There’s more than one way to annoy your prospects when it
comes to trying to sell something to them. Whether it’s on the phone, in person,
at a tradeshow or via email, it seems most of the pitches that hit me are
designed to annoy.
That’s probably not really the case, but it seems that way.
Spam
Let’s take the example of spam. Okay, it’s a really easy example. But at least some of them appear to be trying. “Appear” to be. Just got an email from a software company inviting me to download an “employee performance management software pricing guide.” The email looked nice. Good graphic design which tells me that some thought went into the messaging. The message was clear. But it just wasn’t for me.
There are at least a couple of things wrong with this. First, it was emailed to an email address that I basically retired three years ago, so I know it’s from someone who didn’t care if the email was valid before sending something out. Secondly, they have no idea what kind of company we are – how many employees, what we do, how we do it. We are a project management company that works with subcontractors, not direct employees. They’re shooting in the dark, and it’s pointless and a waste of time, theirs and mine.
Cold Calls
Another easy way to annoy people is to call them at random and start pitching something without knowing what the company does. I’ve lost count of the number of calls I’ve gotten from call centers and the first thing out of their mouth is a pitch. No question about whether I even use the product or what my company does. They just ramble on, because that’s the script they were given and the instructions to deliver it quickly.
Tradeshows
At tradeshows, I’ve walked by booths and had my badge
scanned without anyone even looking to find out if their product or service is
of interest to me. Now I’m on their email list where I get pitches that have no
relevance to me. I’ve had booth staffers stop me in the aisle and give me a
minute or two or three of song and dance complete with in-depth details on the
product they are hawking. But…I would never even buy the product. I’m not in
their target market.
Do you sense a trend? One of the things I’ve learned in
sales and marketing is that if you’re not marketing to an audience of people
that are interested in your products or services, you’re wasting time, money
and energy.
The Answer is Simple
It seems simple. Yet so many businesses today don’t care and
don’t even bother to appear to care.
On occasion I’ll get a cold call from someone who’s actually
done a little research. Maybe they looked at our company website, or they’re
calling from a targeted list they purchased, which at least puts them in the
right ballpark to have a conversation.
And yes, on a rare occasion or two, I’ve actually purchased something
from someone who cold-called me. They knew what we did as a business, they
understood how their product could help me, they patiently answered questions and
gave me a chance to ponder the offer for a few days before deciding to move
forward.
Yes, selling can be done properly, to people that are ready and
willing to buy your products. But it won’t work when the pitch gets lost among
people who will never be a customer.
A professional tradeshow presenter can bring crowds of people to your tradeshow booth over and over again during the course of a tradeshow. Many use a combination of entertainment and product information to entice people. This week’s TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee takes a look at tradeshow presentations from the vantage point of Danny Orleans, Chief Magic Officer at Corporate Magic LTD. Take a look:
This week’s ONE GOOD THING: Paul McCartney’s most recent solo album, Egypt Station.
I got an email the other day from someone whose newsletter I had just subscribed to, and in the introduction email there was a link to the top 5 most read blog posts on her blog. That’s when an idea light lit up over my head and gave me an idea for a blog post (as a blogger, you’re always looking for ideas, right?).
Next thing you know I was pawing through my Google Analytics account to find out what were the most-viewed posts on this blog. These are the ones that floated to the top, for whatever reason. It’s all organic. I don’t advertise, but I do share links now and then on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. On occasion there might be a link here from Pinterest. Or another blog.
This blog is aging. It’s over ten years old, having been launched in November, 2008. There are almost 1000 posts.
One more note: the analytics breakdown shows the front page as “most-viewed” and a couple of pages (not posts) showed up in the top ten as well, including the Contact Me page and the We Accept Blog Submissions page. But beyond that, here are the top ten blog posts since the beginning of the blog (in traditional countdown order):
Number Ten: The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Exhibit RFPs. I created a one-page sheet on what should go into an Exhibit RFP (Request for Proposal), and posted it on Cheatography.com, a site for thousands of cheat sheets. Kind of fun. They regularly sent me emails telling me how many times it was downloaded (500! 1000! 1500!). Not sure how accurate that is, but obviously it’s been seen by a lot of people. From September 2017.
Number Seven: How to Build a Tradeshow-Specific Landing Page.Inspired by Portland’s Digimarc, it’s a look at the steps you can use to put together an online site specifically to interact with potential tradeshow booth visitors. From December 2017.
Number Five: Tradeshow Debriefing Questions. Another oldie but goodie, this post from September 2009 guides you through the after-show info-gathering process.
Number Four: Virtual Reality for Tradeshows. You’ve seen them at shows: people wearing VR goggles. Is it worth it? A brief exploration, from June 2016.
Number Three: Exhibit vs. Booth vs. Stand. They’re called different things in different parts of the world, so I took a whack at trying to explain it. Just last summer in July 2018.
Aaaaand, at Number ONE: SWOT Analysis for Tradeshows. It still surprises me that this post gets a whopping 3.95% of all of the traffic on the site. At the time I wrote it I had been spending a fair amount of time with a friend who was going through school to get his degree in marketing, and one thing that we discussed in depth was the SWOT Analysis. S=Strengths; W=Weaknesses; O=Opportunities; T=Threats. It’s a great exercise to work through in regards to your tradeshow marketing appearances. Check it out. It’s from February 2015.
What is tension in a business sense, or to be more precise, in
a marketing sense?
Briefly, it’s the concept of conflict. It’s the process of
creating a situation where a visitor can’t immediately reconcile one concept
with another.
Think Coke vs. Pepsi.
Nike vs. Adidas
One brand vs. another is one source of tension.
And understand, tension is not fear. You could say it’s the
opposite. Remember in high school when you were attracted to another person and
the tension that was created around it. You wanted to be with that person, but since
the very thought of expressing your feelings created tension, it made you,
well, tense! But in a good way, because you really did want to get to know that
person and spend time.
Another would be telling a story, but not giving away the
end. Maybe harder to do in the chaos and quick turnover of a tradeshow, but I’ve
seen it done. At the National Association of Broadcaster Show this year in Las
Vegas, Adobe (and many others) had huge classes going on teaching their new
software. That is a great story to tell: those that use the software want to
know how things have changed and how they can use it, so they sign up for a
free class to learn the story of the software and its changes. I’ve seen larger
exhibits steer visitors through a maze where you don’t know what you’re getting
into until you’ve seen the maze all the way through.
How do you tell the story of your product or service? By
asking questions:
What is it?
How does it work?
When can I get it?
What does it taste like?
When will it be available?
Where can I get it?
What does it cost?
The price of something is a story in and of itself. Are you
positioning your product against another similar product by offering it at a
lower price? What tension does that create? What if you price it much higher
than your competition? How does that affect the tension people feel?
Is your product something more or less “off the shelf?” In
other words, do you simply manufacture it and put it on a shelf? In that case,
price is a point of tension. Deciding to like the product or not is pretty straightforward
and deciding to spend the money may come down to the perceived value.
But what if what you offer is customized? That means the
customer has a number of choices to make, such as in the case of creating a new
tradeshow exhibit. And having to make a lot of decisions can freak out some
people, either in a good way or a bad way. Ideas can come pouring forth from some
people. From other people, having to come up with a lot of ideas may mean they
freeze up.
Many people are looking for something quick and easy. They
want a “push-button” solution to their problems. That’s why “turnkey” solutions
are often presented for more complex situations. Which is why customized
products create tension and demand a lengthier decision process.
By creating tension in a good way, you’re making your product or service attractive to people. What tension can you create with your tradeshow marketing and story-telling?
We all learn lessons as we follow our path through life. Some lessons are good, some are hard, some are easy. This week’s TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee brings a handful of lessons that I’ve learned along the way:
The tradeshow’s over. It was a success! You made a lot of
contacts that you’re ready to follow up with, and hopefully that will lead to
new clients down the road.
Then you realize that out of the thousands of show
attendees, only a small percentage of them actually stopped by your booth, or
if they did, they didn’t spend as much time as they might have liked because,
well, the other few thousand exhibitors.
Bring them a post-show webinar to show them what they
missed.
I’ve detailed the idea of using a pre-show webinar to outline the various products and people that would be in your booth as a means of engaging and inviting people to stop by.
But what about post-show? Hopefully, you have a lot of photos and video from the show. And of course, lots of information about how your new products were received by your booth visitors. While the photos and video aren’t critical, they might come in handy. And as far as information, one place to start might be to address some of the questions that came up about your products at the show.
Assemble all of those into a webinar and promote that to your
email list, and throughout your social media channels.
This just happened to me. The NAB Show ended almost two
months ago, and today I got an email from one of the exhibitors that invited me
to one of two webinar sessions this week. The objective of the webinar? To give
attendees a chance to go over the details of the new software products they
launched at the show. Brilliant. And why not?
Hosting a post-show webinar is an effective way to do three
things:
Remind attendees about your appearance at the show. It puts your company back to a ‘top-of-mind’ position if only for a moment.
Reminds attendees that you launched new products.
Gives them an opportunity to take a more relaxed look at the product, and if the webinar is designed properly, gives them a chance to ask questions.
Tradeshow pre-show marketing is kind of the lost stepchild
of tradeshow marketing.
“Yeah, we don’t do as much as we’d like. Just don’t have the
time.”
“Well, we post a few things on Twitter before the show, but
that’s about it.”
If this is your approach, you shouldn’t be surprised if your
results aren’t what you’d like. Let’s take a closer look at some tradeshow
pre-show marketing best practices and see if those results don’t come up a bit.
Follow tradeshow pre-show marketing best practices can bring more people to your booth space.
Know Your Market. Who do you want to come see your booth? Do your best to identify them, whether it’s by title, company, region, demographic, or whatever. Next, what problem do you solve for them? Once you’ve identified your market and what you can do to help them, you can start crafting your messages and the channels you’ll use.
Know Your Budget. It’s a given that most of your tradeshow budget will go to the actual show itself: the exhibit, shipping, travel expenses, booth space rental and more. But try to carve off a percentage of the overall budget for pre-show marketing.
Know Where Your Market Spends Time. Not as easy as it sounds. Maybe they’re on social media, and if that’s the case, what platforms? Twitter? LinkedIn? Facebook? Or is there a popular podcast in your market niche that’s worth looking at for possible advertising? Ask current customers and prospects where they spend their “industry time” and see what they say.
Know the Channels You Can Use. Sure, email, social media and list rentals might work. But what about phone calls? Direct mail? In-person visits? Yeah, that last one is rare, but if you are speaking face-to-face with someone you’d like to be at the show, take a moment to remind them and invite them by.
Know the Timeline You’ll Use. By creating a schedule of what to do when, and bringing everyone on your team up to speed on the schedule, you have a much better chance of succeeding. For instance, three months out is a good time to email a “save the date” notice for the show. Six weeks out might be appropriate to send a postcard or other piece of direct mail. A month out is a good time to start posting booth numbers on social media using show hashtags (be sure to include some cool photos from last year’s appearance!).
Know Your Neighbors. Yup, your show neighbors. Learn who’s next to you and across the aisle from you. Reach out to their marketing person and see what they might tell you about their appearance. If they’re planning on doing a live presentation in their booth four times an hour, that might affect your approach.
Know Your Lead Capture Process. Are you scanning badges? That’s a good start. But will that scan capture the time and manner of follow up, or the type of follow up that is agreed upon by the prospect? Have a system in place that works.
No doubt you can come up with a few more based on your own
experience over the years. But maybe these can kickstart the conversation!
This week’s TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee makes a caffeine connection with Do It Marketing founder David Newman to talk about all things marketing. Lots of great tips here!
Calculating your tradeshow ROI is pretty straightforward.
Know how much you spent to do the show. Know how much you made off the show. Do
the math.
There are any number of ways to increase the ROI, but it mainly
comes down to controlling the main two numbers as much as you can: how much you
spend and how much you make.
Whole books
have been written about how to put on a great tradeshow exhibit, train your booth
staff, use social media to beckon attendees and more. But for the purposes of
this article let’s focus on keeping your costs down.
Let’s start with booking your space. By booking early, show organizers will give you a discount. So book
early. Book the booth space. Book the electricity, rental carpet, internet,
cleaning, whatever. Several months before the event, check the show website and
put critical dates in to your calendar. By knowing when the various services
are to be booked to get the early discount, you can save a substantial amount
of dough.
Bring your own.
Exhibiting pros know that when you’re onsite, some of the most expensive things
are the cheap things that you should have in your tradeshow
survival kit. Extension cords, scissors, felt pens, business cards, phone
chargers, extra cables, and so on.
Plan to ship to the
advance warehouse. While this is generally a money-saving exercise, it’s
not always the case so you may have to do the math. But by shipping to the
advance warehouse you’ll often get discounted rates.
Ship only what you
need. Here’s where you may have to work with your exhibit house. Many
exhibits these days are designed and built to be reconfigured into more than
one size. But to make it effective, make sure you ship only what’s going to be
set up at the specific show. Your warehouse can help coordinate the proper
items. Nothing is more frustrating than setting up at a show knowing that
there’s an extra crate that got shipped and you won’t be using what’s inside.
Another note on shipping: be scrupulous about how to use the space in your
crates. Many times a client will ask us to build some extra compartments into
custom-jigged crates so they can ship extra products or samples.
Get rid of items in
storage you no longer use. Yes, it may be great to think that you’ll reuse
that exhibit from 2011 someday. But probably not. No reason to pay for storage
for something that you’ll never use again.
Print only the graphics you need. Tradeshow graphics have a short life. If they last more than one show, it’s because they’re generic or the marketing team is lazy. Or maybe there’s nothing new to promote. In any event, you can save money on graphics a number of ways. Plan on having some of your exhibit graphics designed to be reused for at least a few shows. To save more money, have banner stands or other graphics produced at the show’s city to save shipping costs.
This is a guest post by Vaibhab Kakkar of Digital Web Solutions.
Getting to rub shoulders with the leaders in digital marketing. Hearing their experiences and learning from them. Building useful contacts and partnership opportunities like never before.
Digital marketing conferences bring it
all down under one roof.
And that’s why it’s always great for
aspiring marketers to be a part of these conferences. But, can you or your
fraternity attend all the big conferences? (Like
all of them?)
Certainly not! You’ll need to make a
choice.
To help you do that, here’s a list of the
top 9 digital marketing conferences. To make sure these are worth your while
and buck, we have shortlisted these on the basis of content.
So, let’s get going!
1. Digital Summit: Austin
Key Topics: Customer’s
journey throughout the funnel, SEO, email marketing, content, UX.
Location: Austin
Date: June 04-05, 2019
With a total of 40 digital marketing
experts assembling under one roof to make the Digital Summit: Austin happen,
the event will certainly be rich with priceless insights.
To start off, the pre-event talks on 3rd
June will include words and wisdom about influencer marketing and popular CRO
techniques.
Moving beyond that, the conference will majorly
focus on every important factor affecting digital marketing strategies.
So, be it SEO. Content. Email marketing.
UX. Or growing your network along with your net worth, within the two days,
speakers will open up and elaborate about all of these.
Also, failures and success stories don’t
even need a mention.
The tickets are running out shortly and
are priced between $200 to $995. A basic $200 ticket will simply allow you
access to the masterclass, while a $995 platinum pass will include everything from
lunch to exclusive keynote meetup & platinum swag.
As the call to actions on websites and in
ad sets are crucial for converting prospects into leads, the CTA conference
will shower useful knowledge about how you can optimize your CTAs to the max.
Talking about techniques for writing
brilliant CTA copies, choosing the right CTA colors, links and much more, this
conference will guide you with everything you need for CTA optimization.
Super early bird passes are priced at CA$426.93
for existing Unbounce customers and CA$747.93 for everyone else.
Grab your passes here before the super-early bird period goes off and the prices go high.
Also, to get a rough idea of how the CTA conference events usually are and how the last one was, you can have a look at the speaker videos from last year’s event.
3. Nottingham Digital Summit
Key topics: SEO, PPC,
experience sharing
Location: Nottingham, UK
Date: July 03, 2019
Take your digital marketing skills to
another level with over 700 delegates and 26 expert marketing speakers and
trainers. The grand event in Nottingham is going to have some of the digital
industry’s leading thinkers, visionaries, and practitioners.
And another great thing about it?
Starting off at $50, the event is going
to be the cheapest on this list. In fact, the costliest pass itself is priced
at only a hundred dollars.
Which is why the event is supposed to be
attracting a large number of aspiring and amateur marketers looking forward to
honing their skills.
Grab your passes here, before the day is all sold.
4. MozCon
Key topic: Digital
marketing
Location: Seattle, WA
Date: July 15-17, 2019
An electrifying and highly energized
digital marketing conference, MozCon may just be bursting many digital
marketing bubbles this year.
And with all the speakers and attendees
from all walks of the marketing business, it may just be a perfect place to
network with like-minded marketers and marketing enthusiasts.
By being a part of this event, you’ll get
to learn about SEO, mobile, growth, analytics, content and a lot more.
The exact location of the event is The
Washington State Convention Center situated on Pike Street.
To get an idea about what follows in MozCon 2019, you can have a look at the speakers who were there at the 2018 MozCon.
The price that one has to pay for
attending the event varies for members and non-members of Moz. While members of
Moz can avail a pass for $799, non-members will be required to pay $1,299 for
the same pass.
To get your tickets before the early-bird deals expire, click here.
5. eTail Eadigitalst 2019
Key topics: Retail and
e-commerce
Location: MA, Boston
Date: August 19-22, 2019
If you are a retailer looking forward to
expanding your brand by exploring and bagging on new digital retailing
opportunities like e-commerce, this conference can change your stars.
eTail has been inviting and gathering top
retail executives from around the globe for 20 years now. The key USP of their
conferences is that they bring their “how-to’s” from leading retailers. This
motivates newbies and other experienced-yet-aspiring retailers to scale their
businesses on their will.
The tickets for the conference are reasonably priced between $1,299 to $3,899. For further details and booking your place, you can check out their official website.
Discount coupon for eTail passes: Retailers can use MKTERMS19 to avail 20% off on current prices.
6. Inbound
Key topic: Inbound
marketing tactics
Location: MA, Boston
Date: September 3-6, 2019
What makes INBOUND stand out of all the
other digital marketing conferences on this list? A stand-up comedy show.
But calm down, that’s not the highlight.
Apart from lighting up the mood with a spot-on stand-up show, the event is
going to discuss in detail some of the most effective inbound marketing
strategies and techniques.
Also, the event will include innovative
discussions and presentations relating to inbound. This is to make sure that
the attendees get the most of the killer inbound growth tactics.
Speaking of the strength, INBOUND is
going to be totally houseful with over 25,000 guests arriving at the venue from
more than 100 nations. The past INBOUND events became famous for getting
influential speakers like Michelle Obama, Deepak Chopra, and Brian Halligan and
Dharmesh Shah on-board.
Apart from that, the event is charmed up with an instagrammable ambiance, the INBOUND studio, and platforms for interviews, videos, and curated content (which can also be reinvented for IGTV).
Prices range between $299 and $1,399. For booking your seats, go check out their register page.
7. Social Media Strategies Summit: NYC
Key topic: Social media
marketing
Location: New York
Date: October 15-17, 2019
With over 63% of customers expecting companies to offer services via their social media channels, the need for investing rightly in social media marketing is real.
Helping you with the same, Social Media
Strategies Summit: NYC is going to talk in details about crafting, managing,
and optimizing all your social media marketing strategies.
That’s the first aim of the conference;
instructing the attendees about the nuts and bolts of a successful social media
strategy to position their brands for success.
The tickets start at a price of $1,399 and go up to $2,289. To see various pricing features and to book yourself before the prices go up, see their pricing page.
8. Internet Summit
Key topics: Digital
marketing using Facebook, Google, Pinterest, and several other platforms
Location: Raleigh, NC
Date: November 13-14, 2019
For all the digital marketing enthusiasts
who are always hunting for new marketing tactics and using new media platforms
for expanding their reach, Internet Summit can be a boon.
Speakers include Dave Isbitski from
Amazon, Diamond Ho from Facebook, Caroline Hubbard from LinkedIn, Seth
Weisfield from Pinterest, Ben Morss from Google and many more from other
platforms.
Also, the event will cover topics like
email marketing, storytelling content, mobile marketing, UX design and
optimization, analytics, etc.
And the best thing about the summit
provides is a continued learning experience with access to speaker slides and
recordings after the conference, so, you don’t have to worry about forgetting.
Standard ticket prices start at $445 and go up to $1,195. However, if you book before July 24, 2019, you can save $200 on each pass that you buy.
9. Digital Marketing Leaders Summit: Hong Kong, 2019
Key topic: Digital
marketing
Location: Hong Kong
Date: December 13-14, 2019
One of the greatest digital marketing
conferences taking place in the last month of 2019, Digital Marketing Leaders
Summit: Hong Kong will uncover the secrets of SEO, influencer, email, and
social media marketing.
The conference is going to have some of
the leading thought and internet marketing leaders from across the globe.
To get an idea about their previous events, have a look at the list of their previous speakers.
Early bird passes are priced at $799, $899, and $ 1,099. To know more about what the three passes offer and to book yourself before the early bird offers go void, visit their registration page.
Final words
For marketers and entrepreneurs trying to
step-up their marketing game, the concept of digital marketing conferences can
turn out to be a game changer.
But with hundreds of such conferences
taking place every year, choosing the best one can get you in sweat. To ease
things out for you, here we talked about 9 of the top digital marketing
conferences, hand-picked by us, so you know what you just can’t afford to miss.
Hopefully, this helped you.
Don’t forget to share this piece with your marketer friends to pick the right conference for you and to book tickets before the seats dry out.
Vaibhav Kakkar is the CEO of Digital Web Solutions, a globally trusted agency with a full suite of digital marketing & development solutions. Vaibhav believes in building system over services, and has invested in multiple tech startups including RankWatch, NotifyFox and a CRM software to help scale up client agencies from scratch to niche-leaders with million dollar turnovers.
