Best tradeshow marketing tips and case studies. Call 800-654-6946.
Best tradeshow marketing tips and case studies. Call 800-654-6946.

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Goal Setting for Tradeshow Social Media Marketing

Do you have a set of clearly defined, easily measurable goals for each of your tradeshows regarding your social media marketing efforts?

If not, here’s where to start.

First set down your show objectives.

What metric are you most interested n moving during your tradeshows when it relates to social media? Yes, you want to move the sales needle, but as you add on social media components, you are putting more people into the potential sales funnel.

Money Graph

There are myriad tools available for tracking your social media interaction, but your measurements should be driven more by what you want to learn.

Need to know how many visitors you had this year compared with last?

Want to find out if people respond to a series of tweets inviting them to your booth to get a great deal, meet a famous person or win a contest?

Need to know how many people see those photographs you posted on your Facebook page from the show, to gauge interest in your products or services?

Once you determine what you want to learn, start focusing on the various ways social media lets you do that in the realm of event marketing.

Some of the metrics you might be interested in:

  • Facebook page ‘likes’ – perhaps not as good as adding someone to an email marketing list, but by having them as a Facebook friend they are giving you permission to engage with them.
  • Booth traffic. If you have a rough count of booth visitors from last year’s show, you can compare to what you get this year. If not, start counting anyway – it’s a good metric to have.
  • Direct response visitors, which will come from contests or other come-ons sent out via Twitter or Facebook.
  • Getting more followers on Twitter. If you have show-goers following you on Twitter, chances are they’ll come to next year’s show as well, which means it’ll be easier to find and track them to your booth.
  • QR Code responses. If you invite people to download documents or sign up for a newsletter, track the number of people that have used the code. Compare the percentage that actually followed through on your offer.
  • Blog post views
  • Photo views
  • Video views and possible click-throughs from your YouTube channel to a specific landing page.
  • Want to take a survey in the booth? Here’s a great opportunity to do a little market research. Just make sure to ask respondents how they interact with you online (or if they do at all). Offer a small reward for taking the survey. Capture contact information – at least a name and email so you can follow up. Put them on a newsletter if you publish one.
  • Length of Facebook thread, to show you how much a particular topic or post resonates with your audience (of course, it might be the responses that they’re responding to, not your original post!).
  • Impressions and other opportunities-to-see you.

And of course the sales information that you should be tracking from show to show:

  • Number of leads
  • Number of registrations for demos (or other)
  • Number of appointments made
  • Number of proposals delivered
  • Number of sales
  • Amount of sales
  • Average amount of each sale
  • Comparison of different shows and year-to-year same show results

Yes, there are a lot of moving parts and your particular goals will of course be unique to your company and product or service. The more you are able to track social media metrics and compare those numbers with the more traditional sales tracking metrics and see how they work together (or not), the more informed you’ll be and the better positioned you’ll be to adjust your direction or jump in a new direction when the signs point that way.

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 photo credit: 401K

Ernest Hemingway Would Have Loved Twitter

Do you find that trying to learn social media is confusing, confounding and generally flummoxes you? Do you wish for a time when you didn’t have to worry about whether you needed to buy a book a Kindle, or download a PDF or just get the hardback version?

Don’t feel lonely or left out. There are thousands – probably millions – in the same boat as you.

Look at it this way. History has left some of our most famous folks in the same boat. Benjamin Franklin never sent out a tweet. Alexander Hamilton never checked in to his favorite watering hole with Foursquare. Franklin D Roosevelt never used a credit card. Jonas Salk never used a Pentium II computer.

So if they never had to deal with a Facebook update status, why should you, right? If Ansel Adams never had to post his latest shots to Flickr, why should you?

Actually, I think a lot of those historical figures would have felt right at home. Imagine John Lennon hanging out on Twitter. Think of what Ben Franklin would have done with his Facebook page. Picture Pablo Picasso showing off his latest artworks using Instagram.

The thing is…it’s all been done before. Everything got shared before. It just was done using different sharing methods. Social media gives you a new method to do the same old stuff, on a much wider scale.

One senior citizen executive was heard to say once, “I’m too old to learn social media.” Actually, no, you’re not too old. You’re too lazy. There are senior citizens doing social media every day and loving it. Just like there are young people who don’t give a hang about it. If you don’t want to do it, admit it. Just don’t say that you’re too old, or too busy, or too distracted, or too whatever.

Ernest Hemingway would have loved Twitter, after he got through making jokes about it. The 140-character limit would have fit his writing approach perfectly. Of course, most of his tweets would probably have been crap, as he put it:

“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit,” Ernest Hemingway confided to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934. “I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”

But hey, he did come up with some masterpieces along the way. As we all will.

Tradeshow Social Photo Sharing Do’s and Don’ts

How about a quick list of tradeshow social photo sharing do’s and don’ts when you’re on the tradeshow floor:

Do:

  • Take pictures of guests and booth visitors.
  • Ask for permission to post the photo online.
  • Post as quickly as you are able.
  • Mention names (first names only are okay).

    Sarah from Manitoba Harvest posing at Expo West 2012
  • Mention companies they work for (they love the free publicity).
  • Try to get their logo or tradeshow backdrop in the photo.
  • Remember that your photo-sharing becomes part of your brand legacy. Think before you post.
  • Shoot a lot of photos! If you shoot a photo of someone, tell them you want to take two or three to make sure you get a good one. If you take only one, chances are good that you’ll catch someone with their eyes closed or a goofy look on their face.
  • Tweet out each photo (if you have time).
  • Invite your photo subject to re-tweet and re-post the photo across their social media outposts.
  • Crop photos if you can. If you don’t have Photoshop or some other photo editing software, do your best to frame the photo as you take it to include only the main elements of the photo.

Don’t:

  • Wait days or weeks to post photos.
  • Post photos of people in compromising situations.
  • Post without telling people that you’re posting on your FB or Flickr page.
  • Share every photo….instead, pick and choose the best ones.
  • Share only on one social network. Instead, move beyond Facebook to Instagram, Flickr, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat…wherever your audience may be.
  • Take photos of other booths and post them. Typically that’s in bad form and is often frowned upon by show management.
  • Keep putting the same booth staffers in the photos. Instead, make the photos about your visitors as much as it is about you and your products and/or services.

Should You Create An App For Your Tradeshow Appearance?

With the proliferation of smartphone and tablet apps and the declining difficulty of creating them, is it time to create an app for your own company for your upcoming tradeshow appearance?

It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. There are numerous online tools that make creating an app easier than it used to be. And with more and more of the web’s connectivity moving to stand-alone apps, your clients and prospects may find a lot of value in the app.

Admittedly, I’ve never seen a company app built specifically for a tradeshow appearance, or for the tradeshow side of a company’s marketing efforts.

So what information could you put in your app? Here’s a short list to get your brain working (no doubt you can add more!):

  • Yearly tradeshow schedule
  • Product information
  • Set appointment for interview or demo
  • Submit request for information or contact
  • Booth number and hours
  • Company information
  • Links to demo videos
  • Links to podcast interview
  • Client testimonials

Creating an app is not that complicated, but there are several steps to making it happen. If you have tech-savvy people in your company, you may be able to create it in-house.

But generally you’ll have to hire an app developer through ELance.com or another site. Get recommendations, or take a look at what the developers have done in the past.

First, appoint a point person that can see the development of the app through the entire process.

Determine what you want in the app. This may take several discussions with the various company elements, including sales, marketing, tech team, etc.

Find a possible developer or two, describe the scope of work as best as possible, and then negotiate the price.

There is a lot that can go in an app and it’ll be tempting to want to put as much as possible into it. But you’re probably better off keeping it as simple and useful as possible.

An app for your own company for a tradeshow appearance? Why not? It’ll give you an edge over your competition among those people in your market that have downloaded your app – especially if your competitors don’t have an app, and you have a very useful and user-friendly app.

 

7 Things Your Social Media Consultant Won’t Tell you

Considering hiring a social media consultant to get your tweeting, Facebook posting and YouTubing ramped up, but don’t know where to start? Just because someone calls themselves an expert doesn’t mean they really are the best choice for you. So let’s look at

Laughing sailor

a few things that your potential social media consultant likely won’t tell you:

  1. Don’t always start with Facebook. Just because everyone and their mom is on Facebook doesn’t mean your company should be there. It doesn’t mean it SHOULDN’T be there, either. After all, many of your competitors and much of your potential market are hanging out there. But depending on your strategy and goals, perhaps Facebook isn’t the place to start. Perhaps LinkedIn is. Or Twitter. Or a good set of information videos packed with keywords on YouTube is more appropriate for your business. Truth be told, a good social media consultant will help you examine your market, identify potential target areas, solidify social media goals and then move into the implementation phase – whatever that may be.
  2. Look to connect, not to promote. Even big companies spend a lot of time answering questions on their blogs, replying to tweets and responding to comments and questions on Facebook. Promotions are okay – and in fact if done right can be a big boost for your bottom line. But you should plan on spending a majority of your time simply engaging with those that follow you.
  3. Setting up accounts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest are not ‘embracing social media.’ Building a big list on Twitter is not social media engagement. Sending hundreds of people to ‘like’ you on Facebook is not social media engagement. Oh, sure, it’s good to have people that are connected with you – but unless you are giving them some sort of value on a regular basis you’re wasting your time and theirs. It’s all about the content you share and the conversations you start (and continue).
  4. High-level social media engagement doesn’t require high-level expertise. No, it doesn’t. It really requires common sense and continual work. Everyone is capable of working and understanding social media. And if someone tells you they’re too old for social media, you’re free to steal my line (which I’m sure I borrowed): “No, you’re not too old. You’re too lazy.”
  5. There is no such thing as a “social media expert.” Anyone can hang a shingle and call themselves “experts.” However, a true student of social media recognizes that expertise is gained through hard work, constant education, and yes, learning how to do things right by first doing them wrong. Which means that no matter how much they know, there’s always something new to learn….which means that being an “expert” is really impossible.
  6. While a social media consultant can help you get started, ultimately it’s up to you and your company. Which means that not only will you and your marketing team have to learn and understand all of the nuances of social media engagement, your whole company will ultimately become involved. Not everyone in a company should be representing your company online, but every department should have a representative that engages with your social media outlets. Someone up the ladder must also take the lead and the responsibility for leading the effort.
  7. Social media is really just another aspect of doing the same things you’ve always been doing: generating revenue through great marketing and excellent customer service. You know, the way you’ve been trying to do since the company began. Social media is just a different avenue for executing those plans, generating leads, giving great customer service and touching those people where they live.
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 photo credit: Purblind

13 Ways to Use QR Codes for Events and Tradeshows

  1. Download a White paper or other digital bonus
  2. Signage for presentations to access related additional information
  3. Live chat: QR Code places a call to someone in your company that can answer a question (how does this work?)
  4. Promote your email newsletter with a quick signup on a smart phone.
  5. Grab the QR Code Tradeshow Marketing Guide Kindle book here!

    Facebook page “like” us!

  6. Use QR Code in your follow up with prospects and leads
  7. Invite people to watch a short video demo or testimonial on YouTube on their smartphone.
  8. Set up a Scavenger Hunt starting with a QR Code. Make sure you have a good prize at the end to get people engaged.
  9. Give a discount or giveaway by scanning a QR Code.
  10. While QR Codes on t-shirts are not always easy to scan, if everyone in your booth wore a t-shirt with a QR Code, it would certainly attract attention! And think of how much fun it would be to have guests scan the codes. Make sure to have a flat version of the code in the booth in case someone’s phone doesn’t scan well.
  11. Link to your Twitter account and ask them to follow you.
  12. Set up a phone number in your QR Code. By scanning, a person’s smart phone will automatically make a call.
  13. You can also set up a QR Code to send a text (SMS) message. This might be a request to get on a text message marketing list to receive discount alerts via SMS, for instance.

 

What to keep in mind:

Give value and tell people what they’ll get when they scan the code. People won’t scan if they don’t sense something valuable at the other end. Scanning a QR code is not always quick and easy.

Speaking of quick and easy, be sure to make the QR Code large enough and with enough contrast (black on white is best), so that it’s easy to scan.

Optimize your landing page for the smartphone. Duh.

Test it before you launch it.

Why Your Company Should Consider Blogging

If you’ve been doing tradeshow marketing for years, and you’re edging into social media, good for you. Companies that work intelligently to drive traffic to their tradeshow booths are showing some great results.

But do you have a blog? If so, are you using it to its full effectiveness? If not, why not? Perhaps you should consider blogging. The presence of an active, engaging blog can make the difference between closing a deal or not, all other things being equal.

Here are some reasons to consider blogging:

  • It’s a marketing tool that’s much easier to maintain than a newsletter. You can add and change it at any time.
  • You want to influence people in your market.
  • You want to be seen as a thought leader or industry leader.
  • You have an expertise and you want to share.
  • You like engaging in debate with strangers, who can often become friends and perhaps even clients.
  • It helps you get found online. Blogs are search-engine friendly.
  • Blogs can bring your team together. As an example, the 300-employee company Hubspot in Boston invites any employee to contribute to the blog, which allows them to have several posts a day offering a number of viewpoints and various useful information.
  • Blogging forces you to stay sharp. By continually coming up with material you’re always learning and sharing what you learn. As a result, you become smarter and more well-known for knowing more than most people in your industry.
  • As a result of blogging people will ask you questions, which leads to you learning even more.
  • Creating great content leads to sales. Seriously. When you create great content, you create trust, which brings in people that are interested in your content. Those people often become business leads, and leads often become sales.
  • Creating content leads to comments and discussions. Those comments allow you to learn from readers to find out exactly what they’re interested in. It also gives you insight in to the pain points they’re experiencing. And in a sales call, knowing those pain points and how to solve them leads to sales.

So what about tradeshows, events and conferences? How can blogging help in your event marketing? Let’s take a look.

  • By having a blog platform, you are able to share more information about what happened at the event in real time.
  • As the date of the show gets closer, your blog is a platform for sharing what you’ll be doing at the show. Classic Exhibits’ lead-in to their appearance at Exhibitor this year was a perfect example. Their regular blog readers saw the various videos they posted that teased their Exhibitor appearance.
  • A blog is a perfect platform for posting multi-media from the event: audio, video and photos. This is a great place to interview happy clients and post those video clips on your blog, which become power testimonials for your product or service.
  • Once the show is over, your blog is a place to do continual follow-ups. Material that you compiled at the show can be spun out on your blog over the next few months.

Yet, in spite of all of these great reasons to blog, make no mistake: blogging isn’t easy, and there’s not necessarily a direct payoff from all of the effort that goes into a blog. However, an active blog can be a powerful tool and is often the difference between making a sale or not when going head to head with a competitor who is not blogging.

(photo by Annie Moles, courtesy commons.wikimedia.org)

What Have You Done For Me Lately?

There’s an old Janet Jackson hit song that asks the question: what have you done for me lately?

Not only does the question apply in love relationships (as in the song), but it applies to you in your relationship to your customers and clients.

It applies in your social media efforts, your tradeshow marketing schedule and your other marketing endeavors.

Did you post a terrific article on your company blog last week that helped solve a big problem that your industry faces? Awesome. What’s next?

Did you make a stunning appearance at the last big tradeshow and leave your clients and potential customers wide-eyed and amazed? Great. What are you doing at the next show?

Did you host a Twitter chat recently that got a lot of industry folks involved while you posed and answered questions? Cool. When’s the next one scheduled?

Did you put together a nice little video and post it on your YouTube channel last week that illuminated an issue in your industry – and your insight may help people move forward with more confidence? Excellent! What about this week?

Get the message? Everything you do recedes into the past, and it recedes rather quickly.

One of the folks I follow on Facebook is an old rock-and-roller from the Sixties. For months he’d update us about his activities: new tour, travel adventures, fan meetings, etc., and posted numerous photos of all of those activities.

When he went silent I didn’t actually notice it for several weeks. Then when it dawned on me I wasn’t catching his postings, I wondered if it was because he was dead. Okay, I didn’t really think that seriously, but it crossed my mind! Then I mused it might be because of the weird algorithms that Facebook uses to determine what information shows up in your news stream. Then it occurred to me that he might have simply stopped posting things.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Any salesperson will tell you that the hardest thing, especially if you’re selling a long-cycle product, is to stay ‘top-of-mind’ with your market.

I’ve missed making exhibit sales to companies in the past that I simply hadn’t called in six months. They knew who I was, they were aware of my company’s capabilities and skills – and my interest in working with them – and yet, when it came time to choose an exhibit company, they chose another company that was more ‘on their mind’ than I.

Trying to keep the hopper full in marketing, whether online, social media, tradeshow, traditional or some combination, is to attempt to feed a beast that will never be satisfied. If you’re a blogger, your readers want to know what’s next. If you’re on Twitter, yesterday’s tweets are yesterday’s news. Last month’s tradeshow is history.
It’s all history. It all recedes quickly.

So: are you staying on people’s minds?

Are you feeding the beast?

What have you done for me lately?

(photo by Dan Ingram, used by permission)

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Tradeshow Guy Blog by Tim Patterson

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