After having done many trade shows and conferences across US, Europe, Asia and Africa, I can tell you one key lesson I've learned the hard way: trade shows can be the biggest waste of money. A lot of organizations spend $100,000 or more on a single trade show, with a general metrics to sell ten times that amount or more. But unfortunately in most cases they don’t even recover the initial investment. However, if done right, trade shows can also be a great way to not only hit your 10x metric, but also increase your brand awareness, build up your prospect database, announce major products and company strategy, and win the hearts and minds of the press and the analysts.
The secret to a successful trade show is based on planning, preparation, and execution at the event. Here are the top 7 mistakes made by marketers with trade show marketing that lead to little return on the investment.
1) Investing in the wrong trade show: Nothing worse than wasting money on the wrong trade show. Determine what sort of trade shows you want to attend, and focus on those only. They can be trade shows that target senior level people, like the Gartner Symposium, or trade shows that focus on the folks in the trenches and techies, like in the IT space it would be CiscoLive, VMworld, IBM Interconnect, and others. Whichever one you focus on, make sure that your message, and your strategy at the event is also geared towards that audience.
2) Not engaging with your audience before the event: The actual event is only half the battle. Determine your strategy and how you will engage with your audience before the event. As much effort it takes to run a trade show during the event, you should spend an equal amount of energy, or more, before you get there. Send out invites to your customers and prospects, and let them know you will be there. Offer them an enticing gift, reward or prize for coming by and seeing you at the event. And if you can afford it, it is a good investment to buy the list of attendees before the event and send out special invites. And during the event, you and your team should be setup with the the tools and ability to schedule follow up meetings on the spot!
3) Staffing the booth with the wrong people: At the event, make sure you pick the right type of people to man the booth, who are not shy to talk to people. I've made this mistake too many times allowing people who "want" vs who "should" be there. The people that are representing your organization at the booth can be a critical decision to which you must pay very close attention. Select people who are easy to talk to, not shy, and have good work ethics and energy. Make sure they stand in the walkway and pull people in. Most importantly, make sure they are energetic and fun to be around as the image of your company comes out through those people.
4) Not having a strategy on how to attract prospects at the event: At the event, you’ll want to pull some creative ideas together that attract people from around the show to come see you. Remember you're competing with possibly hundreds of other companies for their attention. My favorite tactics has been flashing shirt pins, with your logo or message on them that people would wear around the show floor in order to win prizes. We've done this a number of times, which has caused many other people to come by asking for the "prize patrol pins" while we have another person walking around the show floor handing out $5 gift cards, and other small items. At the end of the week, we had pretty much everyone wearing our pins, advertising our brand and name, and also pulling other people in to come speak with us. Creative and funny messaged T-shirts are usually a hit, as well as toys people like for their desk and their kids. I'll write another blog later focused on the topic of successful tactics to getting attention at trade shows. But overall, don’t expect that all attendees will come and see you. You’ll have to go after them at the event.
5) Not having sales conversations: When you are at a trade show, you are selling. Many companies at trade shows offer expensive and sometimes elaborate awards in the form of drawings like cars, motorcycles, Apple Watches, and so on, for the purpose of attracting prospects. But, they are useless if you simply collect the person's name and enter them into the drawing. The idea should be to use the giveaways to start conversations and to be selling, selling, selling. Always, make each person and fill out a form at a minimum about their (budget, authority, need, timeframe). This can be powerful conversation starters when sales people are following up with them. But more importantly have conversations about their needs and how you can help them. Should you have giveaways in the first place? Absolutely. They attract a lot of people you would never sell to, but it also attracts the buyers! So be prepared to treat every prospect like a future customer and ask the right questions from the start. And more importantly, take notes and capture their requirements and details to pass on to the sales people who would be doing the following up.
6) Not communicating to sales the value of each lead collected: Invest some time to rank or score the leads from the trade show, based on the conversations and feedback your staff has received. This is so important for follow up and for the sales people that will have to figure out which leads to follow up on first. Always take notes about the conversations you and your staff have. And you should make it mandatory for staff to collect notes. Make sure those notes and lead scores are associated with each lead and sent to the sales people for follow up. Do this daily after the show, before they forget.
7) Not following up in a timely fashion: Always follow up with every lead within 1-2 business days after the event, not a day sooner or later. Remember that your prospects who attend trade shows will speak with dozens of companies about hundreds of products, and it all becomes a blur after a few days. You want to send a custom email from each person that spoke to that prospect. For example, if John from your company spoke with Joe from ABC organization about their XYZ issues, makes sure that Joe gets a follow up from John regarding XYZ and establishes next steps. Don't wait days and weeks for this to happen. Not only will your prospects forget about you, there is also the risk of your competition getting to them before you.
I hope this is helpful. If you have any other best practices or ideas, feel free to share them here with others. Happy hunting!
The secret to a successful trade show is based on planning, preparation, and execution at the event. Here are the top 7 mistakes made by marketers with trade show marketing that lead to little return on the investment.
1) Investing in the wrong trade show: Nothing worse than wasting money on the wrong trade show. Determine what sort of trade shows you want to attend, and focus on those only. They can be trade shows that target senior level people, like the Gartner Symposium, or trade shows that focus on the folks in the trenches and techies, like in the IT space it would be CiscoLive, VMworld, IBM Interconnect, and others. Whichever one you focus on, make sure that your message, and your strategy at the event is also geared towards that audience.
2) Not engaging with your audience before the event: The actual event is only half the battle. Determine your strategy and how you will engage with your audience before the event. As much effort it takes to run a trade show during the event, you should spend an equal amount of energy, or more, before you get there. Send out invites to your customers and prospects, and let them know you will be there. Offer them an enticing gift, reward or prize for coming by and seeing you at the event. And if you can afford it, it is a good investment to buy the list of attendees before the event and send out special invites. And during the event, you and your team should be setup with the the tools and ability to schedule follow up meetings on the spot!
3) Staffing the booth with the wrong people: At the event, make sure you pick the right type of people to man the booth, who are not shy to talk to people. I've made this mistake too many times allowing people who "want" vs who "should" be there. The people that are representing your organization at the booth can be a critical decision to which you must pay very close attention. Select people who are easy to talk to, not shy, and have good work ethics and energy. Make sure they stand in the walkway and pull people in. Most importantly, make sure they are energetic and fun to be around as the image of your company comes out through those people.
4) Not having a strategy on how to attract prospects at the event: At the event, you’ll want to pull some creative ideas together that attract people from around the show to come see you. Remember you're competing with possibly hundreds of other companies for their attention. My favorite tactics has been flashing shirt pins, with your logo or message on them that people would wear around the show floor in order to win prizes. We've done this a number of times, which has caused many other people to come by asking for the "prize patrol pins" while we have another person walking around the show floor handing out $5 gift cards, and other small items. At the end of the week, we had pretty much everyone wearing our pins, advertising our brand and name, and also pulling other people in to come speak with us. Creative and funny messaged T-shirts are usually a hit, as well as toys people like for their desk and their kids. I'll write another blog later focused on the topic of successful tactics to getting attention at trade shows. But overall, don’t expect that all attendees will come and see you. You’ll have to go after them at the event.
5) Not having sales conversations: When you are at a trade show, you are selling. Many companies at trade shows offer expensive and sometimes elaborate awards in the form of drawings like cars, motorcycles, Apple Watches, and so on, for the purpose of attracting prospects. But, they are useless if you simply collect the person's name and enter them into the drawing. The idea should be to use the giveaways to start conversations and to be selling, selling, selling. Always, make each person and fill out a form at a minimum about their (budget, authority, need, timeframe). This can be powerful conversation starters when sales people are following up with them. But more importantly have conversations about their needs and how you can help them. Should you have giveaways in the first place? Absolutely. They attract a lot of people you would never sell to, but it also attracts the buyers! So be prepared to treat every prospect like a future customer and ask the right questions from the start. And more importantly, take notes and capture their requirements and details to pass on to the sales people who would be doing the following up.
6) Not communicating to sales the value of each lead collected: Invest some time to rank or score the leads from the trade show, based on the conversations and feedback your staff has received. This is so important for follow up and for the sales people that will have to figure out which leads to follow up on first. Always take notes about the conversations you and your staff have. And you should make it mandatory for staff to collect notes. Make sure those notes and lead scores are associated with each lead and sent to the sales people for follow up. Do this daily after the show, before they forget.
7) Not following up in a timely fashion: Always follow up with every lead within 1-2 business days after the event, not a day sooner or later. Remember that your prospects who attend trade shows will speak with dozens of companies about hundreds of products, and it all becomes a blur after a few days. You want to send a custom email from each person that spoke to that prospect. For example, if John from your company spoke with Joe from ABC organization about their XYZ issues, makes sure that Joe gets a follow up from John regarding XYZ and establishes next steps. Don't wait days and weeks for this to happen. Not only will your prospects forget about you, there is also the risk of your competition getting to them before you.
I hope this is helpful. If you have any other best practices or ideas, feel free to share them here with others. Happy hunting!
No comments:
Post a Comment