I’m getting together with Hiett Ives of Show Dynamics of Houston on February 16th as he presents “B2B Tradeshow Leads Guaranteed.” It’ll last about 45 minutes with a Q&A afterwards. Can you really guarantee lead generation? Hiett has been in the industry for 40 years, and has learned a thing or two.
Hiett Ives of Show Dynamics, Inc. of Houston
Be sure to join us. Register today at TradeshowGuyWebinars.com. Even if you can’t join us, you’ll get the replay. But you should be there live if you can!
It’s at 10 am Pacific / 11 am Mountain / 12 noon Central / 1 pm Eastern on Tuesday, February 16th.
Here’s Hiett with a brief discussion of tradeshow follow up:
Hey, it’s a Top Ten List! Let’s look at ten things to do as you prepare for another year of tradeshow marketing:
Assess what happened this year. What did you spend? What were your results? Are there any areas where you can cut back? Are there areas that you need to invest more?
Create a will-attend show list. Perhaps you know this by heart. Maybe there are a few shows that have slipped down in your estimation, or some that that become more important.
Create a list of other shows that are on the bubble.
Know your show goals. Your overall goal is to grow the business, but each show likely presents an opportunity to do different things, such as build brand awareness, reach new markets, recruit partners, generate sales leads, solidify ties with current clients, maximize press and media outreach, unveil a new product or service or do research. Shows are often a combination of all of those (and more), but it is worthwhile to create a plan for each show that focuses on 2 or 3 specific areas.
Come up with new ways to attract booth traffic. What you did last year may or may not work this year. Don’t sit on your laurels; try to come up with at least one new concept per show on how you can drive traffic to your booth.
Ensure your lead generation system is working. Your show ROI depends almost exclusively on how you manage your sales leads. Work with your marketing and sales teams to make sure that each step is clear and workable.
Assess your booth. This might mean taking it out of the cases or crates and setting it up. This should be done with any booth regardless of size, just to make sure it withstands the rigors of regular set-up and dismantle. So often a booth is quickly packed at the end of a show and sent back to the storage facility, and no one bothers to check the condition of the booth until right before the next show. Or during set-up, which is ever worse! If repairs are needed, get them done in a timely manner.
Plan to book travel well in advance. Especially hotel rooms at popular and growing shows. If show hotels are booked, you can usually find a good deal on AirBnB.
Plan the logistics of your upcoming shows. Order services, promotions, uniforms and other items a few months ahead of time or as needed.
Plan your pre-show marketing outreach, from email to postcards, social media and other methods.
The more prepared you are, the better the opportunity to increase your leads, sales and brand awareness.
Two conversations I had this week starkly illustrated the vast difference between companies and their approach to show prep and post-show follow up.
In one instance, I was speaking with a potential client about their upcoming schedule for 2016. The gentleman told me that he was relatively new with the company, having come from a much larger company with about ten times the amount of employees. He had been the coordinator of all of the company’s tradeshow marketing efforts – which were big. The new company had an ambitious schedule, too, and he went into some detail about what it took to prepare for the show in terms of logistics, promotion, planning, tradeshow giveaways and so on, and then he went into detail about how much information they brought home from each show in terms of data and sales leads and how much time it took to digest and disseminate that material throughout the company.
In other words, they rocked it. Deep and wide. No stone left unturned as it were.
Contrast that to a conversation I had a day later with a consultant who worked with dozens of companies to help them ramp up their abilities to engage with attendees, gather sales leads and create a plan for follow up.
“It astonishes me how many companies still don’t have a clue. They wait until two weeks before the show and call me and want help doing promotion and preparing. Fact is, they should have called me six months earlier,” he said.
So there’s definitely a large real-world spectrum of how much involvement companies have in their tradeshow strategy, preparation and engagement. Some get it and are taking every competitive advantage available to them. Others are shooting from the hip and hoping to get something good out of the show.
We’ve all been to those shows. Maybe it was a small Chamber of Commerce show, or a county fair or a local public tradeshow. You see booths with the standard six-foot table with a drape in the front of the booth, and someone has put a fishbowl on the table with a small sign that says if you toss your card in the fishbowl you might win something!
Or you see a spinning wheel where you are spinning for a small prize, and perhaps one larger prize. People line up several deep to take a shot at winning a pocket-size LED flashlight, some lip balm or some other little item.
Now and then you see a dunk tank or maybe a little golf putting green that draws people to a booth by the dozens.
These are not effective lead generation activities. You may think they are, but if you’re hoping to attract buyers to your booth or leads for your sales team to follow up with using these flimsy tactics, you might as well stay home and send me the money. Nope, tradeshow success is all about drawing a crowd and knowing what to do with it.
People who put business cards are not prospects. Most will simply plop a card in the bowl and wander off. You haven’t talked to them; you don’t have a valid reason for a follow up call.
And that wheel? What did you learn about that woman who won some lip balm? Probably nothing.
Lead generation is the specific activity of capturing contact information and related follow up information from visitors so you connect with them shortly after the show. A valid lead is someone who you’ve talked with enough to find out if they’re interested in your products, are nearing a buying decision and are seriously considering your company’s products or services.
So leave the wheels and fishbowls to your competitors.
A tradeshow is a perfect opportunity to track stuff: sales, leads, visitors, and so on. Here’s a quick list of things you might consider measuring at each show. It’ll give you a chance to not only compare different shows, but it’ll help you track trends at different appearances at the same show year after year.
Sales. The key indicator of your success. The challenge with tracking sales from tradeshows is that you may get a sale in another 6 months, year or two years as a result of a single appearance. Be aware of where sales come from and track them to their source if you’re able.
Leads. Not quite as critical as sales, but a key indicator of the success of your overall tradeshow program. Identify cool, warm and hot leads and follow up appropriately.
New customers. Sales are great, but what percentage came from new customers?
Visitors. While many exhibitors don’t normally track booth visitors, if you can get a handle on at least an accurate ballpark number of booth visitors from show to show, that information will come in handy.
Samples. Do you give away samples, such as food or flash drives or swag? Keep track.
Demonstrations and attendance. Do you have a professional presenter at your booth? Keep track of how many are given each day and make a headcount of attendees.
Social media content. How many tweets, photos, videos and blog posts are you generating as a result of your appearance? Check things such as how many times your tweets were re-tweeted, or how many times your hashtag was mentioned, the numner of times you received an @ reply. If you saw a spike in Twitter followers or Facebook fans or Instagram followers during the show appearance, track that information.
Other online engagement. Do you steer people to your website during tradeshows? Did social media engagement drive traffic to your site? If you create a specific landing page for visitors, track the traffic on that. If you give away digital assets such as downloadable PDFs, white papers or product sell sheets, track that.
Finally, track the ROI. To calculate the ROI, divide the gross profit minus the cost of the show by the cost of the show. It will look like this:
ROI = (Gross Profit – Cost of the show) / Cost of the show.
For example, if it cost you $200,000 for the booth, travel, lodging, salaries, food, parties, transportation, etc., and you know that six months later the business generated as a direct result of the show was $359,000, you’d write the equation like this:
ROI = ($359,000 – $200,000) / $200,000
ROI = $159,000 / $200,000 = 79.5%
Measure as much as you can. You’ll be glad you did!
Doesn’t every Tom, Joe and Susie have a newsletter these days? After all, they can be very useful in getting your message in front of eyeballs on a consistent basis.
The fact is, my inbox is filled daily with dozens of newsletters of all sorts: news, marketing, comic strips, social media engagement, big biz, small biz, and so on.
I tend to open about one in ten if I’m in a generous mood. More like one in twenty or one in fifty. In other words, it’s hard to get my attention (or anybody’s) these days with just a newsletter. There’s got to be something in there that makes it worthwhile to click and open. And read.
But there are several newsletters that I read frequently. Some I open every single time right when I see it and stop what I’m doing. Others get put on the ‘later’ list and I usually make it back to them.
These are the tradeshow industry-related email newsletters that I read almost every time they arrive. I say almost because, hey, even I have to take a day off now and then! There are others out there – some are closed to the public and others don’t arrive frequently enough to warrant attention, and some I just don’t know about – but here are the tops in my book.
Exhibitor Magazine: a companion to their monthly print magazine, the newsletter is a useful and professional addition to your inbox.
TSNN: The Tradeshow News Network: between this and Exhibitor Magazine, you will have your pulse on the beat of the tradeshow industry news and happenings. Bonus: they have several editions available.
Classic Exhibits Tradeshow Tales: Mel and Kevin at Classic Exhibits in Portland, Oregon, offer great insight, humor and passion on a regular basis.
Andy Saks, Spark Presentations:Andy is a tradeshow presenter, Emcee, Staff Trainer and Auctioneer. In other words, he gets up in front of people. A lot. And his now-and-then newsletter is always a good read.
Anders Boulanger, the Infotainers: I enjoy this newsletter as much as any. Anders is a solid writer and communicator and always has thoughtful, meaty – and useful – pieces.
Marlys Arnold, Tradeshow Insights: Marly has been a show organizer and an exhibitor and comes at the topic from a unique perspective. A worthwhile read anytime.
Susan Friedmann, Tradeshow Tips: Susan is a CSP (Certified Speaking Professional) who has written many tradeshow related books and publishes a weekly tip sheet for exhibitors.
Skyline Tradeshow Tips: Friendly and useful, this newsletter doesn’t seem to show up a lot but when it does it’s good.
BONUS
Here are some non-related business/marketing/sales newsletters that I read all the time. I think you’ll love ’em:
Monday Morning Memo: Roy H. Williams of Austin, Texas, author of the Wizard of Ads and a former radio ad salesman, rings my Monday morning with a loud and clear bell every week. I look forward to this.
Tim Ferris, author of the 4-Hour Work Week and the 4 Hour Body, publishes a newsletter every Friday (and at other random times) of stuff that has caught his eye. Good stuff.
Dave Pell’s Next Draft, billed as ‘The Day’s Most Fascinating News,’ is all of that and more.
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 Marketingchannel. 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:
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.
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.
