“We lowered our cost by 70% and doubled the impact on pipeline ” shared a gleeful SaaS CMO who stopped exhibiting at their industry’s largest trade show. Instead, they hosted their own events near the show. It was a brave and inspiring move for those in 2025 planning mode.

The Trade Show Trade-Off

Many B2B marketers are again spending 40-50% of their entire budgets on events. That’s almost the same percentage as it was before the pandemic. The problem is that full-loaded exhibiting costs have gone up significantly since 1999 – at least 25% when you include travel, entertainment, booth rental, creation, premiums, and staffing costs. So unless marketers are >25% more efficient at securing meetings during these shows, their event budget is already underperforming.

In the case of the quoted marketer, they were spending roughly $500,000 in 3 days on one show. Even with the exhibiting cancellation fee, their new approach reduced their costs to under $150k. And because their customers and prospects were coming into town for the show, they were still able to secure all the meetings they would have had as exhibitors. They were also able to take advantage of nearby customer offices, which created a comfortable “unsalesy” environment.

Are There Risks in Leaving the Show Floor?

You betcha. First, your brand’s mind-share in the industry will decline while exhibitors will see theirs stay steady (if they’re boring) and rise (if they do something distinctive). This probably won’t cost you late-stage deals but could hurt your top-of-funnel lead flow down the road. You might miss out on PR/influencer opportunities and the random conversation with a prospect or former customer that yields renewed interest.

In this case, the marketer planned to reinvest the savings in other marketing initiatives that would build mind-share and didn’t anticipate much downside.

The other downside is the important bonding that happens among employees, partners, and customers at trade shows. That too can be mitigated in other, perhaps less expensive ways, assuming you care.

Is This Really About Not Exhibiting at Big Trade Shows?

Nope. The big idea here is to look at your biggest budget items, especially the sacred cows, and question their efficacy. Maybe you’ve been running ABM programs for 2-3 years with only modest success. Perhaps your content investment (including tech) has grown faster than its usefulness. It may not be about dumping ABM or your content program BUT it could be about doing these things in a radically different manner.

This thinking will help you get ahead of the dreaded “do more with less” request. Instead, you’ll be able to present how you’ll “do more with the same,” and could “do even more with more.”

And wouldn’t that be flocking awesome

Written by Drew Neisser