TradeShow Driver - Trade Show Marketing News and Tips

Here in our weblog we'll share experiences of good (and scary) trade show programs, exhibits, lead generation devices, clever booth giveaways and sweepstakes, and analytic tricks and techniques of note and invite your thoughts and comments.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Promoting your tradeshow

Most companies spend 90% of their tradeshow energy and budget on their tradeshow booth and what goes into it, and of course that’s fair. But just as important as what’s in your booth and on display is who comes to see it. And what you do about the people who do come.

Yet often the tradeshow promotion is an afterthought. When I was on the agency side I can’t count the number of times I got a call from the show coordinator two weeks before their show that went something like this:

"Hi, Bob, Uh, I have kind of a rush project for you—can you help me out here?"

"Sure, how can I help?”

"Well, first, we need to get the booth number into our show ad—by the way, do we have anything we can repurpose to run in the show issue? There’s not enough time to do a new ad anyway."

So we work out the logistics of “repurposing” a corporate ad to go in the show issue—more often than not it’s totally irrelevant to the thrust of the show. A tradeshow is transactional—people come for a specific reason and they want to know what you have to support that reason. A corporate ad just doesn’t cut it in that environment.

Now my tradeshow client gets into the real reason she called. “Uh, Bob, the thing is we need to invite people to the booth. Is it too late for a mailer?”

Now I have to ask the tough questions. Can we use the show attendee’s list? Is there an email list as well as a snail-mail list? Do they have a giveaway in the booth? Do they have a postal permit? Are there any special show events their company is sponsoring? Have their salespeople notified prospects in the area that they will be at the show? Do they want the mailer personalized by sales person? If asked three months before the show, these questions are a piece of cake. If asked two weeks before the show, they’re daunting. The point is, the show promotion is often an afterthought. And it shouldn’t be.

Tradeshow Driver serves many purposes, but its main reason for being is so clients can make the tradeshow promotion easy—and automatic. We ask the “tough” questions early enough to take the difficulty right out of them. The show giveaway is part of our package, and we agree early what it will be. We secure the list early enough to permit our clients to mail bulk rather than first class. If the show list isn’t complete we have time to rent a prospect list and to version the promotion accordingly.

We use the format we have proven to work best—a format, by the way, that’s inexpensive to produce and easy for the prospect to retain in his/her show folder as a reminder to stop by the booth. The copy is straightforward and transactional, and the design is clean and clear. If there is a show event it is highlighted and the details are immediately obvious to the prospect. We have the time to find (or shoot) a photo of any show speakers. And each mailer and email has its unique personal url (PURL) that allows us to capture unique information about each prospect well in advance of the show. We have time to segment the audience using the statistics that are important to each show’s success. To profile the prospects along the buying continuum so each saleperson knows which approach to use in the followup.

By beginning the tradeshow promotion three months prior to the show, Tradeshow Driver has been able to double the traditional attendance. That’s right, we said double. That’s why we include not one but two pre-show promotions—one by mail and one by email. Both capture vital prospecting information that allows a salesperson to evaluate the prospect’s worth. That’s when we offer to use our telemarketing team to invite the prospect to a specific meeting at the booth or during the show.

None of this is rocket science, but for many companies it is difficult to pull off smoothly, without disrupting other show activities. Unless you call in Tradeshow Driver and leave the tradeshow driving…to us.

Next blog…Closing the loop—what to do after the show is over.

Bob Green is the Creative Director of Tradeshow Driver and writes about many subjects from wine and food to tradeshow marketing and lots in between. Please respond to this blog and Bob will keep the dialog going.

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Friday, October 24, 2008

Promoting your tradeshow

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