There are many reasons to exhibit at trade shows (here are 22), and many reasons not to.  While there are some valid reasons not to exhibit at shows, you may mistakenly be relying on reasons to avoid shows that don’t hold water.  Here are 8:

1.  Everyone already knows who we are.

It may seem that way sometimes, that you’re so well known you don’t need to build awareness anymore.  But that high awareness level has to be invested in to be maintained – there are always new people just moving or hired into your market that have never heard of you before.  However, if you truly are universally known, then leverage that high awareness level and shift your exhibiting goals to generating leads and holding face-to-face meetings with clients.  Those are even better reasons to exhibit!

2.  Our clients love us.

Guess what – clients who love you will tell you that, but clients who don’t will tell someone else.  Maybe even your competitors who are at the show.  When your clients have problems with you, you can head off problems by meeting them face-to-face at your industry trade show and asking them, “How are we doing?  What can we do to improve?”  If you listen, and then act on what they tell you, then they really will love you.  And what better opportunity to cross-sell and upsell clients who do love you then at that rare time you can meet them face to face – at a trade show!

3.  We already have enough customers.

For the few that can honestly claim to have enough customers already, you have my admiration.  Just remember that nothing lasts forever.  There will always be turnover at your clients or among your salesforce, turning your loyal customer into a contested account.  Add to that the never-ending efforts by your competitors to dislodge you from your customers, and you have even more reason to keep seeking new clients.

4.  We know where the industry is going.

With the more competitive global economy, the speed of new product innovation has increased over that last two decades.  There is no better place to feel the seismic shifts in your industry than at a trade show – and especially in your own booth, where a parade of attendees asks you how you compare to the latest developments they are seeing down the aisles.  Keep your finger on the pulse by putting your feet inside your trade show booth.

5.  Our competitors can’t compare to us.

If your competitors can’t compare to you, then you should be at the show letting prospects know that.  Make your case with a trade show exhibit that clearly reveals your competitive advantages.   If you really are the best, but you are not there, remember that shopping attendees will compare the remaining vendors they do can see on the show floor.

6.  No one is shopping for our products right now.

There have been some drastic downturns in selected industries over the last few years.  But while that has reduced their flow of buyers, it hasn’t stopped the remaining buyers from attending – and shopping — at trade shows.  There are always buyers – so if you are the one who exhibits, you’ll be the one they meet when they go to the show.  Plus, when the industry rebounds, you’ll already be there, ready to welcome them – and their checkbook – into your trade show displays.

7.  We don’t have any new products.

When product life cycles were longer, companies timed their new product launches for their major industry trade shows.  Now, with shorter product life cycles and the rapid availability of product info via the internet, marketers don’t want to wait to launch their new products.  However, exhibitors still get tremendous value at trade shows from lead generation, increasing brand awareness, and building relationships.  And for most exhibitors, their year or two old products will likely be brand-spanking new to the vast majority of attendees they see in their booth.

8. We get enough leads already.

This is similar to #1, that everyone already knows who you are.  If you are getting enough leads already, you can shift your goals at the shows to go farther than just taking leads.  Take advantage of how the show acts as a central meeting place for your market.  So instead of flying all over the country or the world, you can set up meetings with clients, key prospects, and industry partners you want to build stronger alliances with.  You save time by meeting all these valuable people in one place.

If any of these 8 reasons have kept you from exhibiting at trade shows, perhaps now’s the time to reconsider.  Dust off that old exhibit, or perhaps even get a new trade show display, and get back into the show.

Still on the fence?  There are many more important reasons to exhibit at trade shows revealed in the 24-page white paper, The Value of Trade Shows.  Click here to request your free copy.

A newly published white paper by Marketech reveals what 3,341 trade show attendees, in interviews held at 30 events, said caused them to visit trade show exhibits.   Skyline has sponsored this new research report and made it available free to exhibitors, who can get a copy by requesting it here.

The Value Of People, Product, and Promotions in Attracting Visitors To Trade Show Booths

Attendees gave their primary reasons for visiting trade show displays, and when the answers are grouped, you can see that people, product, and promotions are key in getting attendees into your exhibit:

Source: Marketech, Inc.

Product:  The number one reason given to enter a trade show booth was to obtain product information (32%).  Add product demo (11%) and you get to 43% of booth visitors interested in product.  So being ready to help attendees to learn about your products is paramount.

Promotion:  There are several reasons for visiting a booth that can be grouped under promotion:  Giveaway (17%), in booth activity (11%), refreshments / hospitality (8%), ad / promotion (5%), and invitation (1%).  Those add up to 42% of respondents.   So consider this – does your promotion budget equal 42% of your trade show budget?  Probably less – so promotions are worth the investment.

People:  Attendees said they visited booths because of the greeter (13%), product demo (that a person usually does!) (11%), and to see a rep (10%), which adds up to 34% of interested attendees.  Thus, the people that you choose to staff your booth truly matter.

Other findings from the study.

• Sponsorships and ads do increase brand awareness among trade show attendees, but do little to increase booth visitation.  If the goal is to get leads, then sponsorship appears to be the wrong promotional tool.
• Pre-show promotions are key in getting attendees to the booth, as only 20% said they visited because of “happenstance.”
• Giveaways and greeters are effective investments for driving booth traffic.

Trade show booths are the intersection of people, product and promotion, and all are essential in attracting attendees.

The Incredible Value Of A Proactive Booth Staffer

When asked who started the interaction between them and the booth staffer, attendees said that 89% of the engagements were started by the rep.  So without booth staffers that engage visitors, exhibitors will get far, far poorer results.

To Influence Attendees To Buy, Help Them Learn

Marketech believes this is the key takeaway from this research report:  There was a strong correlation between learning from an exhibitor and being more inclined to buy from them.  For example, when an attendee learns something new, they were 27% more inclined to buy from the exhibitor, but if they did not learn something new, they were only 6% more inclined to buy from the exhibitor.  An attendee who learns from you is more likely to become your client.

But it has to be relevant learning, cautions Marketech:  “Identifying the visitor’s agenda and speaking to it must be one of the most important elements in preparing a staff to work an event.  Otherwise, the exhibit staff is merely delivering an information dump that does not achieve either party’s objectives and is a waste of time.”

Other “Best Practices” Recommendations For Exhibitors:

• Create a reason for attendees to put you on their “must see” trade show list
• Ask your sales reps to invite their customers and prospects
• Be sure to train your staff to best engage with attendees
• Create a learning environment in your exhibit to drive purchasing behavior, and be creative in transforming known information into something new
• Teach technicians to mention your brand name while they do demonstrations to increase memorability with attendees
• Pay attention to non-customers and influencers, too, because they can spread the word to buyers, too
• Increase memorability with hands-on demos

The size of this study – based on over 3,000 interviews – gives you an unprecedented body of experience to help you enhance your trade show program.  There’s great advice here, especially about drawing in attendees with product info, promotions, and the right people, and about creating a true learning environment to make attendees more likely to buy from you.

Boost your trade show results with insights from this new white paper, What Attendees Tell Us About Best Practices, based on over 3,000 interviews with trade show attendees.  Click here to get your free copy now.

How important is it to measure and communicate the results of your trade show program?  Here’s how essential measurement is to your success:

• “If it can’t be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.”  - Robert Heinlein
• “What gets measured gets done, what gets measured and fed back gets done well, what gets rewarded gets repeated.”  - John E. Jones
• “In God we trust, all others bring data.”  - W. Edwards Deming

So yes, measurment is imporant.  That is why Skyline is honored to offer you an updated tool to help you measure your trade show program.

The 3rd version of the “Measurement Made Easy” Trade Show and Event Calculator CD program now gives you a place to record and calculate 20 different trade show metrics.  There are 5 measurements for before the show, to help you prepare, and 15 measurements for after the show, to help you measure how you did.

But like a bike with 20 gears, you may not need to use all of them.  So for this 3^rd edition, we highlighted the 7 metrics we feel are the most important:

Before The Show

1. Pre-Show Promotion

In today’s competitive trade show arena, you need to invest in promotions to get more attendees to cross from the aisle into your trade show booths.  This calculator helps you calculate your cost per contact from pre-show promotion, so you can see how much extra value promotions bring your program.

2. Attendance

Surprise: Your best shows may not be the biggest shows, but the shows that have the most people that fit your target market.  This calculator helps you delve deeper into each show’s audience to discover the shows that are the best value for you.

3. Estimated Budget

With this calculator you can quickly estimate for a show how much you might spend on key areas such as booth space, trade show displays, travel, show services, and more.  The estimates are based on industry average budget expenditures.

After The Show

4. Budget Versus Actual

So, how close to your estimated budget did you actually spend?  This calculator lets you compare what your actual costs to what your original estimates – and see where you had the biggest percent differences.

5. Cost Per Contact

This simple calculation lets you calculate how much each individual contact cost you after your entire show budget is added up.  Then you have a cost that you can compare against other ways to get face-to-face contacts.

6. Cost Per Lead

One of the most popular metrics, this calculator not only helps you calculate cost per lead, which is your total trade show exhibit program investment divided by your number of leads, but also track (and define) leads by quality, such as “A” leads, “B” leads, and “C” leads.

7.  Potential Return On Investment

While ROI is the ultimate measurement for most companies, it can take many months, if not years to close B2B leads with their longer selling cycle.  This gets you a viable number quicker, by considering lead counts, percent of sales-likely leads, average sales dollars, and exhibiting investment to get to a potential ROI.

There are also 13 more metrics you can measure, calculate, record, and report with this updated Measurement Made Easy CD.  And as with previous versions, the program allows you to record your show data, then print reports for management.

We are grateful for Marketech for creating this program and allowing us to share it with you.

Measure and justify your trade show program with the newly updated Measurement Made Easy CD.  Click here to ask for your free copy of this program.

Want to be a smarter exhibitor?  Not just above-average, slightly ahead of the pack, but a full-blown trade show marketing genius?  Then follow these 6 (not so easy, but worthwhile) steps:

• Be Genuine
• Be Experimental
• Be A Nerd
• Go International
• Be Useful
• Drive Sales

Be Genuine

Trade shows offer a huge opportunity to gain exposure for your company’s brand image.  So make your trade show exhibit true to the heart of your brand.  Trade shows let you go beyond just your brand colors and taglines.  You can create an entire experience that helps your visitors connect to what makes your company genuinely different — and better — than your competitors.  Get prospects involved and engaged with activities that embody the best of your brand.  And set the stage for a deeper personal relationship between your company and your clients and prospects.

Be Experimental

Don’t get stuck doing the same-old, same-old, just because you’ve always done it that way.  Great marketers are always testing new waters — without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  Experiment with new booth staffers, new training methods, new exhibit layouts, new promotional ideas, new booth sizes, new shows, and more.  Ask your peers what they’ve done to boost results, adapt their ideas for your situation, test, measure, and retain the best winning ideas.  Just be sure to set expectations with your bosses that you are not expecting to succeed on 100% of your tests, but need to keep experimenting or you risk being left behind.

Be A Nerd

I’m not asking you to start wearing pocket protectors or to fix your glasses with tape.  To be a trade show genius requires using more tools than paper and pencil.  It means going to school on new technology that is revolutionizing trade shows.  So go beyond knowing what Twitter is, to actually pre-scheduling a pre-show promotion campaign of tweets via a free account on www.hootsuite.com.  Learn how to take the Excel file loaded on the USB drive you get when you return the show’s rental lead retrieval machine, and import it into your company’s marketing database for quicker lead fulfillment.  Get the best content on your website adapted into an iPad app that lets your booth staffers better interact with attendees anywhere in your trade show displays.  Go ahead and get techy; it’s never been cooler.

Go International

There are 7 convention centers outside the U.S. that are larger than McCormick place, the biggest the U.S. has to offer.  What’s more, a new facility being built in Shanghai, China will be twice the size of the next largest existing show hall.  Moreover, 75% of the world’s economy lies outside our shores.  So pack your bags and go!  Just do your homework on the differences in exhibiting overseas, such as how attendees interact (more about relationship building), promotions (privacy laws make it harder to reach attendees directly pre-show), costs (show space may cost less, but travel and hotel costs cost more), and more.  We have done a lot of the homework for you – just click to request your international exhibiting white paper.

Be Useful

Increase your social intelligence by making yourself more useful to all the stakeholders of your trade show program.  Help your sales manager drive more sales from your trade show leads by finding out what questions booth staffers should ask to qualify attendees in your trade show booths.  Then your sales manager will be more willing to let you handpick your favorite booth staffers.  Provide answers quickly to your exhibit house account executive (such as approval on graphics files) and you’ll build up a reserve of goodwill you can call upon for help in an emergency.  And most of all ask your top management what are their main goals for exhibiting at trade shows – then measure and report how your program achieved those goals.

Drive Sales

Perhaps the smartest thing you can do for your trade show career is be known as a rainmaker that positively moves the dial generating revenue.  You drive sales by going to the shows where your buyers walk the aisles, pulling them into your trade show exhibits with enticing promotions, engaging staffers, and attention-getting exhibits, then giving the best leads to your sales force, and finally proving those leads generated sales through measurement.   Prove that you can profitably generate sales with your trade show program and you’ll soon be known as an exhibiting Einstein.

Stretch your exhibiting brainpower by pursuing some or all of these 6 ideas.  You’ll be seen as the genius within your company that knows how to get the most out of trade shows.

Find more smart ways to boost your trade show results in The Value of Trade Shows, a 24-page white paper that reveals why exhibitors and attendees value shows, and how exhibitors can get more out of them.  Click here to request your free copy. 

When Skyline recently exhibited at EXHIBITOR2012, we gave mini-seminars in our trade show booth to attendees at the show.  By far the most popular topic was “12 Tips About Social Media for Trade Shows.”

The idea was to communicate in just 10 minutes, 12 actionable tactics exhibitors could use on the most popular social media networks to get more people into their trade show displays.  Not a lot of strategy; just quick, usable ideas.

I covered just the most popular networks:  Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and blogs.  Here we go:

Twitter:

1. Tweet Reasons To Visit Your Booth:  A lot of markers are reluctant to use Twitter because they simply don’t know what messages to send.  But with nearly 500 million accounts and about 9% of the U.S. population on Twitter every day, it’s worth using!  So here’s a great start: Tweet reasons to visit your booth that you are already sharing via email, direct mail, ads, and the phone.  Tell attendees all the great things you will be offering in your booth, such as show specials, giveaways, contests, new products, special offers, and the like.  Those are messages attendees will want to hear, and will get them interested in visiting you in your booth.  You can send a few messages a week for the month or two leading up to the show.
2. Pre-Schedule Tweets:  Now that you’ve got a lot to say, you don’t want to be tied to your desk or have to remember to go back to Twitter once a day or two to send out those messages.  Fortunately, you don’t have to remember.  There are free, web-based programs such as Hootsuite.com or Tweetdeck.com that allow you to to pre-schedule your tweets, even down to the five minutes you want.  For our Exhibitor 2012 event, we pre-scheduled 46 tweets starting almost 2 months before the show.  Just remember to adjust for the time difference between your location (where you set up the account) and the local time at the show.
3. Learn the Hashtag (#) for Your Shows:  One of the reasons people are reluctant to use Twitter is that Twitter has its own seemingly secret code.  One of the most important codes is the hashtag.  That’s when a person on Twitter includes a pound sign or hash symbol “#” directly in front of a word.  That turns that word into a hyperlink that lets a viewer click and see all the recent messages with that same hashtag.  So by including the hashtag of the event you are exhibiting at (for us it was #exhibitor2012) you are more likely to be seen by potential attendees.  Find the hashtag by going to your shows’ website, or by asking them directly.

Facebook:

4. Not Just Personal, Also for Business:  For many people, Facebook is their personal place for social media.  They want to use it to keep in touch with high school and college friends, not to interact with businesses.  However, Facebook is now so big that businesses – even B2B businesses — can no longer resist using it.  Facebook has 800 million users, which would make it the 3^rd largest country by population.  Facebook daily traffic and activity today is equivalent to all the volume of the entire internet in 2004.  So businesses are setting up pages for their businesses.  For example, General Electric has nearly a quarter of a million friends for their Facebook page!  You don’t have to promote your company from your personal account.  Just set up a business page and start engaging with your clients on a more personal level – no writing like a press release!
5. Post Photos and Videos from Your Trade Shows:  And what can you post on your business Facebook page?  As a trade show exhibitor, you can post photos and videos from your booth.  Show what new things you introduced.  Share with your company’s friends who couldn’t go to the show the action they missed out on.  It’s really easy to do with a smart phone!  Just test it out before the show – take a picture of your company’s building to try it out.  Even better: give your attendees a reason to have their picture taken in your booth, with a fun banner stand backdrop or a celebrity, and make it easy for them to share that picture on their own Facebook account.
6. Announce News from the Show for Friends that Couldn’t Come:  Did you announce a new strategic alliance with a partner?  Introduce a new product?  Whatever news you shared at the show in your booth, you can also post to your friends on Facebook.

YouTube

7. Include Company & Show Name In Video Title:  Guess what – YouTube is actually the second-most popular search engine in the world!  And people don’t just search on Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga, they also search on just about anything, including the name of the show they will exhibit at.  So include in video title the show name, plus your company name – and maybe even your booth number.
8. Great for Pre-Show and Post-Show Promotions:  YouTube is a great place to get your story across with all the power of video and without the cost of running an ad on a network.  For pre-show promotions, load up the video with all the great reasons to visit your trade show booth (see point #1 about Twitter).  You can also record and produce a video showing all the action you had in your booth – new products, demonstrations, happy client interviews – and post that to YouTube soon after the show.  Then email links to people, or embed the video on your website or blog, or get found by searchers by including the show name and great keywords in the video title.
9. YouTube Videos Not as Formal:  In days gone by, almost all corporate videos required a high-end production crew and a very button-down presentation format.  Now, because of the changing expectations of social media, it’s much more about a human connection than a big production.  So you don’t need to break the bank to make a video, and you don’t need everyone wearing suits, either.  Just relax and speak from the heart on why attendees will benefit by visiting your booth.

Blogs

10. Blog About Your Exhibiting – Find Out Who or Start One:  If you think you are not interacting with social media, you may be surprised to find out that you have been without knowing it – via blogs.  About half the websites on the Internet are created with blogging software.  Blogs are so much easier to set up than traditional websites, and virtually free.  Find who blogs for your company, and give them info about your events – they will want to publish great content like your event news.  Or start your own blog about what your company is doing at events.  Your blog can serve as a home base for each show’s promotional activity.  It can also boost your SEO results by how you set up its blog, which keywords you use, and the links you build.
11. Industry Bloggers = New Press, Public Relations:  If you could find a copy of your main industry trade magazine from 15 years ago, you’d be surprised by how much thicker it was back then.  Magazine ads were the main way to reach your industry audience, until the Internet and Google made online marketing more effective and took revenue away from magazines.  That also reduced the number of journalists magazines could afford to employ.  But the Internet revolution made blogs possible at a low, low cost, so bloggers have stepped in to replace magazine writers.  You can find these bloggers by going to http://www.google.com/blogsearch and searching on the names of the trade shows you exhibit at.  These are the people you want to build relationships, much like your (remaining) industry press.
12. Blog Post Show: Recap Trends, New Products:  Reach out to your new found blogger friends before the show, and give them the information they need so they write about you after the show.  Get them an interview with your company CEO or though leaders, to share your views about industry trends.  Set up an appointment to demonstrate your new products introduced at the show, so they may include it in their recap about new products on their blog.

So there you have it – 12 tips you can use today to leverage the amazing reach of social media to drive more people to your trade show booth.

What social media tactics have you found that work well for your trade show marketing?  Let us know in the comments box below.

To learn more about how social media and many other factors are helping the marketers of today, read the What’s Working In Exhibiting white paper.  Click here to get your free copy of the 32-page book that reveals exhibitors’ most effective strategies in 7 key ares of trade show marketing. 

You never have a second chance to make a great first impression — except on the second day of a trade show!  That’s when you get a whole new batch of attendees to impress.

Because the first day of a trade show usually has the most foot traffic, Day 2 and 3 can be a let down by comparison.  But Day 1 is never perfect, and with the following plan, you can made quick adjustments to generate greater results on Day 2, even while the traffic is slower.

Here are several key areas you can monitor and adjust on Day 2:

Trade Show Booth Staffers:

• Are your staffers working well?  Are they spending the right amount of time with each attendee?
• What opening lines worked well?  Which bombed?
• Check each booth staffers’ lead counts, and if they are taking complete leads with notes about what attendees asked for, and especially if they are qualifying leads or not.
• Were all aisles around your island trade show display covered, or did staffers congregate in a few spots?
• Were your staffers comfortable delivering demos and using any interactive technology in the booth?  Are they smooth or shaky?
• If you hired Crowd Gatherers, how well did the hand off go from them to your own staffers?
• Your new booth staffers showing up for the first time on Day 2 will need the same complete booth staff training you gave before Day 1.
• If there is less traffic on Day 2, remember that you can only talk to one person at a time.  On a busy day there are a lot of people walking by that you can’t get to anyhow while you talk to an attendee.
• If there is a lot less traffic on Day 2 (or 3 …), go ahead and take longer with the leads that you do get.  Ask them deeper questions, or take longer demoing the product they like.

Promotions:

• Check your promotional giveaway quantities — are your trade show booth staffers giving them out at the right time to the right people, or just handing them out willy-nilly?
• Do you have enough giveaways to honor your promises for the rest of the show?
• Did your at-show promotion spin out of control, where your staffers got so caught up in the promo that they forgot to advance the buying cycle with attendees?

Trade Show Exhibit Design:

• Were there any parts of the exhibit that were missing or did not get set up completely before the show opened on the first day?  Make sure you get them taken care of before Day 2 starts.
• How well did the exhibit layout work within the flow of traffic for this show?  If there were glaring problems, can you make adjustments?
• Were you featuring any product in the booth that really did not generate any interest?  If so, can you remove it from the booth?  Better yet, can you replace it with a more popular product?
• Did attendees “get” your messaging?  If not, can you adjust?

Where To Get Feedback

If this is a lot to look for, remember that you’ve got help.  You can get great feedback from your team in a few ways:

• Take your booth staff team out to dinner after the first day.  Ask them how they thought the day went, and how to improve.
• Ask your booth staffing veterans.  They have the experience to know what worked before, and when things are getting off track.
• Ask your rookies.  They see things with fresh eyes.  They may have booth staffing knowledge from another company, too.
• Check your lead cards, and count leads per booth staffer, and percent leads completed per booth staffer.  Find who needs coaching, and who can do that coaching for you.

Implement Your Day 2 Plan

Host a pre-show meeting in the booth with your staffers one hour before the show starts on the second day.  Go over what’s been going well (such as any stellar leads taken on Day 1), what you would like to improve, and how you want to fix it.  Ask all the staffers for feedback, but especially the ones who have already given you good feedback that you want your entire team to hear.  Then get everyone on board with your fixes.

Some of these items may not be fixable for Day 2, or even any day while you are at the show.  If so, then use this checklist to review after your show is over, to prepare for your next show.

So while Day 1 is usually the busiest day of the show, with a perceptive eye, good teamwork, and flexibility, you can make Day 2 even better.

Whether it’s Day 1, Day 2, or later, trade shows provide great value to both exhibitors and attendees.  Read why – and how you can improve your results with this knowledge – in the 24-page white paper, The Value Of Trade Shows.  Click here to request your free copy. 

Are you a trade show exhibitor?  Or a trade show marketer?

It’s understandable that as an exhibitor you get caught up in logistics, because no matter what, you have to get your booth from point A to point B (and to point C, D, E, and so on).  But those required logistics can sometimes crowd out the even more important marketing aspect of trade shows.

So let’s take a few minutes to set logistics aside (don’t worry, they’ll still be there when you get back) and focus on how you can be a better marketer who just happens to use trade shows.

Target Your Best Personas

Personas are portraits you create to better understand your best clients as prospects.  A good persona includes age, gender, income, ethnicity, and even emotional aspects such as personality, likes & dislikes, their mentality, and key motivators.  A persona gives your team a more tangible, living target to aim for when you create your marketing materials.   You can create and target several personas.  For example, a car company may have car buyer personas that are driven by status, or economy, or hauling family, or sustainability.  When you understand your buyer personas, you can tailor all marketing aspects to better appeal to them.

Write A Creative Brief

A creative brief is a like a mini-marketing plan for your trade show.  It takes some time to pull together, but it saves you time in the end.   Include in your creative brief your goals for the show, your positioning, your strengths and weaknesses compared to competitors, what you want to have happen in the booth and after the show, how you plan to promote your presence at the show, and even your show budget.  Once you have it, you can share it with your booth staffers and the vendors you are hiring for the show, such as your exhibit house or your promotions vendor.

Select The Right Shows

Rather than choose which shows to exhibit at based on cost per square foot or number of total attendees, your marketing mind should instead hone in on the number of attendees that fit your target market, or the return on investment you’ve received at previous years’ shows.  You look at which vertical market shows exist where you have the greatest potential, even if the overall show attendance pales compared to your main industry shows.  And you regularly reexamine your show schedule based on marketing potential and performance.

Design Your Exhibit As A Marketing Tool

Your trade show displays are not just pieces of furniture – they are marketing tools that both communicate a message and support your booth staff.  Make sure your trade show exhibit lives up to its full marketing potential.  Does it clearly communicate a compelling reason for your buyers to stop and visit you?  Does it boldly say (with both images and text) what products and services you offer, and how you are better?  And if you are exhibiting at a variety of shows (based on personas in different job titles or industries), can you change your graphics to more directly appeal to your various personas?

Create Promotions That Appeal To Your Personas

Trade show promotions can get more people into your booth.  Be sure to pick your promotions with a critical and inspired marketing eye, to ensure you excite your best buyer personas, and avoid attracting non-buyers to your trade show booth.   This is the fun part of trade show marketing – when your promotions are so on-target that you build stronger relationships with your buyers because they recognize that you truly understand them.  You do that with compelling offers they crave, and with a look and feel that matches your buyer’s personality.

Follow Up Leads More Than Just Fast

The logistical part of trade show lead follow up means getting the leads into the computer and out to the sales force quickly, and getting your packets in the mail within a few days.   That’s awesome, and essential.  But with a marketing perspective you can go much further.  Make sure you and your booth staff qualified the leads before your send them on their way, so your sales force knows which leads to pursue first.  And don’t just send out a generic follow up packet – tailor your marketing materials specifically to what each attendee asked for.  You’ll create more sales with your trade show leads that way.

So by all means, be an expert at getting your show paperwork in on time to get the early discount.  Know how to set up your banner stands in under a minute flat.  Just remember that you are at trade shows to build your company image, generate sales leads, and build stronger client relationships.  Achieving those admirable marketing objectives requires you to sharpen your marketing skills.

With everything that goes into trade show exhibiting, it can be hard to balance it all.  Read the What’s Working In Exhibiting white paper for the best tips about the most effective strategies and tactics exhibitors are using today to boost their results and stretch their budgets.  Click here to request your free copy. 

You will see our booth just as you enter the exhibit hall.

Skyline would love to see you in our booth, #1325, at EXHIBITOR2012, March 5 to 7, 2012 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.  It promises to be an excellent show.

Many exhibit marketers have renewed their strong trade show schedules, and are looking to expand their booth spaces to take advantage of the face-to-face nature of trade shows.

But because our industry tends to lag the economic cycle, there are also exhibit marketers attending EXHIBITOR2012 who are in expansion mode, just now making up for the reductions they made during the downturn.

But all exhibitors have adjusted to the new reality:  They need a responsive exhibit partner who can augment their smaller team, boost their trade show results, all the while maximizing their highly scrutinized budget.

We look forward to meeting with exhibit marketers who attend the show, to demonstrate how we can help enhance their exhibiting success.  If you need a free pass to the exhibit hall, click here, and enter in promo code 4206 when registering.

5 Reasons To Visit Skyline At EXHIBITOR2012:

Free Trade Show Seminars

Skyline will host 12 “bite-sized” seminars in our booth.  You can get the best nuggets on insights about 6 popular trade show topics such as promotions, social media, booth staffing, exhibit design, and more.  We will present each 10-minute session twice during the show, every hour on the hour that the show hall is open.

Here’s our free seminar schedule (you may want to print it and take it with you to the show):

Expert Advice
After each seminar we will take Q&A from the audience, answering questions about the session topic or any trade show or marketing questions you have. You can also visit the booth at any time to talk with our experienced staff.

Useful, Elegant Gifts
Attendees to our seminars will receive a cool, aluminum-clad notebook.  The elegant notebooks give you a place to jot ideas and reactions to our seminars.  The aluminum covers also evoke the clean, elegant look of our metal exhibit systems.

Chocolate
To complement our “bite-sized” seminars we’re offering bite-sized chocolates.  Stop by anytime during the show when you need a boost, and get a crunchy, creamy nugget of Ferrero Rocher chocolate.

Meet With A Trusted Exhibiting Partner
Whether you are an existing Skyline customer wanting to see what’s new, or an exhibit marketer looking for new ways to achieve trade show success, you can request a meeting with us.  Just click here to ask for a date and time to meet, or stop by to visit us in booth 1325.

Trade shows are a valuable marketing medium.   But they’re also hard work.  You need help you can depend on to succeed.  We hope to see you at our booth at EXHIBITOR2012.

Again, if you need a free pass to the exhibit hall, click here, and enter in promo code 4206.

Imagine this:  You had a great show, with a flood of booth visitors and a pile of leads.  And yet after the show, your fine effort fizzled into nothing because your hard-earned leads sat gathering dust atop someone else’s desk.

Lead management is the least visible, yet most important final stage of your trade show marketing.  To help you bring this essential step into the light, here are the 10 best tips that I’ve gleaned over the last two decades:

• Seek to get not just leads, but qualified leads, so that your field sales force will value them and follow up.
• Train your staffers to qualify leads at the show according to high, medium, and low qualified levels, and then label them as A, B, or C leads.
• Do more lead follow up!  Have a lead fulfillment plan prepared before the show starts.
• Don’t rely on just a business card from trade show booth visitors: Have a lead card or electronic lead retrieval system so you have enough space to record details on your booth visitors’ wants and needs.
• Do more lead follow up!  Get your sales and marketing management to stress the importance of lead follow up — and even put some teeth into repercussions if they aren’t.
• Have one person responsible for lead fulfillment, data entry into your CRM database, and lead transfer to sales.
• Do more lead follow up!  Build more frequent touches with leads after the show (via calls, emails, or mailers).
• Prepare before the show to be able to quickly send fulfillment right after the show — even during the show. Include in the process the ability to customize fulfillment to include what the visitor specifically asked for.
• Do more lead follow up!  Check in regularly with your reps to report on lead progress.
• Watch out for the critical link that is too often broken:  What booth visitors reveal to your booth staffer and what your booth staffer responds is not passed on to the field sales rep, which causes lack of motivation for lead follow up and frustration with the booth visitor.

So much of good lead management starts with proper preparation of your booth staffers.  Yet what happens after the show is just as important — but gets less attention once the urgency of the show is over.

I hope you enact some of these 10 tips and get even more value from your trade show leads.  Your company has invested so much to get them — make sure you succeed at this critical final step.

This article is one of a series on Top 10 Tips for various key trade show topics:

> Top 10 Tips For Trade Show Promotions

> Top 10 Tips For Trade Show Exhibit Design

> Top 10 Tips For Trade Show Booth Staffing

Lead management is just one piece of the puzzle for successful trade shows.  Read the What’s Working In Exhibiting white paper to find out more tips and tricks to get the most out of your exhibiting experience.  Click here to request your free copy. 

Ah, the good intentions of New Year Resolutions!  People resolve to start doing things that they know they should be doing, but don’t, either because they’re too difficult or dull.  Well, there are some essential trade show activities that fall into those categories!

Trade Show Marketer’s New Year Resolution #1: Follow Up On Your Leads

The first and foremost resolution you can make is to simply follow up on your leads.  Following up on leads is almost like flossing your teeth or doing maintenance on your house: you know you need to do it, but are still reluctant.  Following up on the leads gets overshadowed by all the other parts of your job that were neglected while you concentrated on organizing and going to the show.

Trade Show Marketer’s New Year Resolution #2: Measure Your Results

Measuring your trade show results is another worthwhile activity to choose as a New Year’s resolution.  Measuring your trade show results can be complicated when you have a long sales cycle, have multiple lead sources to allocate credit for any sales to, or you can’t easily get access to the data you need.  So it is both difficult and (compared to exhibit design and creating cool pre-show and at-show promotions) kind of dull.  Yet without demonstrable results, your entire trade show program is in jeopardy.

Trade Show Marketer’s New Year Resolution #3: Update Your Trade Show Exhibit Graphics

With so many logistics to take care of, it’s easy to put much of our trade show program on autopilot and avoid the grief of getting new exhibit graphics. Yet, over time your marketing messages changes.  Is the message on your trade show displays still relevant to the message that you’re using in your other marketing programs?  What message is currently on your website, direct mail, print ads, and your blog?  When all your messages reinforce each other, you are much more likely to be remembered. And when you exhibit at trade shows that serve different vertical market industries, do you take the time to adapt your graphics to better appeal to the different audiences?

How do you make resolutions stick?

These three are worthwhile trade show New Year’s resolutions.  Yet, like all resolutions, they are easy to start, yet much harder to maintain.  How do we maintain them?

“One challenge with New Year’s resolutions is that people often set unrealistic goals. They can quickly become frustrated and give up,” says Dr. Linda Nebeling, an expert in behavioral change and nutrition at NIH. “Any resolution to change needs to include small goals that are definable and accompanied by a solid plan on how you’ll get to that goal.”

Here are some ideas to make your resolutions stick:

Make it achievable

 This list has only 3 resolutions, not 30, so it’s more achievable.  You can even just pick one resolution from this list that matters most.  And achieve what you can within your control – for example, if you don’t manage the sales force and can’t get them to cooperate, you can follow up directly with the trade show leads you generated to see if they met with your team or if they bought from you.

Break your bigger goal into smaller activities

For example, if the idea of measuring your results fills you with dread at the size of the task, then break it down into smaller activities.  Make a schedule.  Plan a step for each month, and give yourself a reward for each small step.  So for the first month you outline each step needed to measure your results.  The second month, get the list of all the leads into one place, be it a spreadsheet or a database.  And so on.  Then give yourself rewards for completing each step along the way.

Focus on the benefits

When we focus on the obstacles, we give problems more weight than they deserve.  Put more energy into ways around obstacles, and especially on the benefits you’ll get when you achieve your new goals.  Adopt and continue with these three trade show New Year’s resolutions, and you’ll generate more leads, more sales, enhance your company brand, and make yourself more valuable to your company.  Keep these benefits in mind and the obstacles will look smaller.

Make yourself accountable

It’s harder to shirk from your New Year’s resolution when you’ve told someone else.  “I tell my clients to have a trade show team and hold each other accountable, just like you have a workout buddy,” said Michael Flavin, account executive, Skyline St. Louis.  Tell your boss you want to do this as part of your job improvement.  Then your boss will hold you accountable.  Even writing down your resolutions makes them more real.

It takes time to build a new habit.  Give yourself time to turn wishes into actions into habits.  I hope this will be a happy new year for you!

This blog post was sparked by Michael Flavin, account executive at Skyline Exhibits in St. Louis, who interviewed me about trade show New Year’s resolutions for his blog. 

For more help achieving your goals in 2012, read the What’s Working In Exhibiting white paper.  This 32 page book will give you insight to the most effective strategies and tactics exhibitors are using today to boost their results and stretch their budgets.  Click here to request your free copy.