SHOW TIME.

The article focuses on the use of trade shows, sponsorships and road shows for marketing. Trade shows, sponsorships, and road shows are all great ways to reach customers. For most U.S. companies, deciding whether an event is worth the cost is a little like estimating the size of the St. Paddy's Day parade crowd: It's largely guesswork. But companies like Xerox Corp., whose marketing budget for events is in the millions, know that in this era of limited marketing dollars, precisely measuring an event's return-on-investment is critical. There's a lot at stake: Event marketing averages 20 percent of total marketing communications budgets, according to a 2004 survey of 700 marketing decision makers in the automotive, health care, high-tech, and financial industries here and abroad, conducted by the MPI Foundation, the research arm of Dallas-based Meeting Professionals International, and the George P. Johnson Company, an event-marketing agency based in Auburn Hills, Michigan.