In this TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee, we take a look at how graphics do a lot of work in your tradeshow exhibit. You can get on our notification list at TradeshowGuyWebinars.com.
Today’s GOOD THING: The New Yorker Radio Hour.
As much as I love Jeffrey Gitomer’s sales training (along with books, speeches, podcasts and more), I wasn’t sure where he’d come down on the idea of using tradeshows as a way to generate leads and sales. But when I saw the new Sell Or Die Podcast with Jeffrey Gitomer and Jennifer Gluckow, I had to share. This is just a brief snippet they posted on YouTube talking about tradeshows, and it’s a great start to the discussion:
Hmmm…maybe I should tell them about the TradeshowGuy Blog? As an old radio guy, I could probably figure out what to say as a guest on their podcast! Check out the Sell or Die podcast here.
Welcome to 2017! Here’s the first TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee from January 2, 2017. Technical misconnections aside, it’s a humble start to the now-weekly vlog. Subscribe at TradeshowGuyWebinars.com!
In our webinar How Fabric Graphics Changed the Tradeshow World, Dave Brown of Optima Graphics and I discussed myriad topics regarding tradeshow graphics. We looked at new trends in materials, print capabilities and color. We went over advancements in UV printing, Latex printing and fabric printing. We talked about Tac Tac graphics, a unique one-time use graphic that can really dress up a wall, booth, elevator door or whatever. We ended with a number of questions that tradeshow marketing managers can equip themselves with when discussing new graphic options with their exhibit house.
It’s less than 30 minutes! Take a look:
Sign up for the next webinar at TradeshowGuy Webinars.com
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know I produced a podcast for years back in the Golden Days of Podcasting. Actually, it happened starting before podcasts were a thing, mainly because I’m an old radio hack who tried to learn about the tradeshow industry by calling experts, consultants and others and recording an interview with them. Those interviews got posted on the website of my former employer (now retired and the business is gone), and when podcasting rolled around as a thing in 2005 or so, I morphed the interviews into an intermittent podcast.
Then a year ago I started doing a webinar a month and eventually set up TradeshowGuyWebinars.com as a landing page for signing up. My goal was to do one per month and managed to pull it off for the most part. Some had guests, others did not.
In the past few months I’ve stumbled on a handful of business people who are doing weekly video blogs, or vlogs. They’re turning on the camera and going either live or recording themselves for 5 – 10 minutes and then posting on their blog. They discuss business and personal stuff. To me it’s a great way to get to know someone beyond just their business self.
After mulling it over for a couple of months, I’ve decided I’m going to give a try. Starting in January (exact date TBD), I’m going to log on at nine o’clock Monday mornings onto the webinar platform and do a live vlog. Should be fun! We’ll see what happens. I’ll give it 3-4 months and if it’s still going well, I’ll keep going. If I run out of things or just can’t seem to get in a groove, I’ll pull the plug. Fair enough?
Okay. Sign up for login links at TradeshowGuyWebinars.com or watch for the replay here on the blog.
I love webinars.
No wait, I hate webinars.
I’ve attended so many webinars over the years that it’s easy to come away with both feelings: love and hate. Hate when you spend an hour only to have the presenter take the first 20 minutes giving you his poor sob story, 14 minutes of actual information that you can use, and 26 minutes trying to sell you on his $2,000 product.
But then there are those that cut to the chase, make it worth your while by delivering the goods. So I thought it might be fun to cruise YouTube and try to track down a handful of tradeshow webinars that are actually worth your time.
To begin, Ruth Stevens teams up with Lands’ End in 2013 for a tradeshow webinar called “Get More Out of Your Tradeshow Marketing,” which last about a half hour and is packed full of great information presented professionally.
Udi Ledorgor, author of the Amazon #1 Bestseller “The 50 Secrets of Tradeshow Success,” joined Pepperi for a fun-and-info-filled webinar. It clocks in at just under 40 minutes, so if you’re keeping score and home you now have almost 70 minutes of education to soak up by staying on this page. And if you do, of course, Google will love you, I’ll love you, and more people will find me. So you’re watching these now for TWO reasons: you’re going to learn something that will make you better at tradeshow execution and for the good of all mankind.
But wait, there’s more!
I ran across a rather long, but worthwhile webinar called “5 Tips to Maximize Your Tradeshow Experience” put on in advance of a show in 2016 called QuickBooks Connect by Kelly Bistriceanu of TSheets and Yoseph West of Hubdoc. While there are a number of QBConnect-only mentions for meetups and so forth, these two speak very knowledgeably and discuss some good ideas on planning and execution of tradeshows during this hour-plus webinar:
Okay, if you managed to make it through these webinars, I’ve taken up a couple of hours of your time by now. But y’know what? You’re smarter! And you’ve earned a break and probably a cup of coffee.
I love a good discussion where I come away with more information than I had at the beginning. That’s what happened with the 20-minute webinar discussion I had with Dave Beck of Foundry45, a company that creates content for virtual reality viewing. Virtual reality can be used in a number of ways, and content can be created from many different angles and for many different reasons.
Here’s the webinar:
Sign up for future webinars at TradeshowGuy Webinars.com.
Tradeshow record keeping. Yikes! Who wants to keep track of everything.
Record keeping is one of those things that most of us wish we didn’t have to do, – we know it’s tedious – but know we really should do. So how much should we keep, what should we keep, where is the best place to keep it, and WHY?
Tim Patterson discusses tradeshow record keeping in this brief but informative webinar:
This week I hooked up with Matt Hill of the Hill Group out of San Jose to discuss the importance of booth staff training. It was a fun and engaging but brief 20 minute conversation which hit all the high points of why tradeshow booth staffers will do much better with training on how to specifically work with visitors at tradeshows. We go over questions to ask, how to engage and disengage politely, lead generation, body language and more.
Take a look:
There are many ways to let people know about your upcoming tradeshow appearance. You can email them, call them, advertise, get some press, and so on. Have you ever considered using a webinar to promote your upcoming tradeshow appearance?
Using a webinar to promote your tradeshow appearance does a couple of things: it sets you apart from your competitors who are not doing such a thing, and it allows you as much time as you’d like to point out the specific features and benefits of your products and services. If you tell them enough – but not too much – you’ll have people who coming to your booth who are already interested in seeing more about what you talked about during the webinar. In fact, you can let people in on some inside information in your webinar that you may not want to tell everyone at the show.
Definitely lots of possibilities with this marketing tactic. Take a look:
