Over the years I’ve done a number of webinars, some for myself and some because other entities have asked me to do so. I’ve thought for the last year or so that I wanted to start doing them regularly, so I’ve committed to a schedule of at least one webinar a month for 2016.
I’ll be using the WebinarJam platform. I checked out a number of platforms, compared costs and related tools, and think it’s a good match for what I would like to do. I’ve also joined Webinara, which is a webinar promotion platform, so we’ll see what happens with that affiliation. Webinara, if you aren’t familiar with them, is a Norway-based company that looks to spread the word about webinars across many different markets. Again, we’ll see what happens with that!
January 20 Webinar: Your Tradeshow Marketing Questions Answered
As for the first webinar, it’s set for January 20, 2016 at 10 am Pacific. I’m going to do a Q&A on tradeshow marketing. So if you have a question, make sure you register for the webinar. It could run ten minutes, it could run 90! I don’t know. We’ll see how many people submit questions or join us online. It should be fun, and in any event, the WebinarJam platform records the webinar automatically and makes it available on my YouTube channel.
Here are the details:
Title: Your Tradeshow Marketing Questions Answered
Date: January 20, 2016
Time: 10 am Pacific, 11 am Mountain, 12 noon Central, 1 pm Eastern
David Spark’s new book, “Three Feet From Seven Figures,” takes a look at the interaction between show visitors and booth staff, and takes the position that it’s the most critical element of successful tradeshow marketing.
Hard to argue with that view.
Going through his free sample at Three Feet Book.com, it’s easy to see why he feels that way. You also get a quick glance at his potential solutions. For instance, David outlines a 7-step process to create the most positive qualified engagements:
Break the Ice – find a point to begin engagement
Create a Rapport – find a business reason to keep engaging
Qualify the Person Quickly – is this the right person for your business?
Tell Your Story – Qualified or not, everyone should know your story and be able to retell it
Go grab the free sample for 5, 6 and 7…you’ll be glad you did!
As he puts it, “we put too much reliance on everything but the people.” Yes, you can have a great booth, but people don’t stop to talk to a great booth. It’s just a framework for the people inhabiting the booth and representing the company. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that just because all of the booth elements are terrific that you’re going to have a successful show.
Two conversations I had this week starkly illustrated the vast difference between companies and their approach to show prep and post-show follow up.
In one instance, I was speaking with a potential client about their upcoming schedule for 2016. The gentleman told me that he was relatively new with the company, having come from a much larger company with about ten times the amount of employees. He had been the coordinator of all of the company’s tradeshow marketing efforts – which were big. The new company had an ambitious schedule, too, and he went into some detail about what it took to prepare for the show in terms of logistics, promotion, planning, tradeshow giveaways and so on, and then he went into detail about how much information they brought home from each show in terms of data and sales leads and how much time it took to digest and disseminate that material throughout the company.
In other words, they rocked it. Deep and wide. No stone left unturned as it were.
Contrast that to a conversation I had a day later with a consultant who worked with dozens of companies to help them ramp up their abilities to engage with attendees, gather sales leads and create a plan for follow up.
“It astonishes me how many companies still don’t have a clue. They wait until two weeks before the show and call me and want help doing promotion and preparing. Fact is, they should have called me six months earlier,” he said.
So there’s definitely a large real-world spectrum of how much involvement companies have in their tradeshow strategy, preparation and engagement. Some get it and are taking every competitive advantage available to them. Others are shooting from the hip and hoping to get something good out of the show.
Tradeshows cost time and money. A lot. So how do you differentiate from the thousand other exhibitors all vying for attention?
One way is to become a person of interest at the tradeshow. Here are a few ways to stand out from the crowd.
Be a speaker, or participate in a panel presentation. Typically these slots are open to company management, so if one of your management team is good at delivering a presentation or speaking extemporaneously in a panel situation, work to get them involved. Depending on the show, this kind of exposure can do wonders for word of mouth, especially if the presentation is top-notch. When I’ve given presentations at tradeshows, no matter how many people were in the audience, there were always a handful that wanted to pigeonhole me right afterwards and talk shop. Some have become clients.
You want more ways to become a person of interest? If you’re good, give demonstrations in the booth.
What about one-on-one interactions with booth visitors? You can be interesting by being energetic, outgoing, and asking a lot of questions. And if you have good stories, tell them. Everyone should have at least three good stories. At a party, they could be about things you’ve done or how you’ve lived. But at a tradeshow, if you have three good stories about the business, your products and how they impacted customers, share them.
Above all, if you want to be a person of interest at a tradeshow, just be an interesting person.
We’ve all been to those shows. Maybe it was a small Chamber of Commerce show, or a county fair or a local public tradeshow. You see booths with the standard six-foot table with a drape in the front of the booth, and someone has put a fishbowl on the table with a small sign that says if you toss your card in the fishbowl you might win something!
Or you see a spinning wheel where you are spinning for a small prize, and perhaps one larger prize. People line up several deep to take a shot at winning a pocket-size LED flashlight, some lip balm or some other little item.
Now and then you see a dunk tank or maybe a little golf putting green that draws people to a booth by the dozens.
These are not effective lead generation activities. You may think they are, but if you’re hoping to attract buyers to your booth or leads for your sales team to follow up with using these flimsy tactics, you might as well stay home and send me the money. Nope, tradeshow success is all about drawing a crowd and knowing what to do with it.
People who put business cards are not prospects. Most will simply plop a card in the bowl and wander off. You haven’t talked to them; you don’t have a valid reason for a follow up call.
And that wheel? What did you learn about that woman who won some lip balm? Probably nothing.
Lead generation is the specific activity of capturing contact information and related follow up information from visitors so you connect with them shortly after the show. A valid lead is someone who you’ve talked with enough to find out if they’re interested in your products, are nearing a buying decision and are seriously considering your company’s products or services.
So leave the wheels and fishbowls to your competitors.
One of our recent booth projects over the summer was a custom portable modular booth for the Toronto-based company SoYoung. The project turned out so great and people loved the look, that the design and fabrication team at Classic Exhibits thought it should be entered in the Exhibitor Portable/Modular, which recognizes design excellence. So it was. And it made the finals round where you, the public, get to vote!
Classic Exhibits also had two other projects make it to the finals round: Philadelphia Commercial and Nationwide.
The rules for the voting are simple: you can vote only once a day, but you can vote every day.
A tradeshow is a perfect opportunity to track stuff: sales, leads, visitors, and so on. Here’s a quick list of things you might consider measuring at each show. It’ll give you a chance to not only compare different shows, but it’ll help you track trends at different appearances at the same show year after year.
Sales. The key indicator of your success. The challenge with tracking sales from tradeshows is that you may get a sale in another 6 months, year or two years as a result of a single appearance. Be aware of where sales come from and track them to their source if you’re able.
Leads. Not quite as critical as sales, but a key indicator of the success of your overall tradeshow program. Identify cool, warm and hot leads and follow up appropriately.
New customers. Sales are great, but what percentage came from new customers?
Visitors. While many exhibitors don’t normally track booth visitors, if you can get a handle on at least an accurate ballpark number of booth visitors from show to show, that information will come in handy.
Samples. Do you give away samples, such as food or flash drives or swag? Keep track.
Demonstrations and attendance. Do you have a professional presenter at your booth? Keep track of how many are given each day and make a headcount of attendees.
Social media content. How many tweets, photos, videos and blog posts are you generating as a result of your appearance? Check things such as how many times your tweets were re-tweeted, or how many times your hashtag was mentioned, the numner of times you received an @ reply. If you saw a spike in Twitter followers or Facebook fans or Instagram followers during the show appearance, track that information.
Other online engagement. Do you steer people to your website during tradeshows? Did social media engagement drive traffic to your site? If you create a specific landing page for visitors, track the traffic on that. If you give away digital assets such as downloadable PDFs, white papers or product sell sheets, track that.
Finally, track the ROI. To calculate the ROI, divide the gross profit minus the cost of the show by the cost of the show. It will look like this:
ROI = (Gross Profit – Cost of the show) / Cost of the show.
For example, if it cost you $200,000 for the booth, travel, lodging, salaries, food, parties, transportation, etc., and you know that six months later the business generated as a direct result of the show was $359,000, you’d write the equation like this:
ROI = ($359,000 – $200,000) / $200,000
ROI = $159,000 / $200,000 = 79.5%
Measure as much as you can. You’ll be glad you did!
That’s it. If you are a good listener, you’ll do well.
So many booth staffers I meet at shows seem to think it’s all about them. They will stop me while I’m walking by, try to hand me something, ask me a quick question, and (without really hearing my answer) launch into a spiel about their product or service that is supposed to wow me, get me to stop what I’m doing and sign up immediately!
Well, it doesn’t really work that way.
As a booth staffer, if you are a good listener, you’ll hear things from your visitors that other people may not hear. Sure, you need to ask questions – good questions – but if you don’t have the flip side of that coin, the listening skill to go with those good questions, it won’t matter.
Your tradeshow booth is, hopefully, a thing of beauty. You spent days, weeks, and maybe months working with a designer, then a graphic designer, then a marketing team, then a fabricator to create the perfect big booth.
Then you set it up at a tradeshow where you paid tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of bringing your crew and the booth to show it (along with your products or services, of course) to thousands of people.
And Joe the Attendee and Jill the Attendee walk by at a brisk clip, take a 4 or 5 second glance, or don’t even look up, and keep walking.
What happened? You think the booth is beautiful!
They didn’t give it a second glance.
There are many reasons why this might be.
The real challenge for you is this: how do people outside of your world see your exhibit?
When you’re considering what your booth is saying about you, consider as well what the attendee sees when they walk by. What does it mean to them? How do they react to what they see?
Look at it from their perspective. Is the messaging clear to people who have never heard of you? Does your brand ring clear and deliver itself without misunderstanding?
If your brand is strongly communicated and your messaging is clear enough for those who have never heard of you to easily understand it, your designers and fabricators have done their jobs.
Doesn’t every Tom, Joe and Susie have a newsletter these days? After all, they can be very useful in getting your message in front of eyeballs on a consistent basis.
The fact is, my inbox is filled daily with dozens of newsletters of all sorts: news, marketing, comic strips, social media engagement, big biz, small biz, and so on.
I tend to open about one in ten if I’m in a generous mood. More like one in twenty or one in fifty. In other words, it’s hard to get my attention (or anybody’s) these days with just a newsletter. There’s got to be something in there that makes it worthwhile to click and open. And read.
But there are several newsletters that I read frequently. Some I open every single time right when I see it and stop what I’m doing. Others get put on the ‘later’ list and I usually make it back to them.
These are the tradeshow industry-related email newsletters that I read almost every time they arrive. I say almost because, hey, even I have to take a day off now and then! There are others out there – some are closed to the public and others don’t arrive frequently enough to warrant attention, and some I just don’t know about – but here are the tops in my book.
Exhibitor Magazine: a companion to their monthly print magazine, the newsletter is a useful and professional addition to your inbox.
TSNN: The Tradeshow News Network: between this and Exhibitor Magazine, you will have your pulse on the beat of the tradeshow industry news and happenings. Bonus: they have several editions available.
Classic Exhibits Tradeshow Tales: Mel and Kevin at Classic Exhibits in Portland, Oregon, offer great insight, humor and passion on a regular basis.
Andy Saks, Spark Presentations:Andy is a tradeshow presenter, Emcee, Staff Trainer and Auctioneer. In other words, he gets up in front of people. A lot. And his now-and-then newsletter is always a good read.
Anders Boulanger, the Infotainers: I enjoy this newsletter as much as any. Anders is a solid writer and communicator and always has thoughtful, meaty – and useful – pieces.
Marlys Arnold, Tradeshow Insights: Marly has been a show organizer and an exhibitor and comes at the topic from a unique perspective. A worthwhile read anytime.
Susan Friedmann, Tradeshow Tips: Susan is a CSP (Certified Speaking Professional) who has written many tradeshow related books and publishes a weekly tip sheet for exhibitors.
Skyline Tradeshow Tips: Friendly and useful, this newsletter doesn’t seem to show up a lot but when it does it’s good.
BONUS
Here are some non-related business/marketing/sales newsletters that I read all the time. I think you’ll love ’em:
Monday Morning Memo: Roy H. Williams of Austin, Texas, author of the Wizard of Ads and a former radio ad salesman, rings my Monday morning with a loud and clear bell every week. I look forward to this.
Tim Ferris, author of the 4-Hour Work Week and the 4 Hour Body, publishes a newsletter every Friday (and at other random times) of stuff that has caught his eye. Good stuff.
Dave Pell’s Next Draft, billed as ‘The Day’s Most Fascinating News,’ is all of that and more.
