Back in the dark ages of technology and social media, say
2008 or so, I read many prognosticators who predicted that tradeshows would
disappear. Or become shells of themselves, simply because everyone was going
digital. I remember seeing online ‘virtual tradeshows’ where you could navigate
from booth to booth and see what companies were hawking.
Except that virtual tradeshows never really got going so
much. And the real thing is doing just fine, thank you very much.
Why? My hunch is that it’s because people are face-to-face.
In real time. In real life. Instead of interacting online over Skype or virtual
tradeshows.
Don’t get me wrong: there is a time and place for
interacting online, for social media, for Skype or Zoom.
But tradeshows are here to stay and they’re growing.
A recent (July 2019) post from Marketing Charts indicates that tradeshows have not only proven to be effective across all stages of the buyer’s journey, the channel has a projected annual compound growth rate of 4.3% through 2023.
The article shares other key points, including that tradeshows are the second largest and fastest-growing source of B2B growth. The B2B tradeshow market is expected to be a $15.7 Billion market in 2019, moving up to $18.5 Billion by 2023.
Yes, tradeshows as a method of marketing are critical to a
company’s success. The money spent on tradeshows often will take up as much as
a third of a company’s marketing spend.
There are lot of reasons that companies are successful at
tradeshow marketing (as well as many reasons they’re not successful!), but to my
mind it all comes down to the face-to-face aspect.
Yes, there are a lot of books about tradeshows. In fact, I wrote two of them. Many – actually, most – are good investments. A candid, experienced author can walk any exhibitor through the briar patch of tradeshows, which can often ensnare the inexperienced exhibitor. Actually, tradeshows can ensnare the experienced exhibitor, too. It happens all the time. Just check out the Plan B column in the monthly Exhibitor Magazine, which is full of real tales of exhibitors having to MacGuyver their way through the crazy, deadline-heavy world of tradeshow exhibiting.
Mel White, the VP Marketing/Business Development at Classic Exhibits, has always been a prolific and entertaining writer. His blog posts enliven the pages at Classic Exhibits.com, and his insight into tradeshow marketing comes from years of experience. (Full disclosure: Mel was instrumental in going through both of my books with a fine tooth comb to make them much better than where they started, and encouraging me at every step).
And now Mel has released a book available as both a Kindle download and as paperback, What’s So Funny About Trade Shows? A Humorous Guide to Effective Trade Show Marketing. Brilliantly illustrated by Meredith Lagerman, the book touches on a lot of the elements that make his blog posts entertaining and educational: zombies, Sasquatch, dumb stuff people do at tradeshows, why your booth staff kinda sucks and much more. And, of course it’s highly entertaining while making sure to impart great tips and tricks along the way.
As an introduction to tradeshow marketing, or as a refresher if you’ve been exhibiting for years, What’s So Funny About Trade Shows? is a great addition to any marketing library. Highly recommended!
When you put out a new podcast/vlog every week, frankly, it’s hard to keep up. Makes sense. That’s a lot of content to devour, and it’s easy to let things slip by.
But 2019 has given me a lot of great guests, and chances are you may have missed some of the really good ones (and there are many!). So here’s a random list of 10 guests I hosted on TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee this year that you might have missed. And even if you didn’t miss them, they could be worth another listen:
January 8: BJ Enright of Tradeshow Logic discusses the groundbreaking NAB Show Cares program that looks to address hefty drayage and material handling fees at the National Association of Broadcasters show.
March 25: Dave Scott, long time Portland on-air radio fixture, gets into the podcast game with his Embrace the Change podcast.
May 13: Phil Gorski discusses 3D Virtual Tour Technology and how it can affect tradeshow marketers.
April 8: Tom Beardof Eco-Systems Sustainable Displays talks sustainability in the exhibit world. This vlog/podcast made more timely by the recent announcement that Classic Exhibits and Eco-Systems are merging.
June 17: Danny Orleans. Magic on the tradeshow floor is always an attractor. Danny, Chief Magic Operator at Corporate Magic Ltd talks about how he works magic into a presentation.
June 3: David Newman of Do It Marketing talks, as you might expect, marketing. I have to admit that I like to read his emails, which come about once a day. Really short, but a good mix of very usable info and pitches.
July 22: Howard Berg. Fascinating, fast-paced learning. Howard was a gas.
July 15: Ken Newman of Magnet Productions. Ken travels the world doing his professional presentations for tradeshow clients. He is also a big presence in the Blanket the Homeless effort in the SF Bay area, and talks about both in this fun interview.
September 16: Jay Gilbert, a long time music industry executive has had his own company for years now. And while this is not much related to the tradeshow world, it’s a fascinating look at what it takes in the world of music promotion.
September 23: Laura Allen, The Pitch Girl, helps distill the essence of your pitch down to a simply formula. Very useful in so many situations!
There are many more of course – just search for TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee – or browse the archives at your leisure.
Not too long ago, Josh Elledge of Up My Influence reached out to me and asked if I’d be a guest on The Thoughtful Entrepreneur podcast. Sure, why not? Sounds like fun!
Take a listen:
Josh posted The Thoughtful Entrepreneur podcast complete with transcript here. Check out the main site here: Up My Influence.
Many people look to a yearly tradeshow as a single event, a
one-time experience where everything is on the line. In a sense, it’s hard to
argue against that viewpoint. So much is on the line. The booth rental space is
expensive. It’s not cheap to get your exhibit there, or the travel costs for
your booth staff.
And yes, there are a lot of moving parts. Making sure the
new product samples are ready, appointments are set ahead of time, the booth
staff is up to speed (or professionally trained), the lead generation and information-capture
system is in place. And so on and so on.
It can get overwhelming. Which makes it easy to let a lot of
things slip through the cracks. And when that happens, it’s easy to beat yourself
up for not getting the results you wished for.
Let’s take another approach, especially if you’re a smaller company with limited resources and a limited number of people that can attend the show on behalf of the company.
Learn to do just a few things really, really well!
Let’s say you have as many as 14 things that are on your list, things that are important that they get done. But because you don’t have enough people to do all of them effectively, pick just a few, maybe two or three or four things and focus on those. Give a little attention to the remaining things but pick a few and make sure you do a bang-up job on them.
Maybe you choose to focus on one in-booth activity and the
follow-up details on those interested in your products or services. Let
everything else come in after that. Yes, spend a little time, but make sure you
do those two main things as best as you can, every single time. If you focus on
those two things, you can create an in-booth activity that succeeds more than
you ever hoped for. And your attention to detail on the follow up, such as
when/where/who/how/what will make sure that each and every post-show phone call
or email or in-person follow up is exactly what the prospect expected. Wouldn’t
that be something? Wouldn’t your booth staff like that? How about your sales
staff?
And if you do more than one big show a year, carry that
concentration on just a few things to each of the other smaller shows, and then
measure your results. Once you have figured out how to do those few things with
excellence, add another item or two, such as pre-show outreach or marketing or
building a tradeshow-specific landing page or checking out the competition.
Doesn’t matter.
Just don’t try to do it all at once, especially if your company doesn’t have the bandwidth. Focus on a few things and grow from there.
It’s a common refrain: tradeshows don’t work for me. They’re too expensive. I don’t get enough leads.
And unfortunately, it’s true for too many exhibitors. It’s easy to look at the exhibitor list of a show year after year and point to companies that give it a try once or twice never to return.
Look at the flip side, though: there are thousands of exhibitors that go back to the same few shows year after year, take home a stack of leads, create more business and firmly believe that tradeshows are the most powerful marketing tool they have at hand.
I know that’s true because I work with those kinds of exhibitors.
Now, not every single exhibitor I’ve worked with is successful. Some have
fallen off the wagon along the way. Others have shifted their marketing
efforts. Some have taken a step back from tradeshows and reassessed their
program, but eventually make it back bigger and better.
What’s the difference?
We could point to any number of things: their booth space is
lousy and doesn’t have enough traffic; their booth is small and nondescript;
their staff is bored (and boring) and so on. But it all boils down to just two
things:
Having a good plan and being committed to that plan.
Plans are great. Everyone should have one. But what about
having a bad plan? Bad plans do certainly exist. And having a bad plan is not a
good thing.
Back to that “good plan” and “being committed” to the plan. A
good plan can come from knowing your goals, your budget, your people; knowing
the show and your competitors, and knowing what you really want out of the
show. That good plan can be enhanced by having a well-trained booth staff,
having a standout exhibit and having the most popular products in the show. But
those last three things, the staff, exhibit and best products, are not
completely necessary to have a good result. They’re important, sure, but they’re
more like frosting on the cake. You gotta build a good cake first.
Answer these questions:
What do you want out of the show? In other words, why are you there?
How are you going to know if you got what you wanted? How are you going to measure your results?
What are the steps you need to take to get what you want? What will it take to get exactly what you want?
Sometimes it takes a little brainstorming and communication
with the various members of the team. Sometimes it means knowing what worked at
your last show and knowing what didn’t work. Be honest. Sometimes you have to
be brutally honest to say that having that crazy mascot uniform didn’t really
work, or that having the general manager do the in-booth presentations didn’t
draw that many people. There are lots of reasons why things don’t work and
assessing and understanding those ideas will help you move forward.
Another way to look at it is to ask yourself: When I get
back in the office the morning after the show and say, Man that was a great
show! What does that mean to you?
It’s not the same for every company.
Once you’ve defined the main goal of your tradeshow appearance,
break it up into pieces. If you want 300 leads over a three-day show, you’ll
need 100 a day. If the show is open from 10 am to 5 pm, that’s 8 hours. You’ll
need to average 12.5 leads per hour, or one about every five minutes. If you’re
doing demos, for example, and you know that for every demo you do there are 15
people on average standing there, and three of them are good leads, that means
you’ll need to do a demo about four times an hour. If, on the other hand, you
get six leads for every demo, that means you only need two demos an hour. Or,
you could try to double your projected leads by doing demos four times and
hour.
Run the numbers. If you want to give away 1,000 product samples
or sign up 200 people for lengthier demos in the next three months, you know
what that will break down to by just doing the math.
If your goals are not so straightforward, you can still look at it from an angle that will help. Maybe you want to make solid connections with only three distributors that, if you can get them to carry your products, would double your company revenue in the next two years, figure out what organizations are the best and most likely candidates. Make whatever effort you need to set and confirm appointments at the show. Yes, tradeshow success is all in the numbers, and it’s all in the ability to show off your products and make sales. So do the math, do the outreach. But don’t forget that we’re all humans – you and your prospects – and there’s often not a straight line to success. Make allowances for that, learn from your missteps and do better the next time. That’s what it’s all about.
Business coach and business owner Dominic Rubino joins me today to discuss, among other things, an easy formula for difficult conversations. Check it out – it’s a good one:
A good piece of fiction is surprisingly like a good
tradeshow marketing effort. You don’t believe me? Let’s take a look. What
happens when you read a good piece of fiction?
1. Create a unique world.
Fiction allows an author to create a world that exists only in one place: the reader’s mind. A good tradeshow exhibit and marketing plan creates a world that exists only in your booth. Whether it’s a unique display, a professional presentation or a one-of-a-kind activity, creating a unique world for your visitor is a good way to make sure they remember you. Having a great product that no one else offers is also a good way.
2. Create tension.
A good story has tension that pulls the reader further into the story. A good tradeshow exhibit can create a good kind of tension. Maybe it’s a compelling and challenging statement on their graphic, or maybe it’s a challenging question that makes you stop and want to know more. That tension creates a kind of desire to learn more.
3. Know who your story is for.
I like to read detective page-turners and mysteries. I don’t like to read romance novels or fantasy. A good tradeshow marketing plan knows exactly what audience is attracted to their type or product or service and they don’t try to bring in anyone that isn’t interested.
4. The main character in a story has a “super objective.” What’s yours?
I recently heard this concept about a character’s super objective. You may not actually see this super objective detailed in the story, but it drives the main character. Jack Reacher, for example, is compelled to do what he can to right the wrongs that he sees. Harry Bosch believes that ‘if anybody counts, everybody counts,’ when it comes to solving a murder. No one gets more or less attention simply because of their place in society.
5. There’s always an objection (or a hurdle).
Know your prospect’s objections. Any novel where the protagonist has no hardships or obstacles is a boring novel. Expect your potential clients to have tough questions. If they do, it shows they’re interested and want to know more. Identify the most common objectives and make sure your booth staffers know how to answer those questions.
6. Keep the page turning.
Have you ever gotten part way through a book and just decided that you couldn’t finish it? Maybe it was boring. Maybe it wasn’t your type of book. Maybe you bogged down in too many unrelated bunny trails and lost the main story. In a tradeshow booth, show your attendees enough compelling evidence – the storyline, as it were – to stay until they learn enough to know if they’re going to buy from you or not. Depending on your product, this might mean that you’re giving in-booth demonstrations or training sessions, or your professional presenter is sharing enough information in a lively and engaging manner that compels the visitor to want to find out more.
7. Deliver the goods: make it a great ending.
Every novel has a wrap up where you find out what happened to the character, the storyline. It’s the payoff. Does your product or service make that same delivery? Are they the great payoff, the great ending that your prospect is looking for?
Yes, I think fiction can be a good inspiration for tradeshow marketing. By using the various elements contained in a good novel, you can create a template for showing your visitors all of the best of your products or services in a compelling and intriguing manner.
Seth Kramer has been doing tradeshow and corporate magic presentations for decades, so he knows a thing or two about how it works. In this week’s TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee, he share some of his experiences and hands out a tip or two:
The biggest challenge of tradeshow marketing, it seems, is to draw attendees to your booth. There are hundreds of ways to do that. On today’s TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee, Sam Smith of Social Point joins me to discuss the many ways his company has devised to get people to stop at booths and stay engaged.
