November 7, 2012

Bringing Home the Bacon

In the swirl of the tradeshow marketing soup, you’re working to create a potent mix of trained staff, an awesome-looking and appropriately-functional booth, interactivity, social media engagement. When all is said and done, the ONLY important thing at most shows is: bringing home the bacon.

When you get back to the office, the big question that determines the success or failure of your tradeshow marketing effort is this: did you get enough warm and hot leads to justify the expense of going to the tradeshow and planning to go again next year? Because if you haven’t, there’s something missing. But what?

When you examine the various and disparate elements that go into a successful tradeshow marketing experience, you may be reminded of the famous question attributed to Henry Ford: “I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted, but which half?”

Make no mistake, if you can’t identify the wasted parts of your tradeshow marketing efforts, you’ll continue to leak dollars and leads and return from shows with half-empty cups of leads.

It behooves you to examine all of the elements of your tradeshow marketing to determine where the inefficiencies lie:

Tradeshow booth ‘look and feel’ and function: does your booth draw the right people and once they get there, is it set up to handle them properly?
Booth graphics: do your graphics qualify and disqualify visitors as they arrive?
Tradeshow staff training: what’s the level of knowledge of staffers on your products and services and are they properly trained in how to interact with visitors in the chaotic environment of a tradeshow?
Are you attending shows that offer the best market for your products and services?
Social media marketing: do your SM marketing staffers understand social media and the art of engagement?

By hitting all cylinders properly, you’re actually doing two things: one, you’re putting a much more effective tradeshow marketing machine on the tradeshow floor, and two, you’re positioning your company at a much higher level than most of your competitors.

Given the stakes at risk and the amount of money you’re investing in your tradeshow marketing, I have one question for you:

Why wouldn’t you want to do all of these things properly and with excellence to significantly increase the odds of bringing home the bacon?

If you’re not willing to do that, perhaps you are not yet ready for tradeshow marketing.

Oh, and if you want to know where the inspiration for the title for this post came from…

October 30, 2012

10 Things Zombies Can Teach Us about Tradeshow Marketing

Thanks to a recent post on tradeshow-exhibiting Zombies published here on the Tradeshow Guy Blog, Mel White, VP of Business Development for Classic Exhibits, was suitably inspired to come up with a Top Ten List on what we can all learn from zombies. Thanks for sharing, Mel!

Single-minded Focus. You may not appreciate their all-consuming desire to eat your flesh, but they are committed to the task. They let nothing get in their way, except an ax to the brain. Your next trade show will be wildly successful, if you make it a priority, not an afterthought.
Teamwork. Zombies travel in packs, like ravenous hyenas. That teamwork ensures them a much higher percentage of kills. There’s a reason “We killed it” signifies success. By working together, those poor doe-eyed attendees don’t stand a chance.
Appearance Matters. You never forget your first impression of a zombie: filthy clothing, rotting flesh, vacuous stare, and rancid halitosis (that alone is enough to make you hurl). It’s sad but true. We judge people by their appearance. Your company spent considerable money to participate so shine your shoes, press your shirt, and dry clean that blazer.
Lights, Motion, and Noise. The undead and the living are both attracted to lights, motion, and noise. As much as we try . . . we can’t resist it. When planning your booth, ask yourself this, “Will my exhibit attract 200% more zombies than my competitors?” If the answer is “No!” then you need to get creative (or consider a ceremonious human sacrifice ever day).
Intelligence. Zombies love brains and so should you. Being smart about your trade show marketing means you understand that trade shows are not the same as print ads, videos, brochures, or traditional sales calls. Trade shows are opportunities to attract new customers and strengthen existing relationships.
Fresh Meat. Ever notice that zombies won’t eat other zombies. They like their meals fresh. Fresh ideas and innovation, particularly during a weak economy, propel one company forward while leaving another one struggling to survive. Trade show attendees go for two reasons: to find solutions to existing problems and/or discover innovations that will strengthen their operations or bottom line.
Know Your Customer. In zombie-speak, we are customers. Good customers freak-out and get eaten. Bad customers ram a metal rod through a zombie’s skull. You want good customers, just without the “getting eaten” part. Good customers become good customers because we understand them and tailor our product or service to meet their needs.
Preparation Matters. Zombies don’t need a trade show toolkit or an exhibitors handbook or an exhibit designer, they are 100% prepared the moment they go from living to undead. You’re not so lucky. You won’t succeed without thorough pre-show, show, and post-show preparation.
Without Customers, What’s the Point? Wandering aimlessly is pointless, even to a mindless zombie. Zombies crave excitement. When a living, breathing human enters its proximity, it switches from listless to high alert. Serious exhibitors react similarly, albeit without the growling and moaning. We’ve all seen exhibitors who appear annoyed or resentful when an attendee enters their booth, interrupting their game of Angry Birds. What’s the point if it’s not about customers?
There’s No Cure. Once a zombie always a zombie. If you love trade shows and are serious about trade show marketing, there’s no antidote. It’s in your blood. No matter how hard you fight it, once bitten, it’s incurable.

Photo by Bob Jagendorf from Flickr.

October 15, 2012

4 Ways to Avoid Tradeshow Exhibiting Zombies

As a tradeshow manager, one of the worst things you will ever face is a booth staff that has become, well, zombies part way through the tradeshow. If you leave the booth and come back to find your staff spending time discussing politics or gossiping about business (disengagement), or if you see things disappear (employee theft), ignoring visitors (wtf? – visitors are why they’re there!), you’ve got a Zombie Apocalypse!

Zombies in your tradeshow booth don’t actually walk around chewing on your tradeshow booth or looking to dismember visitors, but with active disengagement your booth staff might as well be zombies for all the good they’re doing your company.

So, here are 4 ways to avoid Tradeshow Exhibiting Zombies.

Make sure your staff is trained. Nothing’s worse than untrained staff, expect perhaps an uninformed staff. If your staff doesn’t have the skills to interact positively with visitors or know how to answer questions, they might as well be the walking dead.

Marketing goal buy-in. If your booth staff has only the bare information on why they’re there (pick up a paycheck!), you’re doing your company a disfavor. Your booth staff, from the lowliest temp employee to the highest ranked engineer or member of management, should know exactly WHY you’re at the show, WHAT the goals are, and HOW to attain those goals. If they SEE the goal and BELIEVE in what you’re doing, chances are very good they’ll have BUY-IN and will participate with energy and enthusiasm. If so, they’re emotionally engaged. In not, they might as well be…you get the point.

Communication. Your Zombie Apocalypse is only a motion or two away if you aren’t able to communicate effectively and in a timely manner. If that means you’re tweeting about a prize giveaway or posting great deals on Facebook that will spur visitors to rush to your booth, but don’t tell all of the staff, those promotions may fall flat on its face.

Show them you appreciate them. Yup, sometimes the hardest thing for some folks is to say THANK YOU for a job well done. If your tradeshow succeeds and your staff did a stellar job, be sure to recognize them for it. Often the recognition can be nothing more than a pat on the back in front of the staff, but it can also mean that you’re buying them a nice dinner on the last night of the show and telling them as a group that you couldn’t do it without them. Whatever form of recognition you choose, you must be sincere and believable.

Follow these guidelines and the Zombie Apocalypse will likely bypass your company and instead devour your competition!

photo credit: possan

August 2, 2012

7 Ways Your Social Media Tradeshow Marketing Sucks

On, no! Not another list post! But they’re so fun to write! Not only that, but putting thoughts into a numerical list makes it much easier to digest.

Here are a few ways that you may be coming up short, er, uh, sucking…at your social media tradeshow marketing.

You’re not taking and sharing photos. People love photos and love to spread them around. Next time at the tradeshow booth, have your smart phone handy, or a digital camera. Take photos of visitors, get their names, post on Facebook, or if you have a lot, put ’em up on Flickr. Then share them throughout your social network.
You’re not consistently tweeting. Just one tweet about your special tradeshow booth guest or author isn’t enough. Get it out several times a day. Post ahead of time by a few days. Use Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to schedule your tweets.
You’re not shooting video and sharing it. Videos can be extremely useful, especially if you’re shooting videos of customers talking about how your products can help them (testimonials). Don’t worry about professional quality. Just keep it short and to the point – two minutes or less – and you should be fine.
You’re not mentioning anything about your tradeshow appearance on your blog. Yes, your blog isn’t supposed to be rife with tons of posts about your company. It’s not a place for press releases and company awards your CEO just won. It’s for helping readers solve problems and answer questions and gain insight into your industry and products. But there’s nothing wrong with mentioning upcoming events you’ll be involved in, especially if there’s an opportunity for visitors to get questions answered or see how your products and services can solve problems.
You’re spending too much time reading goofball posts and not actually creating good content. In other words, it sucks because you’re allowing it to be a time-suck. Be thoughtful and conscientious about your approach to social media marketing and the time you spend, and you’ll do a lot better.
Thinking that each tweet, Facebook post or video that you post will translate to a sale. Social media and sales will probably never converge the way that marketers and sales teams wish they would. But if they understood how social media could build a tribe of followers and like-minded people, those connections may eventually ring the cash register. Not only that, it can create a tribe of people that will go to bat for you and help spread the word about your product or service. Face it; social media connections are generally fairly weak. Believing that each ‘like’ on your page means you’ve just gained a great friend or customer is wishful thinking. Instead, think of it as an introduction during a busy party. Once that introduction is made, look for common ground, offer useful information, respond to questions and engage without looking like a stalker. And DON’T try a hard sell – if you do, those casual connections will vanish.
You’re not involved at all. Yes, it would be easy to write off social media as a weak marketing effort. If you do, though, you’re letting a terrific opportunity to meet and greet with no pressure slip through your fingers. Instead, look at social media as a way to continue to make connections, and even though they’re weak at the beginning, if you are a real person behind a brand, those connections will strengthen as you spend time working them.

photo credit: CUhomepage

June 25, 2012

Top Eleven Reasons to Use Social Media at Your Next Tradeshow Appearance

So the guy in accounting loves hanging out on Facebook, checking status updates and posting photos. Your sales manager loves Twitter. And the installer-guy checks in on Foursquare all day long.

But you’re still trying to make the decision on whether or not your company should get involved in all of those platforms for your next tradeshow appearance.

Not to fear! Here’s an incomplete list of reasons why you should seriously consider using social media to engage with potential clients and visitors at your next tradeshow appearance.

Most, if not all, of your potential booth visitors are already using social media.
The entry level to using social media is cheap, if not free.
Most, if not all, of your employees are familiar with, if not adept at, social media.
Tradeshow are a visual medium. It’s easy to share visual images of the show and your booth through photographs and video.
Twitter is a great tool for capturing attention and broadcasting to attendees through the use of hashtags. Hashtags are the magical currency that moves people from place to place and alerts visitors, thanks to the near-instantaneous spread of information.
Tradeshows are social. Social media is social. People love to connect, either in groups or one-on-one.
Social media actually makes in-person events more attractive, not less, as was thought years ago when it first came on the scene.
Tracking metrics via social media can be extremely useful to your long-term marketing efforts. By uncovering information about your visitors, you can use that info to determine where they hangout online, what gets their attention, and what they respond to, so at future shows you’ll have more insight into their actions.
Social media allows you to build buzz before the show.
Social media allows you to stay connected during the show.
Social media allows you to continue to drive online traffic and keep attendees and followers informed and interested long after the show doors have closed.

No doubt you can come up with more for this list. Suffice it to say that social media gives you tools, insight and leverage that you didn’t have before. And you can be assured that whether you use the tools or not, your competition is definitely using them!

In fact, feel free to download our free Social Media Tradeshow Marketing Checklist if you’re just getting started. It’s a freebie with no strings attached and no opt-in required: PDF download – right-click to save to your hard drive.

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