Tradeshow Marketing Expert & Dynamic Public Speaker/Trainer
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:
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:
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:
Questions are powerful. Asking the right questions in the right situation can open doors to more business, to gathering critical information and to getting someone interested in your product or service.
At a tradeshow, questions are your superpower. It’s a busy, chaotic environment and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other exhibitors and booths competing for your visitor’s attention. What are you doing to differentiate yourself from the competition?
You’re asking powerful questions.
Given the situation that time is of the essence, unfortunately you can’t necessarily spend a lot of time with rapport-building questions. A typical sales call may allow you time to ask about how their business is going, what they’re doing this weekend, and to get into details of their company’s short and long-term goals.
But you can ask impactful questions that get people thinking.
Ask about Goals and Objectives: What are you hoping to accomplish in the next 6 to 12 months? The next 2 – 5 years? Or ask about a specific project: what does this particular project mean to the company?
Ask about Problems and Challenges: What’s missing in your challenge to reach Goal A? Is there anything in particular that’s holding you back? What solutions are you considering?
Ask questions that position your company: If you were to work with us, what are you hoping will be different from what you’re currently doing? What does success look like for you in this project, or in how we work together?
A few simple questions will make it clear that you should pursue the situation further, or not. Depending on the circumstances, it may be appropriate to sit down at a private table and hash out all of the details, or it may mean setting up an appointment to follow up.
Asking open-ended questions lets the visitor respond with as much information as they like. Asking too many questions, though, makes you sound like an automaton. In other words, don’t’ overdo it. Sometimes the right response is simply to say “Tell me more” or “How so?”
Just keep in mind that on the tradeshow floor your goal is to qualify and disqualify visitors quickly. Don’t waste time with a non-prospect and don’t spend an inordinate amount of time with a prospect. Make sure you have a proper and agreed-upon follow up sequence in place before he or she leaves the booth.
This is a guest post by Valerie McSween.
Your company has invested substantial capital to purchase an exhibit, you’ve spent thousands of dollars to secure floor space at an upcoming tradeshow and your marketing team developed a thorough marketing campaign to make the show as successful as possible. You will also incur important travelling expenditures. You are looking forward to flying in with your team for the event.
You arrive at the show with excitement of meeting quality people over the next few days and discover that your booth’s delivery missed the receiving deadline at the marshalling yard. Your floor space has a lovely carpet, which you also paid for, however your booth didn’t make it on time and the show must go on…
Tradeshow logistics plays a vital role in delivering a successful event. When efficiently orchestrated, it implies getting the booth and events material delivered to the tradeshow venue on time, and in perfect condition. We’ve listed a few general rules of thumb to help mitigate the risks involved in not delivering – or recovering – your exhibit material on time.
There are a few key issues you want to address before leaving the premises once the show concludes. To mitigate the risks of penalties and resulting costs for not recovering your shipment on time:
Understanding the importance that transportation plays in tradeshow logistics will help you make the right choice when hiring a transportation provider for your next tradeshow exhibit. Your day-to-day carrier may offer competitive pricing for non-time-sensitive orders, however they may lack knowledge and experience with tradeshow logistics. To help you reach your tradeshow objectives, choose a carrier who will give you the peace of mind and let you focus on the reason you are exhibiting at the show to begin with.
Whichever transportation provider you hire to carry your exhibit material, request references and reach out to clients who swear by them when it comes to events and tradeshow logistics.
Valerie McSween, CCLP is the Vice President, Eastern Region at Mactrans Logistics Inc. She is also the Vice Chair Finance for the CITT Board of Directors. Over the last 20 years, Valerie has worked with both asset based and non-asset based transportation providers in various strategic business development functions. She holds her CCLP designation as well as an Executive MBA in Logistics.
By definition, a marketing plan details your current approach to spreading the word to the marketplace about your products or services. A tradeshow marketing plan is designed to coordinate your overall marketing plan with the various tradeshow appearances you have planned during the year.
Things are always changing. People come and go, as do customers. If you can focus on a calendar year, you can map out strategies and tactics that will then drop actions into quarters, months and particular shows.
Your tradeshow marketing plan should give each member of your marketing team an understanding of what steps will be handled by them to achieve your company’s objectives during the year.
By breaking the plan down into the following areas, your approach to planning each year’s tradeshow marketing plan should be easier and make sense.
A tradeshow marketing plan is an addendum of sorts to an overall marketing plan. Even if you have a good, solid marketing plan, breaking out your tradeshow marketing tasks and goals will help to make your overall marketing plan more effective.
Once the plan is in place, it can be used as a go-to source to make sure that you’re not forgetting something in the chaos of executing a tradeshow. So often it’s easy to let things slip away or be put aside when the show is underway. Then when you’re back in the office and you don’t have a particular piece of information, such as the number of booth visitors or how many people attended your demos, you’ll be kicking yourself for not making that happen. A plan will increase the chances of fully executing all the important tasks ahead of you at the tradeshow.
There are a hundred reasons to exhibit at a tradeshow, and one of the best is to see what your competitors are doing. Everything they have for public consumption is on display and it’s a great thing!
Play spy and learn what you can from their appearance.
Not only are they showing off their new products and services, but their brand and people are all on display as well. If you put together a checklist it’s an easy task to rate those competitors and size them in relation to your company, as well as other competitors.
Prior to the show, create a list of those companies that you want to evaluate. This should be easy enough to do by examining the show website. Once you have your list, determine what you’d like to evaluate.
First, find out if the company did any pre-show marketing. If so, can you quantify or track it?
Next, rank their booth on a scale of 1-5, A-F, or whatever you’d like. Stand back from the booth so you can take it all in. Evaluate things such as:
Make note of any activity in the booth. Are they doing anything in particular to draw traffic, such as a spinning wheel, special guest, or an interactive and engaging activity? Ask yourself if you think these activities are actually engaging potential customers or if it’s just gathering names and addresses that are ultimately not very useful, such as collecting business cards in a fishbowl for an iPad giveaway or something similar.
Are they giving anything away, such as imprinted pens, buttons, squish balls or flash drives?
Are the staffers branded in any way, such as branded shirts or silkscreened tee’s? Do those branded items clearly represent the brand and are they easily identifiable?
Are they giving away any samples or product materials?
If you are the kind of person that finds it easy to talk to other people (yeah, some of us are and some are not – I get it!), see what kind of corporate intel you can gather by chatting either with one of their employees, or with one of their competitors. This is where you might find out about personnel movement, corporate decisions, new products in the pipeline, or other pertinent information. Tradeshows are often rife with gossip.
Before wrapping up your competitor evaluation, check to see if any of their management is involved in any of the show presentations. If so, make a note of the topic and time and date.
Once the show is over, sit down with marketing and management and share the information. It may be an informal sharing over coffee, or it could be a formal report on what competitors you evaluated and what you learned. In any event, tradeshows are a great place to learn as much as you can about the market – so plan on using that opportunity to its greatest advantage.
If you weren’t able to join us last week for the Handshake.com webinar, here’s a replay. Lots of good things in here, as I covered everything from booth design and function to graphics, pre-show marketing, staff training, lead generation and follow up and more. Each of the 10 steps had 3 takeaways or discussion points for your team. Check it out here.
One of our newest clients, SoYoung from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, unveiled their new custom 10×10 booth to the public earlier this month at Natural Products Expo East in Baltimore, MD to great reviews.
“The show has been hopping and the booth is fantastic!” was the text I got from company owner Catherine Choi on day two of the show. She had a photographer come by to document the booth and products. Check out the gallery. And thanks to SoYoung – glad to have you as a new client!
In the 1992 Bill Clinton Presidential Campaign, his advisors made sure the campaign talking points were focused on the economy. So much so that they held as their campaign mantra “It’s the Economy, Stupid!”
It’s unimpeachable advice.
That is, to focus to sharply on one single element. Sure, they had to make sure that all other parts of the campaign were functioning well, but the economy was the overarching focus.
Focusing on making sure you follow up on your leads is as critically important.
The long-held statistic that 80% of all tradeshow leads are never followed up with may or may not be true (doubtful, actually), but what is true is that if you don’t follow up on those leads, you won’t sell anything to those potential clients.
In the course of lead generation and follow up, what’s really going on?
First, there are the methods of gathering leads. Make sure yours are effective.
Then, the leads must be graded in terms of Cool, Warm and Hot.
Third, the leads must contain information that allows the folks back in the office to follow up properly.
Fourth, they must be followed up in a timely manner, consistent with what was agreed to with the prospect.
And fifth, they MUST BE ACTED UPON!
It’s like they told me in junior high school: if you want to dance, you have to ask someone. You can’t just spend the entire dance standing in the shadows with all of the other folks scared to ask someone to dance.
Bring home the leads.
Follow up!
I’ve seen several writers and new sources chime in recently on the controversy of hiring models, aka ‘booth babes’ at tradeshows to attract attention.
Here the CBC looks at the continuing controversy.
Fortune Magazine covers a story where the RSA Conference, a top tech conference in San Francisco, has banned those scantily clad girls.
The Geek Feminism Wiki describes what exactly is a ‘booth babe.’
The Infotainer, Anders Boulanger goes into it in a couple of places on his blog, and nails it.
I don’t have much add, except for a few questions for the marketing geniuses who think that hiring an attractive scantily-clad model is going to bring in more leads and close more business.
First, do the models represent the essence of what your company is all about? Do they really show off what your company is all about? Unless you’re a company that rents dancing girls, probably not. Instead, the girls tell attendees that you really don’t have a specific product or service that is more important than, well, scantily clad girls. How do you explain that to clients?
Do the scantily-clad women attract potential buyers? Doubtful. More likely they’re an eye-candy distraction that will probably repel (read: embarrass) true buyers and draw in only those who are there for a quick gander, who will then also be embarrassed and quickly retreat because they’re intimidated.
Do your ‘booth babes’ help convert prospects to buyers? Again, in most cases: NO. Spencer Chen has done the math in detail here, which is a brilliant takedown of the idea that booth babes will help bring you more customers, but suffice it to say that someone hired strictly for their ability to draw in a specific type of male attendee probably won’t do you any good in getting a potential buyer to convert to a client.
Finally, in today’s world where ‘booth babes’ are already a controversy, why in the world would you court controversy when you’re trying to increase leads and close more accounts?
