The client annually attends several hundred trade fairs around the globe. The investments that come with the preparation, attendance and follow up of such exhibitions are significant. Nevertheless, there had been no tool available to determine the impact of the attendance. Therefore, an appropriate method to measure the success was required to justify the high expenditures. Apart from that, the client was keen on documenting current processes related to trade fairs in order to find areas of improvement.

In the beginning, a theoretical framework was built on the topics of sales leads, trade fairs, marketing analytics and advertising value equivalency. From this, the questions for the interviews with the client’s employees as well as external marketing experts were derived. The applied questionnaire consisted of three sub-topics and ten lead questions. A structured analysis of the interview answers and the review of internal guidelines and reports lead to the main findings of this work.

As a result of the findings throughout this Bachelor Thesis, the client was provided with a trade fair valuation matrix. It enables the client to approximate the value of their interactions with customers and prospects before, during and after an event. The tool offers the possibility to compare the results of different exhibitions over time or between regions or business units. Through that, it can be measured whether the exhibition of a booth was successful, based on performance indicators that are defined in preparation phase of a trade fair. Apart from that, it encourages the common definition of objectives for every employee that is involved with a particular event. Furthermore, the major procedures in regard to trade fairs were compared with relevant literature. It was found that there is still potential for improvement, specifically in the areas of goal-setting and objectives alignment, the use of supporting tools or the involvement of marketing employees in the process.