Hey, I’m heading to Outdoor Retailer in early August. Salt Lake City hosts this fun and engaging national show twice a year: one for winter market (think skiing!) and once for the summer market (boating, hiking, bicycling and more!). Thousands of exhibitors and tens of thousands of attendees take over the Salt Palace Convention Center the first week or so of August.
…and I’ll be there doing some tradeshow booth performance tests. You know, a look at how companies are using their tradeshow booths to live up to the promise of gathering leads, attendee engagement and delivering a brand message.
The following is a guest article from Jennifer Callahan of Fathom:
It can come as a directive from the top, but most likely it’s Sales or Marketing trying to squeeze company budgets to allow a team to exhibit at a tradeshow. So if you’re part of a team trying to get dollars approved to set up a tradeshow booth but are facing increasing pressure to prove that it’s worth not only the money, but the time away from the office, you need to read on.
No matter which industry you’re in, you have likely seen budget restraints over the past five years. Proving a Return on Investment for Sales and Marketing is more important than ever. So how do you maximize ROI for your upcoming tradeshow?
First, it’s never too early to plan. Following are just a few items you should begin working on now:
– Press Release: A crucial part of your pre-show marketing. Tell people what booth number you’ll be at and what they can expect from your team. Will you have new product demos? Free assessments? Make it easy for reporters from trade mags to meet with you by stating when and if you’re available to meet with the media.
– Your Website: On your home page you will want a noticeable call to action (perhaps with a discount code for attendees?) to incentivize anyone attending the show to stop by to check you out.
– Multiple Blog Posts: This is a no-brainer if you have plenty of time between now and the show. But don’t just do promos about your company. Write about what attendees can expect from the show and the types of events that have happened in the past. And when you return, write a wrap-up blog post.
– Use Video! If someone from your company is speaking at the event, or if you will be interviewing any notable people from your industry, make sure someone videotapes it. Place the video on your YouTube channel, along with a link to it in your blog, Twitter feed, Facebook posts, etc.
– Meet with Current and Prospective Customers: Schedule time to meet with your current customers at the booth. It’s not a bad idea to have prospective customers meet with your Sales or Marketing team at the same time. Oftentimes your current happy customers can be great ambassadors of your brand.
– Toss the Paper: Resist the urge to haul reams of paper documents for passing out at the booth. Get interested prospects’ business cards to email them everything they’re interested in, post-show. Chances are your documents will end up in hotel room trash cans, anyway. This runs into the next tip:
– Email, Email, Email: Nurture prospects with email post-show. It can start with company documents that explain more about products and services. And from there on out, it’s up to you to continue with marketing automation to further nurture those valuable leads.
While tradeshows may be dwindling in attendance in your industry, there is a way to turn attendees into customers in this digital world. It takes major planning and teamwork between Sales and Marketing. Download the whitepaper 21 (+2 Bonus) Tips to Maximize Your ROI to plenty more tips to make the most of your company’s marketing dollars.
One of the most pressing challenges for exhibitors is determining what shows to exhibit at on a regular basis. Just because your company has been going to the same show for twenty years doesn’t mean it’s the right show for you to go to. The exhibit industry changes and evolves. Audiences and interests change. Some shows expand. Others downsize. Some vanish altogether or are folded into similar shows. All of this means that you should examine what shows you go to on a regular basis and determine the reasons for attending – or not attending.
I’ve seen companies that exhibit at shows for years suddenly drop out because their business model changed. One company exhibited for years at the Natural Products Expo West and one year they just didn’t show up. It turns out that so much of their business moved online that it didn’t make sense to put out the large amounts of cash just to keep going to a show that didn’t give them the return they needed – and were clearly getting elsewhere.
Other companies have downsized or simply taken a few years off from certain shows as they re-examined their purpose in being at a particular show. So yes, it does matter that you take a look at the big picture of why you’re going to show in general, and why you are exhibiting at a particular show.
In the process of determining your ‘big picture’ of the shows you attend, those you don’t and might want to consider and your whole reason for tradeshow marketing, here are a series of questions to help you examining it.
What shows do you exhibit at on a yearly basis?
What shows did you used to attend but haven’t for several years?
If you listed a show(s) here, how long has it been since you exhibited?
What shows are you considering exhibiting at but haven’t done so yet?
What is your potential audience at each show? What is your overall potential audience for the year?
How many leads do you bring home from the each show?
In your opinion, what are the most obvious things you’re doing right?
In your opinion, what are the most obvious things you’re doing wrong?
What’s the biggest goal you have for tradeshow marketing in the next 2-3 years?
How much money is budgeted for the year’s events?
How much money is actually spent on the year’s shows?
How much business can you directly attribute to the leads that were gathered from the shows?
What’s the ROI on the sales leads you gathered from the shows?
Can you identify other benefits of going to the shows that don’t directly impact your bottom line, such as branding, earned media mentions, new distributors, strengthened ties with current distributors and more?
By knowing the answers to all of these questions – and by sharing that knowledge with your team – you’ll be much better prepared to answer the question ‘are my tradeshow marketing dollars well-spent?’ As you’ve seen me mention many times, one of the best things you can do for your company is to continue to increase the knowledge base of your co-workers. By knowing the answers to all of these questions and more, that knowledge base increases. In the long-term, you’ll be better-equipped to make good choices on which shows to attend, what to focus on at the shows, and which shows you might decide are simply not worth it.
After perusing an array of statistics from CEIR, Exhibit Surveys and others, I thought it might be fun to grab a handful of them and stick them in a cool infographic. Here’s what I came up with:
We’d all love to get more people to like, approve, respond, comment or share our tweets, posts and articles. Here’s a simple way: add an image. In fact, you should make it a hard and fast rule to not post anything without some sort of image. No, seriously!
In preparation for a meeting with a potential client, I put together an infographic on the various steps of the 30×30 Bob’s Red Mill booth our company did in 2012-2013.
Tradeshow pre-show preparation and marketing involves more than just a short look at how to attract visitors to your booth, or determining what graphics you’ll need to update on your booth. While there are more areas in your pre-show preparation that you shake a stick at, for the purposes of this article let’s take a look at just the target market and the products you’re focusing on:
So who, or what, exactly is your target market? Are you trying to reach grocery store owners, food distributors, software engineers or end users of your product? Keep in mind that your target market can change from show to show, and it can also change from year to year as your company matures. For instance, one eco-friendly diaper company I’ve worked with for years has seen their target market shift along with their strategy for each show as their products are in more stores now than a half a decade ago. They don’t need the distribution that they once yearned for. Now it seems that they need to focus more on the relationships with the clients they do have by providing them with the best service and product updates as possible, and add new distribution channels only if appropriate.
Typically, pre-show preparation will often focus just on pre-show marketing, and there’s nothing really wrong with that. If you focus exclusively on that, you may forget a few other items such as staff training or critical booth upgrades. Still, how you address your pre-show marketing will be crucial to the outcome of your show.
With pre-show marketing, here are some questions to ask:
How will you reach them before the show?
Email
How far in advance of the show do you email your group?
How many times to you email them before the show?
What is your message?
Product
Service
Social media
What platforms do you promote your show appearance on?
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
YouTube
Pinterest
Other
Direct mail
Telephone
Other
What is your message to the market?
What are your top 1, 2 or 3 products/services you’re focusing on for the next show?
When do you typically roll out your pre-show marketing?
One week in advance of the show
One month in advance of the show
Two months in advance of the show
Three months of the show
Other
How often do you communicate with them prior to the show?
1-2 times
3-5 times
More than 6 times
By walking through this flowchart, you can identify areas that you’re strongest at, and determine what areas might need more attention. There’s no wrong answer when it comes to what pre-show marketing you should do or when you should do it, or even what you should focus on. But it is important that you create a plan, make sure that everyone involved in your tradeshow marketing efforts are aware of the plan and are able to do their part.
Just returned from Expo West in Anaheim where I had a number of tradeshow booth clients, including Bob’s Red Mill, gDiapers, Aisle7 and Hyland’s. One of my goals at this particular show was to do informal assessments of a couple of dozen booths, including booths that I picked at random, and those of companies that responded to my 2-minute video I posted about ten days before the show.
Since I have a handful of client booths at the show, I am disqualifying them from winning any awards (although I think they all were top-noth projects)!
Before getting to the awards, a few comments: first, these are for fun only. Nobody actually wins anything substantial except a mention in this blog. Second, while I spotted a number of booths that would qualify for awards such as ‘Most Cluttered,’ ‘Most Confusing’ and ‘Shouldn’t Even Be Here Because Mom Didn’t Approve it’ the point is not to speak ill of booths that should be improved. Hey, I can’t help everybody, right?
So, without furthre adieu, let’s begin:
Cleanest Look & Most Pristine Representation of a Brand: R .W. Garcia. Not a custom booth, but an aluminum frame-and-fabric construction, nonetheless this captured my attention with its attention to detail. The graphical heirarchy was clean: company name at the top with secondary bullet points describing the company’s products. The back wall graphic was dominated by images of chip bags, so there was no doubt about the company’s products.
Most Iconic Use of an Icon: Guayaki Brand Yerba Mate. Okay, I only caught one photo of this, but the use of a life-size cutout of the Pope drinking tea stopped me in my tracks and made me want to have Yerba Mate with His Holiness.
Best Story on a Booth: Amy’s Kitchen debuted their new booth in 2013, and this 30×30 island clearly captures the company’s natural image, including a back wall section with photos and captions detailing the company’s history.
Best Interactive Booth: While there were several booths that invited attendees to write notes on a board, YesTo asked people to write what they would say YES to.
Best Use of Shipping Crates: Several booths use shipping crates as part of their booth to save on time and shipping expense. Ridgecrest Herbals showed how its done with branded shipping crates that doubled as counters, benches and product display.
Best Dancing Mascot: SweetLeaf, with their Sweet Drops Sweetener doing his/her shaking to a live guitarist.
Best Use of an Olympic Stud: Drink Chia! How can you top an impromptu aisle race featuring Olympic athlete Justin Gatlin? (check out his race here)
Most Elaborate Use of Booth: Clif Bar. The 40×40 island that Clif Bar used to represent their brand included not one, but two enclosed client meeting rooms, two sample stations, messaging that showed their love of fun and helping Mother Earth and the creative use of repurposing old wood for something new. And more. Hanging plants in wooden boxes. Bicycle gears. Old window frames. The steep usage of the word ‘organic.’ With all of this disparate yet congruent elements, this booth came close to a Terry Gilliam dream (go ahead, look him up. I’ll wait.).
And finally, Best MashUp of a Beatles Album Cover: Love Birch. With their wacky replacement of John, Paul, George and Ringo’s heads with leaves, Love Birch took the iconic Abbey Road album cover and turned it on its head, and in the process stopped people in their tracks.
This is the 13th consecutive year that I’ve attended Expo West, and it still seems fresh and fun, bigger and bolder and more overwhelming every year.
A few final observations: while there was a lot of use of social media this year, it didn’t seem to be anything out of the norm for most companies. Several companies invited attendees to ‘like’ them on Facebook, or tweet out a photo for a prize, but not as many as you might think would.
I was also on the lookout for QR Codes, and was a bit surprised to find only one on display. I had tasked myself with testing each and every QR Code I ran across to see if it worked. This one didn’t. The invitation next to the code was to ‘like’ us on Facebook, yet when I scanned the code, I was taken to a home page of a website – not optimized for a smartphone – and there was no indication of how to get to Facebook from there.
With QR Codes seemingly fading from popularity at least at this year’s show, perhaps that’s a good thing since it seems that so many QR Codes fail at least one part of the test: tell people what they get when they scan, make sure its optimized for a smartphone, and then test it all to make sure it works.
Natural Products Expo West is the biggest natural products tradeshow in the US, with some 3,000 exhibitors and 60,000 attendees. Yes, it’s the big time.
2014 will be my 12th consecutive year at the show. Many of my tradeshow clients have been exhibiting there for year.
For example, come see Aisle7 in booth 1668, gDiapers in booth 3605, Hyland’s at 1804 and of course Bob’s Red Mill at booth 3546.
One thing I like to do at Expo West and other tradeshows is check out the booths. There are thousands of them and with that many to look over, frankly, it’s a bit overwhelming! This year, however, I’m going to try something new. I’m going to take a look at a few dozen booths with the specific intent of seeing how they do in the TradeshowGuy Booth Performance Test!
If you’d like to have me subject your booth to the performance test, just tweet me at @tradeshowguy and I’ll be glad to swing by and take a look!
Last week I flew into Houston to give a presentation for ISES Houston for their monthly meeting. This one focused on tradeshow marketing and was hosted by 2020 Exhibits. The presentation went over the various aspects of what it takes to compete on the tradeshow floor.
Definitely a fun time had by all: thanks to Vivian at Juz Do It Productions and Becky at 2020 Exhibits for making this all come together.
