May 21, 2021

How to Solve a Bad Tradeshow Booth Location: Video

Yes, you got a lousy location. What to do to prevent poor traffic and lack of leads by the end of the show? Here are a handful of things you can do to bring people to your booth:

November 12, 2020

The Well-Rounded Tradeshow Marketer: Video

When it comes to being a tradeshow marketing manager, a lot of different skills come into play. Let’s take a look:

May 28, 2020

Ways to Level Up Your Online Zoom Presence

Zoom is ubiquitous. So much so that I’ve even been reading lately about “Zoom fatigue.” So many Zoom meetings!

But what’s a person to do? Many offices are closed. Millions are working from home, navigating the line between getting work done, keeping kids occupied, quieting pets and so much more. Zoom is a lifeline as well as a way of life for many people. Meeting with business colleagues and clients, and family gatherings.

I recently chatted with Ken Newman of Magnet Productions, a long-time tradeshow friend and colleague, about ways to step up your game when a Zoom call. He works with a number of clients to do the same, and we chatted about the various ways of improving the quality of your Zoom interactions.

What are your goals?

Let’s start with your situation. Are you planning to make changes to get you through another couple of months (or however long it takes to return to “normal”), or are you looking to make permanent changes to your home studio? Even when tradeshows come back, many things will be normal, but there will also be a more robust virtual element of tradeshows.

How are you using Zoom?

Zoom was built to handle speech, not music. When Zoom hears a loud sound, like a siren or car horn, it will immediately clamp down the sound to prevent it from going through at such a high level. Which means, if you happen to want to play music or some other type of sound on your Zoom calls (such as a larger meeting where several people might be in a single room, or where one person is playing music through an amplifier, for example), you’re going to have a big challenge in front of you to keep the sound at an even level. To get around that, you can go into settings and “enable original sound.”

Do rehearsals.

One of the first lessons I learned in my early radio days was to know what you really sounded like, not what you think you sounded like. It’s the same concept with a video call or presentation. Simply start a meeting with nobody else there. Record it and play it back. You can check how you look, how the lighting looks, how you sound. And when you do rehearsals, you’ll catch those little crutches that you usually don’t know about, like saying “like” all the time or “y’know.”

Check the background of your image

Don’t have an open window behind you, because your guests on the call will see a poorly lit image of you, mainly a silhouette. Use lighting at about three-quarters.

Green screen: a gimmick, but more as a fun thing, but after the initial view of Fiji, it gets boring and distracting.

Limit background noise

Close the door. Try to schedule meetings when people are doing other things (yes, that may be impossible!). Tell the others in your house that you’re going to have the call and to please assist with keeping kids and dogs quiet. Yes, I know that if you live near a train track that sometimes things just happen. If background noise is a continual problem, you might check out Krisp: recommended recently by Seth Godin, who says it is good a dampening background noise when you’re on a Zoom call.

Equipment to Consider

Ken and I discussed a number of pieces of gear, both hardware and software. These range in cost from small or modest to more expensive and are worth taking a look at depending on your level of use of video and how much your budget can handle.

Lighting

LED ring lights are mostly low-cost and add a lot of control of your image. Set them off to the side so they’re aiming at your face at about 45 degree angle. Package them with a tripod that can also hold your camera and you’ll only need the one, if that’s what you’re using for Zoom or other video. Otherwise, consider getting two of them and put one on each side of your face at a 45 degree angle.

Microphones

With a laptop or desktop, having a USB microphone will immediately take you above the sound you get from typical AirPods or earbuds with a microphone in the cord. AirPods have a decent sound, and in many case the smaller microphones on your earbuds will be okay. The microphone on your laptop or desktop computer is probably the lowest sound quality and the most problematic when it comes to background noise.

USB Microphones:

I use the Audio Technica AT2020USB+. Good sound, has a mini-headphone jack for plugging headphones in and mixing sound. It’s not a high-end microphone, but the sound is solid and it’s been a good workhorse for me.

Ken often uses a Shure MV-51, which is a higher-end USB mic with more bells and whistles.

We’ve both had the Yeti Blue mic, which is good but nor great. It’s lower cost means a lot of people have tried it. I stopped using mine a year ago when it simply stopped working. But frankly, if you can find a low-cost USB microphone it’ll be a good upgrade from your laptop or AirPods in terms of sound. Not only that, but it’ll show that you’re serious about your audio sound.

On location, and in any situation where you want freedom to roam but still get good sound, use something like a Kimafun 2.4G wireless lavalier microphone with built-in audio interface. Short-range dedicated wireless connection (not Bluetooth). It comes in a compact case that is smaller than a typical shaving kit.

Webcams

Chances are you have a phone with a built-in camera or a laptop with a good built-in camera. If you want or need something a little better, consider these:

Logitech C922 HD webcam

Logitech C270 – lower cost version

Software

OBS – Open Broadcaster Software. More for the serious webcaster who wants a full package to be able to broadcast high performance realtime video and audio capture and editing. Audio mixing, adding in recorded video scenes to your broadcast. Like having a small TV station control panel in your computer. Learning curve is steep, but if that’s what you want, this is a good piece to explore. And since it’s open source, it’s free to use.

The world was moving to much more online video even before the pandemic forced a lot of us out of the office and in front of a webcam and microphone. Since the chances are you’ll be doing more video, you might as well look and sound as good as you can!

Check this video on Quick Tips For Shooting Video At Home from Livd + Produced on Vimeo.

Thanks and kudos to Ken Newman of Magnet Productions for sharing insight and expertise!

April 2, 2020

Selling in the Time of No Tradeshows or Events

The social distancing guidelines put forth due to the COVID-19 pandemic has effectively shut off a majority of the economy, like turning off a spigot. It would be easier to line-item the businesses that are open than those that are closed: grocery stores, drive-through coffee shops and some business offices. Ten million in the US have filed for unemployment in the past two weeks.

Ten Million.

The impact of this on the nation, on the world, is unfathomable.

I know many people who are sitting at home most of the day, binging TV shows or reading books or even playing board games or sharing music online. Others are making use of the time to learn a new skill, to tackle that novel, to write music, to create.

Others don’t know what to do.

If you’re still working, whether from home or in the office, and you have to sell to keep things going in the company, what do you do? What approach do you take?

I subscribe to several sales newsletters and thought I’d share a few thoughts. Some came from the newsletters, others from just my own experience. But here we are in a time where it’s difficult to even find someone to talk to.

First, when you call, it makes sense to ask your contact what approach their company is making. Are they putting everything on hold for the time being, awaiting the end of the social distancing and figuring they’ll kick back into action when the pandemic is over? Or are they moving forward with business as usual, as much as they can?

If it’s the former, tell them, that, ‘yeah, it’s a crazy time, I get it,’ and ask if you can send a quick email with your contact information so that when we do get back to normal they can reach back out to you. If it’s the latter, move into your typical sales questions to uncover any needs they may currently have for what you’re offering.

Seems appropriate somehow… (click to play the album!)

Another part of the equation is what you’re selling. If you’re in the restaurant supply business, chances are that your potential buyers are not even open, unless they’re doing take-out or drive-thru only. If you’re selling Personal Protective Equipment for health workers, you probably can’t keep up with the demand. It all depends on the specific products or services you’re selling.

Most people probably fall somewhere in between those two extremes. Which means you’re going to have to find a strategy that keeps at least some business coming in.

With millions stuck at home, that means people are going online to shop, they’re connecting via video meetings (Zoom is being mentioned dozens of times a day in the mainstream press!), telephone and email.

Questions to ask yourself:

What shape is the company website it? Does it need upgrading? Can you add new products, new services and new ways for people to connect?
Are your social media platforms being updated frequently? With so much time on their hands, everybody is on social media.
Can you offer a digital version of your services? Lots of people are taking this time to create online learning classes or other ways of sharing their information.
Can you connect with others regularly? Sure! Some people are starting up regular Zoom meetings just to have a face-to-face connection with others outside of their home.

Bottom line: be there for clients and prospects. Don’t stop doing outreach, however that looks for you. Don’t be pushy but if you continue to think you can offer something of value, something that your clients and prospects can really use, keep doing it.

October 31, 2019

10 Ways to Stand Out at a Home Show

Smaller, regional or city home shows are where local residents go to see the latest in roofing, home repair and improvement, HVAC, landscaping, and more. It’s not uncommon for exhibitors at these smaller shows to lack experience in exhibiting that their national show exhibiting brethren might have. If you are going to set something up at a home show, how do you attract the attention of attendees? Let’s look at a few different ways.

First, have an outstanding exhibit. This can be done in many ways. I’ve seen, for example, exhibits that are unique and custom. They were possibly designed and assembled by the company’s work crew using a little creativity and a lot of ability, and they reflect the company’s brand and personality. Sometimes they’re done by an exhibit house, but not necessarily. By presenting yourself with something that’s attractive to look at and delivers a strong message, you’re ahead of the game. Examples: companies that sell leaf gutter blockers who have a small room sample showing their gutter blockers with water running down the roof with leaves caught on top of the leaf guards. Also, a landscaper that decks out their entire space with rock, sod, waterfalls, small creek bridges or whatever. It’s time-consuming, yes, but it catches people’s eyes.

IDEA! Have a Polaroid camera, take people’s pictures and put ’em on a corkboard!

Second: Have a well-prepared booth staff. Make sure they understand the goal: gather more leads, capture their contact info for follow up. They need to know the basics: no talking on their phones in the booth, no eating in the booth, no sitting on a chair. The do’s and don’ts also include offering a smile to visitors, asking pertinent questions (are you looking to improve your landscaping? etc.) and being present with visitors when the ask questions. Tell people thanks for coming by, even if they didn’t show much interest.

Three: have something for visitors to DO. Interactivity keeps visitors in your booth and if it’s really good they’ll stick around long enough for you have a good Q&A. You see a lot of spinning wheels where people can win a prize, and while I’m not a big fan of these because virtually everybody that wants to win something stops, and they’re not all potential customers. But they do get people stop long enough so you can ask them a few questions. Other things you can have them do: find something quirky about your business, or even get a life size cutout of a famous figure like Frank Sinatra or Elvis and put up a backdrop with your company name and the show hashtag and invite people to snap photos and post on social media for a chance to win something. It gets people involved and helps promote your booth number. Another idea: have a really big Jenga set, where each block has a question that relates to your business, and when they pull it out, give them a chance to win by correctly answering the question. Give away LED flasher buttons with your logo and booth number and tell them a secret shopper is wandering the hall and if they spot you with the button you could win something. Another way to promote your booth away from your booth space. One more: custom printed flooring that invites people to take their picture with the floor (another variation of the social media back drop/life size figure).

Four: Make sure that you give your visitors what they want. And what is that? They want to see what’s new. They want to speak to someone who knows their stuff. They want to be treated like a friend and with respect. A warm smile goes a long way. They don’t want their time to be wasted.

Five: Have your booth staffers stand out by wearing unusual or different clothing. Could be that all of your staffers at an HVAC booth don tuxedos. Or everybody wears colorful branded t-shirts. Purple one day, orange the next, red the next, and so on.

Six: Have a magic word of the day (or hour). Put up a sign on the front counter that everyone can see. If someone says the magic word, they win a prize. It’ll intrigue people enough so that they stop and start a conversation. Have a few ready-made hints for what the magic word might be.

Seven: Put on a small white board and invite people to write a short Haiku (a short three-line unrhymed verse of five, seven and five syllables. Have a few examples for starters. Give away prizes.

Eight: Shoot a commercial at the show. Invite visitors that are customers to record a short testimonial. Interview one of the managers and ask her how things work.

Nine: Conduct a survey. Make it very simple, maybe two or three questions. Ask people to fill in the answers. If they want a chance to win, give them a space to put in their name and phone number or email address, but don’t require it for the survey. Find out what people really think about some of the things you do.

Ten: Make sure your graphic messaging is very simple. One of the keys to delivering a good message is to make it easy to understand. On tradeshow back wall, use no more than seven words. Put the more complicated stuff in a handout or a download.

No doubt you can think of more. What comes to mind?

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