July 25, 2019

Checking Your Tradeshow Marketing Results

You can have the best booth, a well-trained staff, good products and more, but what about your tradeshow marketing results? How did you really do at the show?

Here are a handful of results and outcomes you can gauge.

Certainly, the most important two metrics to know and understand are leads generated and business generated from those leads. How many sales did you make?

And not only at the show, but in the months to follow. Many shows allow you to sell direct at the show, or strike deals for later delivery, but almost all shows will generate leads for follow up, which is where the money lies. To accurately track the Return on Investment, you’ll probably want to calculate a new ROI every so often, perhaps every quarter, to see how many leads converted to clients along the way. While you may still be tracking new customers from a tradeshow for as much as a year (or longer), I would think that knowing the ROI a year out is sufficient. And assuming you are going back to the same shows, you can start tracking ROI from that show separate from the previous show.

Beyond leads and sales, there are a number of “softer” items to track which can affect your tradeshow marketing results:

Feedback on various things. How did people react to your new exhibit, for example? Did it wow people, or was the reaction a little more ‘ho-hum’? Or is your older exhibit still impressing people?

Feedback on your products. Depending on what you’re pitching or launching, gauging people’s reactions to those items can be very valuable. If it’s a complicated piece of software, for example, is it easily understood? Does it spur a number of unexpected questions? If you’re test-tasting new flavors of your food, what does the look on people’s faces look like when they’re first biting in? If you’re pitching a new service, is it easily understood?

Feedback on your marketing message and graphics. Do visitors immediately understand what you’re trying to do? Do they ‘get it’?

Booth staff: does your booth staff know how to engage for positive results? Do they know how to approach people, or are they sitting in the back of the booth on their phone or eating? These actions can affect your results in a positive or negative way.

Finally, look around at other exhibitors: how do you compare to them? Are your products similar or do they stand apart? Does your exhibit compare favorably to direct competitors (size, layout, attraction, function) or does it look a little pale in comparison?

There are so many things you can measure to check your tradeshow marketing results. The great thing about tracking so many things, even informally, is that you can more easily compare those results year to year, show to show and determine if tradeshow marketing is working really well, or if you need to focus on some specific things to improve.

November 5, 2018

TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee, November 5, 2018: Robert Strong

Magician and professional tradeshow presenter Robert Strong discusses how to draw a crowd, how he works with clients, and what makes a good opening line – and a lot more – in this enlightening interview.

Find Robert Strong here.

Robert was kind enough to share some great material including the following posts:

Want Over 1000 Quality Scans a Day at Your Tradeshow Booth?

If You Don’t Clearly Define Your Goals at Your Next Tradeshow, You Will Lose to Your Competition

Robert as Guest on the Savvy Event Planner Podcast

Your Tradeshow Booth Would Be Twice as Successful if Your Booth Staff Simply Removes Typical Bad Behaviors

Robert also shared a list of Best Booth Behaviors:

1.     Remove bad behaviors: No eating, drinking, cell phones, sitting, booth huddles, etc.
2.     Add good behaviors: Stand, face the aisles, smile, make eye contact, initiate conversation, etc.
3.     If you are not getting rejected a hundred times an hour, you are not initiating enough conversations.
4.     Have a strong opener: What do you do at your company? What is the most interesting thing you have seen at this show? What is your (companies) biggest pain point?
5.     Make the current attendee you are talking with the most popular person at the show.
6.     Be able to do the overview (elevator pitch) in 10 seconds, 30 seconds, and 90 seconds.
7.     Understand and communicate concisely the giveaways and raffles.
8.     Be able to scan badges and do it quickly.
9.     Qualify leads quickly, make introductions, and end conversations quickly.
10.Have three case studies (success stories) rehearsed and ready to go.
11.When doing a demo, scale. When you see someone else starting a demo, help them scale.
12.You are on stage. High five each other, fist bump each other, enthusiastically cheer for your fellow booth staff, and let the attendees see that you really like each other and are having fun.
13.Treat the attendees exactly how you would want to be treated if you were in someone else’s booth.
14.Make a follow-up plan and take notes.

And finally, this week’s ONE GOOD THING: the Bag Man Podcast about Vice President Spiro Agnew.

7 Questions You’ll Never Ask Your Exhibit House

October 4, 2018

Being Proactive in Your Tradeshow Booth

It almost seems dumb to suggest that you should be proactive in your tradeshow booth, but with the number of relaxed and frankly lazy exhibitors I’ve seen over the years, it’s not so dumb.

I’ve seen exhibitors standing behind a table in their booth on the phone, eating lunch, talking with co-workers and more. They’re doing anything but paying attention to attendees.

And that’s just dumb. Keep in mind that tradeshows are a focused marketing opportunity where hundreds or thousands of potential clients or customers are going by your booth space. Also keep in mind these attendees are qualified: they’re in the upper-reaches of the decision-making echelon of the companies that decide to attend the show. You know, the show where your company has spent thousands of dollars to connect with those very decision-makers.

So when I see booth staff ignoring passers-by, I think “they’re letting money just walk on by. Don’t they get it?”

On the other hand, being proactive in your tradeshow booth isn’t hard. It might be slightly harder than standing there gazing idly as potential clients walk but, but not by much.

Instead, your booth staff should have a plan. They should be trained. They should understand the reason they’re there. They should know how to engage attendees in an upbeat positive way.

As our old pal Andy Saks says, you must find a good way to break the ice. Once you do that, you have control over a brief conversation. During that conversation, you’re proactively working to qualify or disqualify the attendee. Once you do that, you dig a little deeper to find out a handful of items. Start with a collection question such as “how did you get started in this industry?” It’s an innocuous question, but it gets people talking. They you proactively peel the onion by uncovering what problems they may have with their current product or service-provider.

Finally, once you’ve gathered sufficient information, close with a confirmation question to verify that you indeed understand the visitor’s situation and move on to setting up the next step before disengaging them.

Or take our old friend Richard Erschik’s approach. There are five questions you should get answered to know if the visitor is qualified:

Do you currently use our product?
Are you considering the purchase of a product such as ours?
If so, when?
Do you make the buying decision?
Do you have the money to spend?

In both cases, the goal is to proactively find out if the person standing in your booth can be turned into a customer.

If you’re proactive about how to engage with tradeshow visitors, this approach can be extremely effective in uncovering leads, identifying their problems, moving them from a prospect to a customer.

Sitting on a chair eating a sandwich just won’t cut it!

7 Questions You’ll Never Ask Your Exhibit House