Is going to exhibitions and fairs a good growth strategy?

In a recent internal study, WhereInFair, which is like Yelp for exhibitions and conferences, discovered that companies spend on average, in one year, around $200.000 to participate at an average number of 5 exhibitions per year. The Marketing Department of those companies also spend about 2 months during the year in discovering and deciding which expos they should attend in order to get the best Return On their Investment (ROI). At such a high spending a company should naturally ask itself this question: is going to exhibitions worth the investment?

What exhibitions manage to do most of the time is to create unique new business opportunities that would otherwise take a lot more time and energy. In a relatively small space and in just two or three days you can find new and interesting supplies, get awesome business ideas, study the competition, find new products to sell, establish new relations and sign new partnerships, or meet your existing partners without having to travel to their home base. Exhibitions can also become a great source of revenue, if you decide to be an exhibitor. They work and that is the reason why they still exist and they thrive.

A company can decide to redirect the budget for exhibitions for other purposes, but it will soon see that it will lose touch with the latest technologies, products and services and on top of that that the relationship with the partners and clients will suffer. Attending great conferences can be usefully leveraged by the marketing and PR department and the lack of events like this can hurt the image of the company. Journalists love to attend exhibitions and they might love your products and services too, that is, if you are around for them to meet you.

So going to exhibitions and fairs is obviously beneficial, what takes more time than it should is the decision-making process that happens before each conference or exhibition. You now have tens of thousands of exhibitions to choose from. Discovering the right one and deciding on one can be a lengthy and costly process. Not to mention how frustrating it is to attend a fair that you quickly realize is not for you, but only when it is too late because you are already there.  If you can shorten the decision process and make sure that you will make the right choice every time, then you will have a lot to gain. One way to do this is to turn to specialized web applications like WhereInFair.

WhereInFair is a web-application where you can search, discover and compare over 10.000 exhibitions and conferences in 130 countries and 100 industries, big ones like Enterprise Connect or ITB Berlin . You can replace Google and word of mouth as your primary inspiration and use a tool that is already proving to be beneficial for leading companies. On WhereInFair you can find out key information and read and write opinions over exhibitions through ratings and reviews.

WhereInFair promises an easy way to compare exhibitions or to search by keywords for the ones that you might be interested in. You will find all the info that matters about a conference or exhibition and see if other attendees found it worthwhile and why. On top of that, you can also add you your own content like photos, videos, slides and presentations.


Every business owner knows how important it is for his or hers business to be present to the best exhibitions for the company’s business needs. It’s a great opportunity to shake hands with some important partners and future suppliers that will help your company grow, even if it is not that evident on the short term. The only thing you need to do now is to figure out how to decide faster and easier on the exhibitions that are worth your investment and to leverage your attendance to the maximum. And one sure way to do this is with WhereInFair.