By Eddie Choi 

The current financial tsunami has further weakened the US economy. Recently I was asked by friends and colleagues in the trade show industry for whether or not there would be decrease of the US buyers traveling in Hong Kong and China for visiting trade shows. I think the answer is quite obvious. As far as I know, the number of the US buyers who travel long-haul to visit sourcing trade shows has started declining since last year.

As a B2B marketer, this is my thought: even if the buyers stop traveling to visit trade shows, those sourcing and procurement jobs still need to be carried on. Will they do more online sourcing? It will be interesting to know if there is any correlation when there is a cutback in corporate expenses (I am talking mainly the spending for the long-haul sourcing trip), online sourcing activity will be increased.

My colleagues in Frontiers Digital are working on a buyer marketing campaign which will put a test to compare if the same media and demographic mix will perform differently across the trade show season (Aug/Sep/Oct).  Time and location will be held as the control variables to test against the traffic on the same media and demographic profile.

It is a commercial advertising campaign so it isn’t designed for research purpose. But I am hoping that the result will somehow throw light on how offline and online media are complement to each other for the best buyer marketing strategy.  The trade show marketers have been discussing this topic for long enough.

Eddie Choi, Tradedot