Archive for the ‘Exhibitors’ Category

What about the other 360?

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

Here’s more new math for new-media.

We recently found ourselves on the other side of the table, as an exhibitor looking at buying one of the promotion options a show organizer was trying to sell us.

We are a small business, with a small budget and a small staff – but with big plans and huge goals. We’d suspect that describes most exhibitors going to tradeshows.

We have a very clear plan of marketing activities that we work on executing every day. When we’re not actually working labor-wise, we do have automated technologies, processes and relationships built that automatically drive our marketing 365.25

Knowing that our customers spend hundreds of hours a year online, we spend a great deal of our time, money and energy into designing, building and maintaining systems to help us understand those customers, build better solutions, extend our brand,  deliver value and maintain relevance. (Actually, we strive to be not merely relevant – but indispensible!)

Our budget for exhibiting at tradeshows is always constrained – it’s competing with so many other things we want to do. So we want to make sure we get the very best results when we do exhibit. We understand that attendees are fewer in numbers, are on tighter schedules, and have more focused purpose than ever. We work hard to make sure we have designed the right messages, with the right presentation, to the right audience – before the event, around the event, and after the event. We use email, social media, landing pages, blog posts, and news releases – on multiple platforms – to engage our audience and prepare for the show. These new-media elements all play into everything else we do year-round. We eat our own cooking and are physical, online and mobile.

We’re also very excited about how we use tradeshows in our marketing strategy, think we make a good appearance, and do a pretty good job of getting real value from them.

But when examining the promotion options offered by show organizers to their exhibitors, we are disappointed by advertising options that, to us – are not only very different from the vast majority of other elements in our marketing mix  – but don’t integrate with or add much synergy to our overall marketing strategy.

More disappointing still, the options seemed geared toward sponsorships by larger exhibitors, cost real money and had the shelf-life of a fruit fly.

These promotions work well while at the event, but what about the other 360?

And what about us small exhibitors? We need good promo ops too. We’re all here because we believe the event will bring the right people together to meet us. We want to meet new prospects, establish relationships and renew friendships. But we need to amortize the benefits and have access to this audience year round  -  and we want the organizer to make it happen for us. We want this show to be a success – so much so that we’ll be back every year!

We encourage all event organizers to ask themselves: “What are we offering to all our exhibitors that adds value to everything else they are doing year-round.”

Here’s a good post from Michelle Bruno at TSNN that provides organizers with a good blueprint.

If you agree with Michelle, we know a great vendor to help you!

Posted in Add Value to the Event, Exhibitors | No Comments »

What Makes a Great Tradeshow Advertisement?

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

You Are Here Email Marketing Campaign Sample

Recent You Are Here Email Marketing Campaign for a client

At a tradeshow, your goal is to get the highest number of qualified leads to visit your booth. Standing out from the rest of the exhibitors is a real challenge. What you need is a GREAT creative, right? But before you jump into designing that great creative I’d say “take a breath.” Building a good ad to support your tradeshow exhibition should not be a one-off project or require all-new processes or elements. Tradeshow advertising is like any advertisement you create. You’ll need a clear strategy to engage the most qualified prospects – and that starts with a good plan, moves to a good analysis, inspires a good design and delivers with good media.

Start at the beginning and make a plan.

  • Identify what you are trying to accomplish with the advertisement.
  • Focus on the actual customers you are after – the overall market of the event is too broad to address.
  • Relate your message to your target.
  • Match your visuals to the message you have created.
  • Simplify your advertisement by cutting out unnecessary elements.
  • Select a display media that extends beyond your booth, leverages the digital elements you build for your other marketing efforts, and fits your budget.


Who is the advertisement meant for?
Are you targeting the operating staff? Are you after management? Are you after 35 year old middle-income single males in the US Northeast? Again, write down your targeted customer and be very specific. If it helps, a side exercise that gets you focused can be profiling your customer. Go onto a stock photo website, (iStockPhoto, GettyImages, Stock Exchange, etc) and find an image of someone that looks like they could be your customer. Copy and paste the low-resolution photo into a MSWord document. Give each one a name, a company, a job title, and explain what they need. Create just a few of them.  (Otherwise you might get caught up in the exercise and never get your advertisement done!) The whole process may sound silly, but putting a face and a story behind a customer is really helpful when it comes to relating to your potential customer at a personal level.

What are you trying to accomplish?
Did your company just release a new product line? Did you just add a new feature to your software? Are you able to offer more competitive pricing because of a recent channel partner? Are you trying to get people to buy into you over your competition? What is your goal with this particular advertisement and this particular campaign?  Don’t worry about structuring the entire year’s message and brand positioning right here now – that’s for another day.  Write down your goal for this specific advertisement only. Pick the most important thing to accomplish and don’t try to squeeze in multiple accomplishments. Squeezing in too much can lead to a bad advertisement. After all, you only have the potential visitor’s attention for a few seconds…if you are lucky.

Relate your message to your prospect.
Now that you know what it is you are announcing or offering, and exactly who you are targeting, it’s time to brainstorm! How can you relate to your potential customer on a personal level? What problems do they have that you can solve? Why do they want what you have to offer? Why do they need what you have to offer? Put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself “What is it they are looking for? What is going to make them take action?” Set aside a couple of ideas so you have options to work with. The last thing you want to do is to back yourself in a corner with one idea – especially if you’re working with others in your own organization with their own perspectives.

You Are Here Email Marketing Sample

Some concepts lead to multiple solutions, then it's just a matter of preference.

If you have trouble relating to your clients on a personal level, can you tie into a memorable theme? Example:  February is here… SuperBowl, Valentine’s Day, Olympics…

Match your visuals to your message.
You have a message and a theme that your customer can relate to now. The next step is to create or find an appropriate visual that helps you portray exactly what you need it to. This is the most important part of your advertisement. Once someone can identify with you, they will give you a few seconds of their time to hear what else you have to say. Here is your chance to sell them. Don’t be the guy at the networking event who hands everyone a business card and leaves. Nobody remembers him, and nobody really likes him. Strike up a personal conversation with your advertisement as the medium between you and your potential customer.
Relate to them first and call for their action second. Utilize visual hierarchy – in short that means put emphasis on the most important part of the message via color, size, font weight, font style, and/or placement. Plan out how each part of the message comes across.

Don’t have time for visuals?
No designer at your company? You can find a stock photo or related graphics online, or you can pull off the entire advertisement with just text and color. It’s been done successfully 1,000 times before. Avoid Wing Bats, Wing Dings, Times New Roman, Papyrus, and Mickey Mouse fonts. Seriously, don’t use them! This is not a personal vendetta against them, they are just easy to overuse and misuse as they come standard on many computers and in many applications. For some reason, too many ads use them despite their blatant awfulness.

There’s clutter on the show floor – but not in your ad!
Avoid cluttering up the ad. Every inch of the space does not have to be used – white space is okay to have! While I understand you paid for every pixel of space, your message needs to be clear. Avoid multicolor backgrounds, tie-dye, and strong gradients (like white to black). If you find something hard to read, then it’s hard to read. Change it.

Simplify.
Look at what you have come up with. You have one shot to catch their attention, to relate to them, and to generate interest. Don’t go overboard! Look at each element of the advertisement and deem if it is necessary or not. Most of the time you should be able to cut at least one element out of what you make. Keep only the necessary.

Deliver
Now it’s time to share your work. You now need to get your message out but your distribution choices are many. Are you messaging before the show? During? After? Print or digital – or both? How, when, and where? Every media choice you examine comes with its own issues of deliverables, placement, demographics, timing and costs. We’ll write about some good options for events in another blog soon, but meanwhile…good luck building your ad!

Feedback
First and foremost, if you give what I have said an honest trial, let me know how things worked out for you. If you have a sample advertisement created by these steps, post a link and share it! Second, if you have additional tips or steps to your design process, please jump in!

-Ed

Posted in Connect Attendee and Exhibitor, Exhibitors | 3 Comments »

Happy – and Prosperous – New Year!

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

All of us at here at MarketArt want to thank all of you for your business, your help and your confidence in us over the last year. Last year wasn’t easy and our industry isn’t out of the woods yet.

We want to take this time of renewed resolve to open our thoughts and increase our dialog with all of you and so we’re launching our blog here today.

We hope to provide some insight into who we are, how we think and what we’re building for the trade show, event and association industries. We believe in the mission of associations and in the power of face-to-face events – and we think our products will help make them both more relevant than ever.

We also hope to learn from you about your own ambitions and your own challenges. Let us know if we’re building the right tools for you to Build Better Events. Let us know when we’re on track  – and please let us know when we’re not!

Several of us here are excited about writing for the blog. We think it will be fun and we hope it will be useful!

But as any of you blog-followers know – it will only be as good as we all help to make it. Keeping face-to-face relevant will require better mind-to-mind.

So here’s to the new year – to new resolutions – and here’s to our blog launch – please join in and share what’s on your mind.

Posted in Attendees, Exhibitors, Show Management | No Comments »