Trade Shows Are Back, Baby
By Chuck McCarthy · October 22, 2026 · 32:17 read
Category: News & Politics
Show: To The Power of X
Trust in digital marketing keeps dropping, and trade show marketing is making a comeback because of it. People are not just ignoring ads, they are questioning whether anything they see online is real.
Trust in digital marketing keeps dropping, and trade show marketing is making a comeback because of it. People are not just ignoring ads, they are questioning whether anything they see online is real.
Reach out to Xponent21 if you want help turning your next event into an actual lead generation system.
Chuck, Kayleigh, and Kiryako dig into what the trust gap means for marketers right now: AI content scales fast, social feeds fill up with lookalike posts, and audiences are getting better at spotting it and scrolling past, a pattern they call slop slinging. That fatigue is working against engagement and pipeline for anyone leaning hard on volume.
Good news: trade shows and in-person events are helping to restore the trust gap with brands. When people are tired of slop and internet interactions, a real conversation at a booth resets the relationship.
We break down why event marketing is moving back into the spotlight, how to think about ROI when you cannot rely on the same ad dashboard, and what it takes to turn an event from a sunk cost into something measurable.
The case study we highlight is Weidmuller, a client shows up to trade shows in a big way. Xponent21 built them a picture ID search-and-find game, playable on a phone or a booth tablet, with the company’s own products hidden in scenes built around their industry. It drove booth retention, captured attendee data in a way people actually wanted to give it, and set up clean segmentation for remarketing after the show, split between recruitment audiences and sales prospects.
Whether you sell electrical components or anything else that is not inherently exciting: start with your goals before you build anything, know your audience, and treat the trade show booth as the start of a strategy rather than the whole thing. Pre-show outreach, on-site execution, and post-show follow-up all have to work together.
Roughly 40% of companies that pay for a booth skip the follow-up entirely, which is the easiest way to waste the whole budget.
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Resources
Check out OnScreenGames.com if any of this interests you. If you have an idea for your own activation, Xponent21 can help you build it.
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About To the Power of X
To the Power of X is Xponent21’s weekly podcast on digital marketing, AI, and search strategy, hosted by the team behind a Richmond, VA based agency that builds its own AI infrastructure rather than just talking about it.
Cast: on digital marketing, AI, search strategy, hosted by the team behind a Richmond, VA based agency that builds its own AI infrastructure rather than just talking about it.