What About After the Tradeshow?

Part 6 of 6
What about after the trade show is over? The key to maximizing the experience is in the follow-up. How you do it is up to you. I’ve sent and received hand-written notes, emails, and letters.

I’ve made phone calls telling the person I enjoyed our conversation so much that I wanted to continue it over coffee. Again, every trade show expert and successful participant will tell you, follow-up is the key in achieving after the show sales and success.

Below is a sample follow-up letter:

Dear John,

Thank you . . . for the opportunity to talk with you at the West Bloomfield Chamber of Commerce Business Expo yesterday. I know your time is valuable and I promise to never waste it. If I can help you or any of your clients in the area of credit repair, please do not hesitate to call on me to be of assistance to you.

ABC Credit Solutions has the resources it takes to get results when it comes to fixing errors on the credit report. We do not claim to delete all negative credit information from the credit history. We can correct misinformation that, once removed, will assist in improving credit rating. In most cases, we can clear the discrepancies within a few days. Unlike our competitors, there is no monthly fee for the credit recovery service and the client does not pay until the service is complete.

I look forward to the opportunity to work with you in the future. If you have any questions or concerns regarding credit recovery, please feel free to call me at (123) 456-7890.

Only One Chance For First Impression at Expos

Part 5 of 6
You only get one chance to make a good first impression. Same holds true when you are at the trade show. You only have a few seconds to attract someone to your booth. The following tips may seem obvious, but from my experience at the expos, they are often overlooked.

The people who are staffing your space should dress as they would for any other business situation. Their clothes and footwear should be appropriate, no jeans or tennis shoes, and be neat and wrinkle-free.

Staff should be approachable and friendly. Standing with arms crossed with a scowl on their face won’t make visitors feel welcome and will give the impression that you don’t even want to be there.

The purpose of being at the trade show is to gather leads and interact with the visitors to the event. That means that the staff isn’t on the cell phone, texting, “tweeting”, eating, conversing with other staff, or doing anything else but greeting visitors.

They should greet the visitor with a smile and a good solid handshake. Maintaining consistent eye contact shows you are interested in the visitor and what they have to say.

This isn’t a selling opportunity so staff should not sell your products or services to the attendees. Their job is to simply answer questions from the visitor and determine if they are a potential customer. You could have a card or form in the display that the visitor could fill out requesting a sales person to contact them after the show or the staff person could make note of the level of interest of the visitor on the back of one of their business cards.

Don’t let staff crowd your exhibit. Have them stand just outside its boundary or a bit in the aisle so as not to block the display.

Next post: Show’s over. Now what do you do as follow-up?

More Tips For Your Display at the Expo

Part 4 of 6
More tips to remember when building your display for a trade show or business expo:

Offering candy in a big bowl, in assorted kinds and colors, is another way to attract people to your display. While they are standing there picking out their favorites, you have a window of time to start a conversation.

Offer a show discount. Everyone loves a bargain. A third or half off the cost of the product or service is a good deal! Make it a limited time offer to insure a quicker response.

Prior to the event, let everyone in your current database know that you will be at the show. You can include an invitation for them to visit you at the event in your e-newsletter, on FaceBook, or in a separate emailing. Attach a free pass to the event if it is available. You can also let them know that you will be offering a special discount on your product or service at the show.

Make sure you talk to the show organizers a week before the event, even if you’ve done the show before. It’s always good to know what to expect or to confirm any needs you might have, such as a location with an electric outlet.

Ask the show organizers if there will be a raffle or door prize give-away to which you could contribute. It’s always a good thing to have your company name announced over the loud speaker for all to hear.

Next Post: Trade Show Etiquette

Making Your Exhibit Memorable

Part 3 of 6
Whether you are working with a large, corporate budget or are putting the display together with more limited funds, there are quite a few things you need to remember.

• Make sure your company sign has big, readable letters. This is the first way you will grab people’s attention. It should be color coordinated to match your company’s logo or brand colors. If you set up the sign on top of the display or at eye-level of those passing by, it will be easily seen.



• Have a plethora of marketing material such as business cards, brochures and flyers readily available on the table.



• Does your company have a video or PowerPoint presentation it uses to show potential clients or one that is posted on your website? Why not set up a laptop computer in your display with the video or presentation running continuously?



• Offer a door prize or incentive for stopping by your exhibit. Have a big bowl or container available to capture a business card from the visitor in order to enter them in the drawing for the prize. The card will have their name, address, telephone and email address on it. This information is golden as follow-up for future sales calls, adding to your emailing database, inviting them to connect with you on LinkedIn or Facebook, or if you particularly enjoyed speaking with that person, setting up a future meeting to get better acquainted.



• Make sure that the person(s) you have staffing your booth know your product inside and out. Friends are great to enlist as helpers, but they will be useless to you if they can’t answer the questions they will be asked by visitors.



• You generally find promotional items, such as pens and post-it notes, as give-away items, preferably ones that have your company name or logo on them. Ideally, these “tchotchkes” would be related to your business in some way. For example, a computer repair company may offer screen cleaners that attach to a PC computer monitor. The user would have a functional item that has the name of your company in front of him daily. Who will be the first person he or she thinks of if they need some computer work done?
  

Next Post: More tips on setting up a display at a trade show or business expo.

Know Why You Are Exhibiting at the Trade Show

Part 2 of 6
Before you commit the time and expense to be a vendor at the trade show, first and foremost, you need to define why you are exhibiting and what you hope to accomplish. Are you there to get leads? To sell your product or service? To get noticed? All of the above?

You will need to determine which type of trade show best serves your purpose. There are two kinds of trade shows. One is a vertical exhibitor show in which the majority of the participants focus their products or services toward a single market, function or industry. The second kind is a horizontal exhibitor show that contains a broad mix of companies that exhibit products or services from many different industries.

It doesn’t matter which of the two kinds of shows you choose, the main attraction for participating in any expo is that it is the best way to get in front of a mass of people in a very short period of time. I’m rather sure that you will see more people there in one day than you could from making sales calls over several months.

Some other compelling reasons for participating are:

You never know who will be at the show. Your product or service may be seen by distributors, franchisees, potential business partners, etc., or even catch the interest of the media

Using the opportunity as a way to test your marketing material

Using it to introduce or test new products or ideas for service

Creating an industry or community presence

Collecting leads for potential customers

Meeting and greeting people who might otherwise be unavailable to you

To support the organization holding the event


Next post: How can you make your exhibit at a trade show memorable and effective?

To Exhibit...Or Not to Exhibit? An Answer to the Trade Show Dilemma

Part 1 of 6
Business trade shows and expos provide wonderful exposure for you to promote your service or product. Almost all Chamber of Commerce and other networking organizations sponsor these marketing opportunities to their members. There is always a cost to exhibit at these events, and sometimes it can be a hefty fee.

Frequently at an event I notice that over a third of the exhibitors don’t capitalize on the opportunity and frankly, I wonder why they spent the money to even be there.

The most memorable space I saw was at a two-day Chamber of Commerce event this past August, held in conjunction with an outdoor summer festival, which guaranteed high traffic for the exhibitors. I wandered up to a table that had a fish bowl to drop cards in to win a door prize, and the really nice item, an oversized space heater, sitting on the table. That was it. The gentleman behind the table encouraged me to fill out a little pre-printed form for the drawing. It simply asked for my name and phone number.

I asked him the name of his company, as there were no brochures, flyers or even business cards to identify the company or their product or service. He told me it was on the sign. The sign he was referring to was hanging in front of the table and was on an erasable message board that was smudged beyond recognition, as everyone who came up to the table leaned against it and blocked it from the view of people passing by.

He animatedly started to go through his schpeil. I stopped him mid-sentence and told him that I was visiting all the other booths too and at his table, there was nothing to help me to remember the product he was so excited about. I explained that without something to take away from his exhibit, he missed the whole point of being there. But most obviously, the company didn’t put much thought into the display at all. . . . . or being remembered.

Next post: Why are you going to be an exhibitor at a business expo in the first place?

Maurer Marketing Minutes #28-Beverly Cornell-Mango Languages

Maurer Marketing Minutes #28-Beverly Cornell-Mango Languages
If your business brand was a person, what would he/she look like? Beverly Cornell-McGlynn, former Marketing and Social Media Director at Mango Languages, encourages business owners to put “fun” in their marketing effort. She says that by capturing your unique business personality in promoting your service or product, you will catch the attention of potential clients in a big way. The marketing strategy she instituted at Mango is a prime example. Contact Beverly at beverlyrcornell@gmail.com.
Direct download: MMM-28-Beverly_Cornell-Mango_Languages.mp3

Maurer Marketing Minutes 23-Mark Besh-Visual Impact

Maurer Marketing Minutes #23-Mark Besh-Visual Impact

Mark Besh, multimedia expert and Principal at Visual Impact agrees with our former guest, Kevin Krason, that video is becoming the most important media to get your company, product or service message noticed and ranked higher on the search engines. Mark talks about the benefits to business owners in using video to reach their customers and how to get the advertisement seen by the virtual community. Mark is happy to hear from you at mbesh@4vis.com or 248-548-7000 or visit his website at www.4vis.com
Direct download: MMM-23-Mark_Besh-Visual_Impact.MP3