Budget season arrives, and someone asks what events are on next year’s calendar. The answer is basically this year’s list, copied forward, with a few dates updated. Nobody debated whether the trade show in March was worth doing again. It’s just what you did last year, so it’s what you’re doing again.
Why “It Worked Fine Last Year” Isn’t a Reason to Repeat It
It’s easy to assume last year’s event list is basically fine. Nothing obviously failed, so it must be worth doing again.
That assumption skips the actual question: not whether the event was fine, but whether it was the best use of next year’s budget compared to everything else you could do with it.
Most Events on the List Have Never Been Given a Number
The real problem isn’t whether last year’s events went well. It’s that most events on the list have never been given a real cost and a real expected return, so there’s no way to compare a show you’ve done for ten years against one you’ve never tried.
Without that, the list gets ranked by comfort. The event you know best feels safest, whether or not it’s actually the best use of next year’s budget.
Give Every Event a Number Before You Compare Them
In our first post, we talked about deciding an event’s objective in dollars and its full cost before you go, so you can measure what it returns. The same discipline applies when you’re comparing ten events against each other, not just judging one.
For events you’ve done before, use what you actually saw: the real cost, and the revenue those relationships produced. For events you haven’t tried, a reasonable projection is enough to start. Either way, every event on the list gets the same two numbers: what it costs, and what it’s likely to return.
Say you’re comparing two events for next year:
A regional show you’ve exhibited at for years costs about $8,000, based on last year’s invoice. From experience, it usually produces 2 new clients worth $25,000 each, roughly $50,000 in projected revenue. That’s a projected ROI of about 6x.
A national conference you’ve never tried is quoted at $15,000 for a booth package. With no history to draw on, you project conservatively: maybe 1 new client worth $25,000. That’s a projected ROI of about 1.7x.
Same industry. Similar time commitment. On paper, the regional show is clearly the stronger bet, and you’d have no way of knowing that without giving both of them a number.
Rank the List, Don’t Just Renew It
The numbers tell you what an event is worth. A few more questions tell you whether it’s worth doing at all:
- Is this a respected event, one your team and your customers already trust?
- Does the content actually fit what you sell?
- Will the customers you’re targeting be in the room?
- Is there a real opportunity to have the right conversations there, whether that means a booth, a scheduled meeting, or working the floor with a plan?
- Are your competitors already showing up there?
- Does the timing and location make sense with the rest of your year?
Then decide the right level for each one, and don’t assume a booth is the default. Walking the floor with a plan, targeting the people you actually want to meet instead of stopping wherever the giveaway looks good, often beats staffing a table and waiting for the right person to wander by. Reserve a booth for the events where a physical presence is genuinely the strongest way to reach the room. Present, sparingly, only where you know you can add something real.
None of this replaces debriefing an event right after it happens, that’s worth its own conversation, and we’ll get to it. What it does is make sure every event on next year’s list earns its spot with a real number, not a feeling that it “went fine.”
Catching up on the series? Part 1: Why Events Don’t Deliver an ROI and Part 2: Don’t Just Show Up to Events and Expect an ROI
We built a simple planning tool that scores events against these questions and rolls up cost, projected revenue, and ROI for your whole year in one place. Download the Event Annual Planning Template and build next year’s list on the numbers, not the habit.