November 30, 2015

Pre-Show Tradeshow Marketing Questions

Upon the release of my new book Tradeshow Success, as you may know (or not!), I offered free downloads of the digital version of the book (click here to get yours).

An interesting thing then happened. As exhibitors got their hands on it, one question has come up a number of times:

“I need help with pre-show marketing, so I was glad to see it addressed in the book.”

I’ve had conversations with a few of these people, and their position is clear: they’re not doing any pre-show marketing, or doing so little they know that they can do better.

In the book, I address pre-show marketing, promotion and preparation a number of times. For example in Step 3, “Getting Ready for the Big Dance,” Wally, one of the fictional characters in the book, discusses his pre-show preparations:

“There’s pre-show marketing and promotion, staff training, booth preparation, product and service preparation, show research, generating public relations, engaging social media, sales and lead-generation prep and so much more.”

So yes…there’s a lot to cover.

When I chatted with these exhibitors, I suggested that if they were starting from zero (and many were), they don’t try to do it all at once simply because it can be overwhelming. Find two or three things that they know they can get done either in-house, or by hiring someone to help out.

That may mean doing outreach via email and direct mail to remind customers and potential customers that you’re going to be at the show and giving them the details.

It might mean focusing on media and PR for this particular show and working to create reasons for reporters and media outlets to be interested in your business, as well as beginning to develop relationships with those that cover the industry.

It might mean ramping up your social media team to be ‘all hands on deck’ as the chatter around the show starts a few weeks prior, and to be onsite during the show taking videos and photographs and tweeting and sharing that information online.

Pre-show marketing is art as much as it is science. And as in all art and science, there’s no one answer that fits all situations. What works this year may not work next year. What works at one show may show poor results at next month’s show in a different location.

I believe the key to success in pre-show marketing is to pick a tactic or two or three, work it to the best you can, measure the results, make some adjustments and work to improve it at the next show.

Before you launch your pre-show marketing effort, make sure you have measurable and trackable goals in place. For example, if you came home with 45 strong leads at the last show, you might want to shoot for 60 this show. If you gave out 550 samples of your product, you might want to try and give away 650 this year. Or you want to get two article written about your business or products in industry press.

Whatever the goal, make it achievable and measurable. And have the personnel and methods in place to track those goals.

November 27, 2015

Tradeshow Exhibit Design and Fabrication Timeline

You want a successful tradeshow exhibit design and fabrication process, naturally. A number of factors come into play in the process, including (but not limited to) the timeline. When do you start the process?

It depends upon your current status: do you already have a booth and simply want to upgrade, or are you starting from scratch? Do you want to move up from a small 10×10 or 10×20 inline booth to a larger island? While you intuitively know where you are, the first step of the process is to take a few moments and write it all down. Share it with all team members. You may want to do a full Request for Proposal from potential new exhibit houses, or you may be comfortable with your current vendor and simply want to communicate the desire to upgrade to them.

In any event, make and share the assessment with those that will be involved.

One Year Prior to the Show

If you’re essential starting from scratch, you should probably look at the entire project from the 30,000 foot level about 9 months to a year out from the show date when you’ll want the new exhibit. This gives you a chance to determine a comprehensive and detailed budget. Having this budget document that includes all related costs such as storage, potential shipping, set-up costs and so forth will reduce the element of surprise for you and management once the project is officially under way.

This early discussion should also look at the main shows that you’ll be using the new booth at. Some companies have large booths that are used only once or twice a year, while they use smaller inline or popup booths at smaller shows. Look at things such as show goals and objectives, audience, traffic flow, etc.

Provide your exhibit house with a design brief detailing all of the elements of your new exhibit: size of booth, show goals, meeting spaces, storage, demo areas, branding elements, etc.

Six Months Out

Bu now you should be starting regular conversations with your exhibit house in earnest and their designer should be working from your design brief.

Your booth builder will want to have as much information as you can provide about the show such as dates, location, and other details. You may even want to provide them with your show marketing strategy and details so that they are aware of how you will promote your show appearance.

Four Months Out

You should have reviewed at least one or two designs and walked through any revisions with your 3D booth designer. You’re in the stage of finalizing all of the details prior to fabrication.

Graphic designers will have received graphic placement details and graphic dimensions from the booth designer and should be developing graphics in conjunction with the marketing team.

Reach out to I&D companies for early estimates and availabilities for set-up of the new booth, if it’s a larger booth that requires a set-up team.

Sometime in the next few weeks, depending on your exhibit house’s capabilities, the booth will go through fabrication.

One Month Prior to the Show

A walk-through with a booth set-up will be arranged and all graphics will be completed and placed. Any final items that need to be changed will result in a punch list that will need to complete by the exhibit house prior to crating and shipping.

This is when you’ll make final arrangements for shipping, I&D and storage if they haven’t been made yet.

Small Booths

Smaller booths, such as modular, kit or pop-ups don’t follow the longer timeline that custom island booths demand. Many can be chosen from a catalog and ordered quickly once graphic files are completed and are often capable of being shipped in less than a month, and depending on the complexity of the booth, in just a week or two.

At the Show

You have a great booth! Set-up was flawless because your exhibit house furnished thorough and easy-to-follow instructions for the I&D team. Your job is to work the show, talk with visitors and generate new business!

November 25, 2015

10 Steps to Facebook Success on Your Tradeshow

Our good buddies over at Bartizan Connects have released a neat little e-book that is designed to help you leverage your Facebook page in conjunction with your appearance at a tradeshow.

The White Paper looks at the following:

how_to_use_facebook_at_your_tradeshow-resized-600

Best Tools on Facebook
Most Frequent Face Mistakes
How to Grow Your Fanbase

If you organize tradeshows, you should take a few moments to download this free resource here.

November 19, 2015

14 Proven Steps to Take Your Tradeshow Marketing to the Next Level: The Video Series

As part of the promotion of my new book Tradeshow Success: 14 Proven Steps to Take Your Tradeshow Marketing to the Next Level, I assembled 14 videos. Each short video focused on a specific step as detailed in the book. If you hang out on Twitter or LinkedIn and follow me, you may have seen them. They’re quick and descriptive, and are good introduction to the book. Here’s the playlist of all of the videos:

November 6, 2015

“Tradeshow Success” Book Released

This week is the launch of my new book “Tradeshow Success: 14 Proven Steps to Take Your Tradeshow Marketing to the Next Level.” I’m doing a lot of the normal launch things an author would do: sending copies to industry media and bloggers, along with industry colleagues. Creating a list of clients and potential clients that I’d like to get the book into. And much more!

Beyond that, I’ve created a series of 14 videos, with each one relating to one of the chapters in the book. Those videos are appearing, about one a day, at my YouTube Tradeshow Marketing channel. Check ’em out!

So what can you do? If you want to purchase the paperback, here’s the Amazon.com page. You can also buy the Kindle version for about half the list price of the paperback.

You can also read the book for free here at TradeshowSuccessBook.com. You’ll be asked to opt-in to a mailing list (which, if you gotta, you can always unsubscribe from).

What do you get in the book? As mentioned in the subtitle, I’ve detailed 14 steps that are critical to tradeshow success. Not every successful tradeshow marketer uses all of these steps with utmost efficiency, but most of them make very good use of many of the steps.
So what are the steps?

Let’s take a look at the 14 Steps:

Step One: Going with or without a Map? Are you doing enough planning and organizing around your tradeshows?
Step Two: Dollars, Pounds, Euros: How Much Do You Really Need to Make This Work? A breakdown of the budgeting process for tradeshows and what it takes to budget for a new exhibit.
Step Three: Getting Ready for the Big Dance: Pre-show planning and marketing.
Step Four: Did You Come to the Right Dance? Just make sure that your target market is at the show you’re going to dump all of that money into.
Step Five: Home is Where the Booth Is: Booth design essentials, including function, traffic flow, graphics and more.
Step Six: Is Your Frontline Team Up to Snuff? Booth staff training!
Step Seven: What Do I Do With All of These People in the Booth? Now that you’ve drawn a crowd, what do you do with them?
Step Eight: Tweeting, Posting and Instagramming Like a King or Queen: Putting social media to work for you in a creative way.
Step Nine: Who’s Keeping Track of Those Damn Tweets? Someone needs to create videos, blog posts, tweets, etc. Here’s a great look at some online content ideas.
Step Ten: Got a Stack of Leads: Now What? Lead generation and follow up.
Step Eleven: Becoming the Zen Master of Stats and Records: Record-keeping is the secret sauce to tracking your success.
Step Twelve: Stirring the Public Relations and Media Pot: Working with industry media.
Step Thirteen: Do QR Codes Still Kill Kittens? And Other Tech Questions: A quick examination of technology in tradeshows.
Step Fourteen: Out Of Your Nest: Time to Fly! Your call to action!

Want to grab your own copy? Use the links above to own your own. Or if you want the digital version (PDF download), try this:

Click Here to Get Your Digital Copy of My New Book

November 2015