As startups, we're often forced to be ultra-conservative about where we spend our money. Last October my co-founder, Rian Gauvreau, and I launched Clio, a web-based practice management tool designed specifically for solos and small firm lawyers. We've been building buzz about it using word-of-mouth marketing, but wanted to step things up at a tradeshow and try to get the word out in the mainstream legal press and blogs.

The legal industry's biggest tradeshow, LegalTech New York, was the obvious place to do this - it just wrapped up yesterday. We wanted to attend the show and raise the visibility of Clio, which traditionally would be done by buying a booth, flying out 2-3 people to staff it up, buying some giveaways, etc. Renting the space for the booth alone would be $10k (just for a 10x10 booth), while buying a booth can easily be another $5-10k.

Looking at a $20k+ tab to have a booth at this show, we decided we should look at an alternative: just showing up at the conference with a laptop for demos, setting up meetings beforehand with e-mail, and leveraging Twitter to connect with existing and potential clients at the meeting (lawyers have a surprisingly vibrant presence on twitter - http://www.lextweet.com/).

The response? We spent 2 solid days answering DM's to set up meetings, even connected with giants in the field like Bob Ambrogi (@bobambrogi) via Twitter. It was easily the most positive and exciting tradeshow experience I've had, and we didn't spend a penny on the traditional booth, shwag and rental expenses. For any other HN startups out there: think twice before shelling out for an expensive booth to get the message out: you might be surprised at how effective Twitter can be as a marketing tool.

We blogged about this recently at http://www.goclio.com/blog/2009/02/05/ltny-wrap-up-how-twitter-changed-how-we-will-approach-tradeshows/. We're at http://twitter.com/goclio.

Would be interesting in hearing other experiences/opinions around tradeshows.