A sit-down with Jamie Young of Uptown Screen Printing where we delve into ways to plan goal-setting for tradeshow marketing, and how to find a good promotional product that resonates. Hope you enjoy this week’s TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee:
It doesn’t take that much to exhibit at a tradeshow. Just rent a booth space, bring an exhibit, a handful of staffers and do your thing.
Uh, what’s your thing, though? That’s the big question. Are you there to increase brand awareness? Show that you have a bigger or cooler exhibit than your main competitor? Take a client out for dinner and drinks?
It’s better to have a plan. To know what you want. More leads? Sales? Giving away a specific number of samples? Getting more social media followers? Certainly, you want to pick goals that are important to growing your business. But one step beyond that is to not only pick good goals, but to make them concrete goals, such as:
We want 150 good leads, 50 of which are new.
We want 300 new Instagram followers.
We want to hand out 1000 product samples.
We want to do 100 in-person demos of our product or service.
We want to meet with CEO’s of three major prospects.
Once you delineate those goals, create a plan to get there. Create the roadmap. If you want to meet with specific people, set appointments. If you want to line up new social media followers, make it easy. If you want new leads, have a method for uncovering the right prospects.
Tradeshow marketing can be expensive, but since you are at a place where thousands of prospects are all gathered in the same place, it’s also the ideal setting to generate leads at the lowest cost-per-lead you’ll ever manage.
Every tradeshow visitor is looking for something. And a majority of those visitors are decision makers at their company or can influence buying decisions. Make sure you’re giving them what they want:
One of the lesser seen but more important parts of your exhibiting experience is the help provided by labor that sets up your exhibit, work with audio and video setup, transportation, carpet/flooring and furniture. And you may (or may not) be surprised to learn that there’s an industry association that works on behalf of the more than 200 member companies that represent more than 12,500 fulltime tradeshow professionals and more than 50,000 part-time workers.
As with all companies in the events, tradeshows and conference industry, the EACA members have been dramatically affected by the pandemic, which cancelled or postponed hundreds if not thousands of tradeshows. The EACA, to work their way through the pandemic, has continued to hold regular virtual meetings and webinars for members, which are available on their website.
Executive Director Jim Wurm was on a recent industry call that I attended, and he mentioned that several webinars on their website might be worth a look. I took a look and found several that might be of interest to those in the tradeshow world.
Webinars about cash flow, internet advertising, the PPP program and lobbying efforts on behalf of the industry, scaling your business, employee engagement, and more. You can search for “webinar” on any page and you get something like this.
If you’re an exhibitor, several of these archived webinars may be of interest to you – check them out!
What is hype, really, and is it a worthwhile thing to use to get attention in this busy world of today? Author and marketer Michael F. Schein of Micro Fame Media joins me to discuss this topic and many others in the world of marketing on this week’s TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee:
Now that most companies haven’t exhibited at a major show in the US for nine months or so, where does that leave their marketing efforts? I’ve heard some companies badly miss shows because that’s where a large portion of their lead generation came from and without that they’re struggling to generate as many solid leads. Some companies have shifted to other marketing outlets and been at least moderately successful, and I suppose some companies have even determined that they don’t really need tradeshows.
It’s my impression that there’s always been a bit of perception from many management and sales staff that tradeshows are a grind, a big waste of money and time. That they only attend because their competition is there but if they could they’d bail on exhibiting or even attending shows.
Meanwhile, tradeshow managers are buried in details of exhibiting and logistics and new product launches and are-there-enough-samples and so on.
By the time bigger shows return, it’s likely that at least a year will have passed for many exhibitors since their last appearance at a national or international show, and the question is undoubtedly being asked: are tradeshows still even that important?
That question can only be answered by each company individually based on their own goals, budget and personnel.
One result might be that companies will exhibit at fewer shows. If that’s the case, the focus on the shows should be to make sure that exhibiting is worth their time. Maybe you’ll have the same budget but with fewer shows, you can concentrate on those select handful of shows and make sure you carefully and completely execute all of the tradeshow marketing steps from A to Z to ensure great results.
Another consequence of the coming post-COVID world may mean smaller budgets, which means downsizing your exhibit, or renting an exhibit save a few dollars. Or taking fewer people to shows.
One other change that I believe will be a result of no tradeshows for a year or so: the psychological effect on both exhibitors and attendees. How will we feel, for instance, about shaking hands with people we meet, or hugging old friends that we haven’t seen for a year or two or three? How will food companies hand out samples so that everyone who is picking up a tasty sample is comfortable with it? Will we really feel okay flying across the country to attend a show, stuck in an airplane for hours with strangers? Some will be okay; others may have high levels of anxiety. It’s likely that aisles will be wider, giving more separation between booths and giving attendees more space to keep people at a distant.
Bill Stainton was a guest on this show three years ago, and I wanted to catch up with him to see how he is doing in the midst of the crazy times. We ended up talking about an article from Entrepreneur he had flagged in his latest newsletter that looked at five trends in innovation and how leaders can use them in 2021. It was a lively discussion:
Once you return from a tradeshow, it’s easy to want to kick up your feet and relax. After all, you’ve been working hard for months to make the show the best it can be. But before you take a break, do these seven things:
When you set up a team to complete a task or do a job, or work together indefinitely, one major assumption is that everyone’s work is equal. Everyone pulls their weight. The workload should be distributed equitably. Isn’t that what you would naturally think?
It depends.
I got to thinking about this after listening to an interview with Brian Eno, the producer, writer, musician and longtime collaborator of David Bowie and others. He’s well known in the ambient music world for decades of work, and has produced albums by Talking Heads, U2, Devo, Ultravox and has contributed to recordings by Genesis, David Bowie, Massive Attack and on and on.
In other words, the 72-year-old has been around awhile.
Teamwork is not democratic, and it shouldn’t necessarily be. (I’m paraphrasing). Sometimes you need more of one person and less of another person’s contribution. The dynamics of teams, especially long-term teams like bands, fluctuate and the work requirements of each person will come and go depending on the situation.
I think that’s a valid observation. Depending on the task or challenge in front of a team, whether it’s four people in a band, or three or six or fifteen people working to execute a tradeshow exhibiting appearance at an upcoming show, each person will have a different role, and their overall contribution may differ in terms of time and energy they put into it.
In Eno’s case, he gave an example that because he’s an outsider, and not a member of the band, he can give feedback on items that might otherwise be a touchy subject if given by one of the band members.
That would seem to be the case in a marketing team as well. You have a lead person, who is by definition not only a part of the team, but apart from the team as a leader, and has a different role to play in addressing issues as they come up; different than one of the team members may have.
I think the key here is that everyone feels they’ve contributed to the best of their ability, are aware of other’s contributions and were a valued part of the overall goal of the team, whether it’s a short term project or an ongoing team.
