Should Franchisors Participate In Franchise Exhibitions And Trade Shows?

Every year, there are countless franchise exhibitions and trade shows organized around the world, and most if not all, see tens of thousands of visitors turning up. If done right, these events are a great way to increase a brand’s profile and generate more potential franchise leads.

Related: The Most Common Oversight When Taking Your Franchise Global

However, participating in such events does not come cheap. From the start, you are looking at renting a booth space to showcase your franchise brand. Furthermore, there are additional expenses like printing of materials and decorative collaterals for the booth. If you are participating inbound from an overseas country, the expenditure balloons with the additional costs of travel, lodging, sustenance and maybe even entertainment expenses. And the reality of it is, you may not even generate any franchisees from the event and see your investment go up in smoke.

So Why Do So Many Franchisors Still Participate In These Franchise Events?

Exposure To High Quality Prospective Franchisees

Visitors to franchise events are typically there for one reason – to find a suitable franchise opportunity. Most of these visitors have committed to leaving the comfort of their home to actively learn first-hand about available franchise opportunities. Of course, while there will be visitors who could simply be around just to take a look at what’s happening, however a good number are high quality prospects who will be attending the event with an objective. 

Exposure To The Industry

One of the main reasons for participating in franchise events, other than to generate new franchisees, is also to increase brand awareness not just within the franchise industry but overall, as a brand too. While a visitor may not be looking to take up your franchise concept, they could find your product or service interesting: try it, like it, become a become a returning customer and recommend your brand to others. With a positive experience, the ripple effects thereafter from a potential would-be customer are almost endless. Moreover, some of these franchise events receive press and media coverage so passing up your participation also means giving up the potential chance for coverage in any of those publishing avenues.

Exposure To The Competitive Franchise Arena

Being at the franchise event allows you to discover what other franchisors are doing to attract new franchisees. Whether it is a marketing tactic or a design strategy, with the amount of franchise opportunities available out there, you will need every advantage to know how to stand out. Additionally, while you could be offering an awesome franchise concept that is proven to be highly profitable to franchisees, it could be simply down to an elimination process just because you were not there to impress them.

Choose What Works Best For You

There’s no denying that the expenses involved for participating in franchise exhibitions and trade shows are high. Nonetheless, instead of basing decisions focused on financial benefits, perhaps franchisors could take another look at how these franchise exhibitions and trade shows could provide further benefits other than just new franchisees. Meeting face-to-face with people always provides that extra human connection that would be otherwise difficult to establish. Zoom only goes so far. But that’s not to say take part in any and every franchise event, rather pick and choose which ones will provide the most value that relates to your growth objectives for the franchise business.