking about us and some new people meeting us to generate work. It is all perspective I guess, but I feel it was still worth our time and the $250 fee. Also, we have all the resorts we did last year tentatively booked and some new ones going to call.

Best wishes!

Mark Saiger