Promotional Marketing - Effective Promotion Vs a Cheap Giveaway

The notion that simply giving stuff away at a trade show is effective promotional marketing may be one of the biggest myths ... one of the biggest bottles of snake oil ever sold to business owners and marketers. In order to craft a more effective trade show program you must first divest yourself from "giveaway" thinking. To that end, it's vital that you understand the difference between a giveaway and a promotion.

A giveaway is a one-way street. You basically spend your money to fill up people's junk drawers. A business gives away some cheap "doodad" thinking it will create goodwill and effectively promote their business, mindless of the fact that the item is irrelevant to their business or the wants, needs or desires of the person to whom the item is given. The recipient takes the item home and:

1) puts it in a drawer,
2) gives it to the kids,
3) throws it away,
4) uses the item but never does business with your company,
5) is so beholden to you that they fall all over themselves to do business with you and they go out of their way to tell everyone they know about your existence.

With a giveaway you cannot measure your return on investment. You gain practically nothing meaningful, certainly nothing you can actively follow up on. And as far as building business? Few will say, "Wow! They gave me a cheap piece of junk with their name on it! I've really got to do business with them." Seriously. #5 rarely happens as a result of handing out inexpensive "giveaways" at trade shows. Full article.

Exhibitions make strong contribution to Sustainable Development

Faced with global warming and diminishing resources the exhibition industry is conscious that it must strive to improve its impact on the environment both locally and globally.

As a result, exhibition venues and exhibition managers around the world are taking steps to reduce waste, convert to sources of renewable energy, recycle frequently used materials and ensure that they contribute to the development of staff and the local community. More.

Do You Have Problems with Time Zones?

This coming weekend, it is time for most of us to move our clocks back an hour. (Spring forward, Fall back). But some places, like Arizona, don't change times. And the Southern Hemisphere is just going into Daylight Savings Time.

Time and Date.com is a great site to check time zones.

They also provide useful information on international dialing codes, date calculators, and calendars. This is a go-to site for anything time related.

Competitive Intelligence Smarts

When you exhibit at trade shows you want to know how to stand out from your competition and secondly there is no better place to collect competitive intelligence than at a trade show! In this lesson we will focus on both of these areas. Good news is, you won’t have learn secret codes or other tools of the spy trade.Why Track Competitors? Besides needing to differentiate yourself at the shows you exhibit at, tracking competitors is an important analysis tool to help define what your competitors are up to and "where they are headed". This information helps steer many aspects of your business:

• Trade show exhibiting
• Advertising
• Management planning
• Marketing
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Restructuring
• Pricing
• R&D (research and development)

Types of Competitors

When you are defining who your competitors are, you shouldn't just look at the companies offering similar products to what you offer. There are 3 types of competitors to look for; direct competitors, indirect competitors and future competitors. Direct competitors are the most obvious; these are businesses offering the same type of product/service as your business does. Indirect competitors are businesses that offer an alternative solution to your key prospect's problem, sometimes it's a little harder to think about what alternative solutions may be, but here's an example that may help you understand this better. For example airlines are not just competing with other airlines, they compete with chartered flights, high speed trains, bus services and arguably even video conferencing. Future competitors are businesses that are expected to start "invading your market space" sometime down the road.

Finding Your Competitors

To know who and what to research, you need to determine who your top competitors are in those 3 categories. There quite a few places to help with your search for competitors. Below is a list of a few examples to help you get started with your search. Full Article.

The Power of Buzz

How did a new email service gain over 12 million subscribers in 18 months? How did the very low budget movie like “The Blair Witch Project” become such an incredibly successful phenomenon in a sea of big budget films? The answer lies in the power of “buzz.”

Buzz, or word-of-mouth marketing, influences more people to buy, or not to buy products and services, than most other forms of marketing.

Why is it so powerful? Basically, we have a need to share information as a means of communication and also as a way of understanding the world around us. Often, we base many of our purchasing decisions on information gleaned from friends and well-respected associates. We tend to listen to them more readily than most mass-media messages, because we view their opinion as credible and reliable.

So how do you create “buzz” in a business environment where it currently does not exist? We offer some guidelines to assist you in developing the “buzz” factor. Full Article.

Getting Media to Your Tradeshow Booth

Trade shows are great opportunities to meet with the many professionals writing about your industry. Meeting with a reporter face-to-face can solidify a relationship beyond what email could ever do. Here are some tips to working with press at tradeshows:

Get the Show Media List: The first step to getting a reporter to visit your booth is to set up an appointment with the reporter. But first you need to know who is going to attend. Contact the show's press contact and request a media attendee list. It is usually free to show participants.

Make an Appointment: Media reporter’s schedules can fill up fast at trade shows, so once you have that list, go ahead and ask them for a meeting - try to do this at least 3 months ahead of the show. Give them a reason to stop by your booth (show them a new product you're launching, meet with your CEO, etc.) and be as accommodating as possible to their schedule. You may need to be persistent if you want the meeting - don't give up after one email. Email and call again as the show nears.

Do Your Homework. If you do set up a booth visit with a reporter, make sure you do your homework and prepare for the meeting as if you're about to do a formal interview. Have your press kit on hand and only say what you're okay seeing in print. In a relaxed environment we often say things we shouldn't - so be buttoned-up if you're not ready to release info to the press. (Side note: Some times reporters don't want to lug around press kits and product samples - so offer to mail the items to the reporter's office - brownie points for you!). Go to Full Article.

5 Hottest Marketing Trends

Does your tweeting leave them chirping? Are you aware that awareness marketing is huge? Are you getting all the green you can from eco-friendly promotions? Find out how to add value to your client's campaigns by taking advantage of these hot trends.

Tweet this: A recent survey of distributors and suppliers on asicentral.com shows that 91% of them use Twitter. Only 20% of them did one year ago. The poll also shows that 86% use Facebook (34% a year ago); and 84% use LinkedIn (45% a year ago). This dramatic increase of usage in the ad specialty industry alone illustrates the marketing power of social media sites.

It’s no surprise. Such media promote community and connectedness. Those qualities – along with a sense of social responsibility and a touch of goofiness and humor for fun – are some of the characteristics of promotions that are building big brand buzz right now. Here we take a look at five top strategies you can use today. Read more.

Increasing Trade Show ROI

In today’s economic climate, increasing trade show ROI is as important as ever. While we can get very in depth on how to do this, I’d like to throw out a few quick trade show strategies that can help your company close more deals from your trade show leads.

Trade Show Lead Qualification – Being face to face with prospects is the main benefit of exhibiting at a trade show. The conversations that take place on the show floor determine which leads are good opportunities. The challenge is recording that conversation. Just scanning their badge with an exhibitor lead retrieval system doesn’t cut it. You need to either have to use a trade show scanner with custom qualifiers or use lead retrieval software with custom surveying capabilities.

Lead Rating – Once you have the trade show leads qualified you can use a lead scoring system to rate the leads (hot, warm, or cold – A, B, or C, etc.). There is no need to waste the sales reps’ time with the cold leads, so only send out the good leads. This will keep the reps engaged in your program, save them time, allow them to put more energy into the quality leads and, as a result, increase trade show ROI. Full Article from Tradeshow Guy Blog

Successful Exhibit Marketing

by Margit Weisgal, CMA
President/CEO, TSEA

"An exhibition is the ONLY marketing vehicle that delivers a pre-qualified BUYER to you."

Read full article here.

Avoid the Tradeshow Sinkhole

Rule 1: Know Why Are We Here

Decide why you are going to spend money participating in the show. Set up very specific goals and understand what information you are going to gather. Make sure you can measure these goals. Goals need to be specific like “gather 300 names and addresses of qualified persons who we can call sometime after the show to demonstrate our product”.

Rule 2: Know Who You Are Talking To

Everything you do at a tradeshow requires a deep understanding of who is attending, what their needs are and what “jargon” they are speaking. Figure this out and shape your message (your handouts, your demonstrations and your booth signs) so that you are speaking directly to the people who are at the show.

Rule 3: You Have Two Seconds to Tell People What You Do

It goes like this… People who are walking down the aisle will spend about two seconds trying to figure out what you do and if it has any benefit for them. If they can’t figure this out in two seconds, they will turn and walk away. Next time you are at a show, walk around the floor and give the “two second test” to a couple of other participants. To be able to communicate what you do and it’s benefits requires your signs and every part of your display to be clear, concise and short. Full Article.

5 Common Mistakes By Virtual Tradeshow Exhibitors (and How to Fix Them)

1. Assume that visitors will naturally engage (proactively) with your booth staffers – first, understand that the dynamics of a virtual trade show are different than a physical trade show. In a physical event, you can (at minimum) make eye contact with a visitor to your booth. From here, you can gauge the visitor’s interest in speaking further and determine whether you want to strike up a conversation. You don’t get the same sort of signal in a virtual event. However, leaving your booth is but a single mouse click away – so if you do nothing, there’s a chance that your visitor will depart and never return. What I like to do is welcome visitors by way of your booth’s Group Chat – letting them know that you’re there to answer any questions they may have. Alternatively, send them a vCard (virtual business card) with your contact info – inviting them to contact you at any time (within the event or via email/phone). Don’t assume that visitors will engage with you – instead, utilize proactive means for reaching out to them

Fail to have product experts staff your booth – in a b-to-b event, your booth may receive visits from qualified buyers – folks with purchasing authority and budget who are finalizing their short list of solutions vendors. They’re likely to have some detailed product questions to help them narrow their list. If your booth is staffed with sales and marketing staff who are unable to answer product-level questions, then you’re missing out on a great opportunity. If instead, you had product experts staffing your booth (e.g. product manager, sales engineer, technical engineering manager, etc.) – they can engage with these prospects and provide them with all the information they need. Leverage your product experts, as they’ll move prospects down the sales funnel along the way to a purchasing decision. Continue.

Social Media Tip Sheet

From Association Meetings:

Listen, listen, listen. “You need to know what’s being said about you everywhere on the Internet, and what’s being said about you on Twitter,” says KiKi L’Italien, membership and education services manager, Optical Society of America, Washington, D.C. Set up Google alerts for your organization’s name, your annual meeting’s name, any secondary meetings you have, your primary competitors, and keywords for your industry, to pick up news articles, blog posts, photos, and anything else related to your alert topics. Because Twitter isn’t tracked on Google, you also need to set up a separate-but-similar keyword search on Twitter. Continue.

Using Social Media at Tradeshows

Video presentation by Tim Patterson from YouTube. 2:17 minutes.

7 Ways Your Tradeshow Staff Can Sabotage a Deal

Tradeshow consultants and trainers sound like a broken record when they harp on how important it is for your front line people – the tradeshow staff – to be “on” all the time. To put their best face and effort forward. To respond with a smile. Etcetera.

In spite of how fast information spreads (like wildfire!), some tradeshow managers just don’t get it! So here’s a quick list of ways your staff can blow the next deal that may be walking into your booth. Pay close attention now and see if they’re making any of these mistakes: Continue

Shipping Help

Have you discovered Shipgooder ? The site compares costs for shipping rates for local, regional and national couriers -including UPS, FedEx, DHL and USPS.

You can check zip code to zip code - and by weight. Even for international destinations.

The site is free and does not require your personal information.

What is in a Brand?

According to the American Marketing Association, a brand is a:

‘name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition’.

The word brand is derived from the old Norse word ‘brandr’, which mean ‘to burn’ as brands were originally and still are used as a method that owners could mark their animals in order to identify ownership (Keller, 2003). Similarly today, companies add their brand is order to identify ownership and differentiate from competitors. Full Article.

Enhancing Tradeshows with Online Tools

It is human nature to be comfortable with the familiar. We trust what we know and find comfort in the words "Tried and True". When faced with new methods we tend to react with apprehension, resignation, or panic. Tradeshows have been around since the dawning of commerce when merchants and buyers began congregating at central markets. Tradeshows are familiar. They represent the "Tried and True".

The internet brings efficient communication, networking, and a new method of commerce. While buying and selling online is now common place, it is human nature to suspect that this new medium of online buying, selling, and communicating threatens the traditional face to face marketplace of the tradeshow. In reality the connectivity of online communication is a wonderful opportunity for the savvy tradeshow organizer to augment the face to face medium of tradeshows and conferences.

Here are 3 tools for tradeshow and conference organizers to enhance their shows. Continue.

The Top 10 Mistakes Convention Managers Make in Europe and How to Avoid Them

Inflation, soaring energy prices, a weak dollar and the stress of exhibiting across the pond may leave some convention managers feeling anxious, but with a little ingenuity and some advanced planning your convention experience in Europe will go smoothly. Norbert Hultenschmidt, European Manager for Nth Degree, a company that offers event management and marketing services, has zeroed in on the top 10 mistakes that convention managers often make in Europe and, more importantly, how to avoid them during your next event.

Here are the common mistakes...