Tuesday Marketing Notes (Number 68—February 6th, 2007)
A B2B Marketing Newsletter for BMA Members
____________________________________________________________
MAKE SURE YOU CONTINUE TO RECEIVE EACH ISSUE OF TUESDAY MARKETING NOTES—CLICK HERE TO RENEW YOUR FREE SUBSCRIPTION
(NOTE: if you’ve already signed up previously at this link above, no need to do so again)
INDEX TO PAST ISSUES OF TUESDAY MARKETING NOTES:
Click here
Special Savings Promotion for BMA Members—Click here
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Targeting a New Market (Part 3: Using Trade Shows for New Market Launches)
by Eric Gagnon
Last week, we described the five major methods used to sell products in business-to-business markets, and covered direct mail, one of the most effective methods for marketing your company’s (or client’s) products in a new market.
This week, we’ll discuss trade shows, a B2B marketing method that can often be even more effective than direct mail, for the following reasons:
• Proven buyers: Trade shows are the best ways to connect with serious potential prospects, since they attract a large proportion of purchasing decision-makers;
• Real selling opportunities: For companies in certain industries, the amount of business written (or initiated) at the one or two largest shows in their market each year often accounts for a significant portion of their annual sales;
• Trade shows are where markets become real: For marketing managers (and their agencies), there’s no substitute for facing real, live potential prospects, who will give you the best possible reality check on the market assumptions, positioning, and sales copy you’re using in your marketing program.
What you learn from prospects by working the booth at the show for your company or client helps you learn new ways of presenting the compelling benefits of your client’s product that you’d never learn any other way.
Your First Question Facing a New Market: When’s the Next Trade Show?
When planning a launch into a new market, I don’t think you can beat using direct mail and exhibiting at a major trade show as your two most effective, and most cost-effective, activities to kick off your marketing program. If you can’t generate sales leads and new business using either direct mail or exhibiting at a top industry trade show, then you won’t be able to do it with print advertising or any other marketing method, either.
The fact that trade shows put your company’s sales reps face-to-face with prospects in your market gives trade shows an edge, even over direct mail. If your company (or client) has a limited marketing budget, and you must choose between running direct mail or exhibiting at an upcoming trade show, you are likely to be more certain of getting measurable sales response by putting your company or client into a trade show first, ahead of doing a direct mail drop or running any other marketing activity.
Trade Show Preparation Builds Excellent Marketing Execution Skill
If you’re getting your company or client into a trade show as your first major marketing project for your new market, you’ll find that trade show execution forces you to get develop many of the sales copy approaches and marketing deliverables you will need for the other projects and activities in your marketing program.
There comes a time in every new marketing program where stuff has to get written, designed, and produced—and usually for many different marketing deliverables all at once. Trade shows have a way of forcing this process because, unlike a mailing or your Web site, the date of the trade show is a hard deadline that can’t be slipped. We’ll describe ways you can schedule marketing execution for trade show projects so they don’t turn into last-minute train wrecks.
Use a Trade Show to Help You Develop Your Product’s Presentation Across Your Entire Marketing Program
The selling approaches, layout design, and other elements of the deliverables you produce for your trade show, such as booth flyers, brochures, signage, and booth sales video, can be recycled and/or morphed into deliverables used for the printed pieces of your direct mail program, copy and graphics for ad layouts, and key elements in many other marketing activities.
Many of these deliverables, and the sales copy and other messaging they all have in common, will form the core of your marketing program, so developing them for a trade show first gets you over a big learning curve for doing the rest of the hard work necessary to produce deliverables used in one form or another throughout your entire marketing program.
Finding the Best Trade Show Opportunities
Just as there are usually no more than two top trade publications for any industry, there usually aren’t many more than two major trade shows which are the major selling opportunities for your market.
You can find these major trade shows by simply asking people who are “in the know” in your industry—trade association executives, ad space sales reps for industry trade publications, and potential prospects and customers.
How to Evaluate a Trade Show
When you think you’ve found these major, must-attend shows, size them up by contacting their producers, and asking them for their exhbitor sales kits. Of course, You can also get a lot of the preliminary information you need, such as rates, last year’s attendees, etc., by linking to the show producers’ Web sites.
Here are the questions you need to ask your trade show’s sales rep:
Number and mix of attendees: How many people attended last year’s show? What’s the outlook for attendance for the upcoming show? What types of individuals, by job title, attend the show? As we described last week, if you request it, many show sponsors will send you, free of charge, a printout or electronic file of their last year’s attendee list, showing only the job titles and company names for all attendees. This gives you a very clear idea of the mix of attendees, and whether or not attendees at the show match the types of prospects and corporate contacts you’re trying to reach with your company’s marketing program;
Other exhibitors: Who else is exhibiting at the show? You can always get a list of last year’s exhibitors from the show producer’s Web site, and your sales rep can tell you the exhibitors who’ve already signed up for the upcoming show. If the major corporate players in your industry will be exhibiting at the show, this usually indicates that a show is worthwhile. And if your competitors are going to be at the show, then your company should probably be there, too;
Conference program content: Review the show’s printed show guide, which outlines the content being covered at the show conference. Now would also be a very good time to ask your show sales rep for the name of the person at his company who handles speaker selection for their conference sessions, since there may be opportunities to get your company’s key executives placed as presenters or panel participants at the conference;
Rates and availability: Of course, you need to find out how much it costs to rent booth space at the show, and what booth spaces are available. Trade shows produced by trade associations often have higher booth space rates for non-members vs. members, so you’ll have to consider whether or not it’s cheaper, or more advantageous, for your company to join the association to attend the show as an exhibitor.
Your Objective for Exhibiting at the Show: Drawing Qualified Prospects
When it comes to trade show appearances, your major goal is to attract as many qualified potential prospects to your company’s booth at the show. This is not the same as drawing heavy foot traffic to your booth, which is usually done by hiring models, juggling clowns, or by passing trinkets out to any Dilbert clone who shuffles past your booth.
Your job is to employ the tradecraft of marketing to clearly present your product to draw interested potential prospects, and not waste your sales reps’ time by forcing them to qualify everyone who drops by to get a Frisbee printed with your company’s logo.
You do this by using clear, obvious presentation that describes what your product does, who it’s for, and what’s in it for the prospect if they buy and use your product.
Next, we’ll describe how to incorporate this clear presentation in the trade show deliverables you’ll be needing for your new market launch at “the big show.”
Deliverables—What You Need to Get to the Show
Most trade show projects require the following marketing deliverables:
• Pre-show mailing;
• Booth backdrop;
• Signage;
• Sales video;
• Printed collateral;
• Show promotion
Here is an overview of these key marketing deliverables . . .
Pre-Show Mailing
Show producers make mailing lists of attendees to the upcoming show available for mailing by all exhibitors, and you should always plan a pre-show mailing to show attendees, timed to arrive about 2 weeks before the show date. The purpose of the pre-show mailing is to tell the attendee about your company, to show, and briefly describe, your product, and (most important) to let the attendee know you will be exhibiting at the show.
Sending out a pre-show mailing gives you an edge over any other exhibitor who doesn’t do one (and most don’t), and will at least plant a vague memory about your company into the attendee’s mind so they’ll remember your company when they walk the show floor.
The mailing piece for your pre-show mailing doesn’t require any more than a larger postcard (5-1/2” by 8-1/2”) or a self-mailer (8-1/2” by 11” flyer folded down to 5-1/2” by 8-1/2”).
For your pre-show mailer, don’t overload your reader with product features and details. Just give your potential prospects an overview of your company and product and, most important, don’t forget to print the dates of the show and your company’s booth number. Also, if you’ve got some kind of prize drawing, giveaway, or other promotional offer going, put that on the card to spark added interest.
Booth Backdrop
Your booth backdrop is the first thing a show attendee sees from a distance while walking down the show aisle. Attendees quickly scan companies, product names, descriptions, and other text on these backdrops to make a quick mental assessment as to whether they should keep walking, or if they should slow down in front of the booth to take a closer look.
Keep the content and layout of your backdrop focused on presenting only the information that’s most important to get the attention of, and attract, a show attendee: This is your company name, and a brief tagline describing what business your company is in, or the product your company sells. Print this at the top of your backdrop, and large enough so it can be read from 30 feet away from anyone walking in the aisle of the show.
The only purpose of the sales tagline printed on your backdrop is to cut through the noise and confusion of the show by sparking your prospect’s attention as he or she wanders down the aisle. The main selling job of your booth is handled by the other booth elements—your booth signage, and your sales video.
Booth Signage
Your booth signage fills in the essential details of your product’s features and benefits. Here, use at least two smaller, easel-mounted signs printed with bulleted text lines to communicate the essential features and benefits of your product.
These easel-mounted booth signs communicate your product’s most important features and benefits to potential prospects at closer range, as they stand in front of, and approach, your booth. You can develop these bullet points from writing your “Laundry List” of sales copy benefits from my three-step copywriting exercise (see below).
Sales Video
A continuously-running, 1-2 minute sales video with a spoken audio soundtrack, displayed on a large flat-screen display in front of your booth, is an important marketing deliverable for any trade show project.
This is because once a prospect is drawn closer to your booth by seeing your backdrop, and then walks closer still to read your booth signs, he or she is then close enough to start seeing (and more importantly, hearing) your sales video, which essentially gives this prospect a fast, professional presentation of your company and its product.
One striking aspect of booth sales videos is that they are a wonderful way to help your sales reps engage interested prospects. An attendee who is interested enough to stop in front of your booth long enough to watch your video for a minute or so is usually interested enough to start asking questions of your sales reps. In this way, a good booth sales video actually provides enough essential detail to help your prospects decide on their own whether or not they want to learn more about your product, which makes a booth sales video a unique means for helping attendees self-qualify their interest in your product at the show.
In new market introductions, sales videos have another big advantage in that they can also be used as Flash videos for use on your company’s site (we covered development, production, and execution of sales videos in extensive detail, in this previous issue of Tuesday Marketing Notes, at this link).
Printed Booth Collateral
Obviously, you will also need to produce print collateral for your company’s sales reps to hand out to interested prospects. These kinds of printed pieces fall into two types: inexpensive flyers left out for passers-by, and more expensive brochures and sales kits reserved for more highly interested prospects who speak with your reps.
Inexpensive handouts are also a handy format for producing specialized collateral flyers addressing specific product features or industry issues, or for a “Q & A” flyer addressing the questions asked most often by prospects about your product.
Of course, printed collateral is the most copy-intensive type of marketing deliverable you need to produce for a show, which means you need to get to work writing copy for the pieces you’ll be producing for the show, or directing this process when others, such as your ad agency or a marketing consultant, are writing your copy (the three-step copywriting exercise, described below, will help you in this task).
Show Promotion: Using Show Drawings to Start Building Your Mailing List
When preparing for a show, give some thought to what type of promotion, if any, you would like to run during the show. While I’m dead-set against giving away trinkets and other free stuff to everyone, you can have great success running daily contest drawings for giveaways of high-value items, such as laptops, iPods, GPS receivers, etc.
As part of their dialogue with interested potential prospects, your company’s sales reps can invite prospects to drop their business cards in your giveaway prize drawing box or fishbowl for a chance to win the prize at your daily drawing. When utilized for this purpose, show drawings are a very effective way to build your mailing list for future mailings.
Trade Show Deliverables: Where and How to Begin
Developing your “sales content” for trade show deliverables: Your first step in running execution for your trade show, especially if your company’s trade show appearance is going to be your first marketing activity in your new market launch, is to develop your sales content and messaging—i.e., the story of your product, and its major benefits, described in a way that is compelling to your target market.
Whether you are writing copy for your own trade show deliverables, or you’re working with an ad agency or marketing consultant who’s writing your copy, the best way to master the art of clearly presenting your product’s best sales benefits and sales messaging is to get everything down on paper, by writing exhaustively about your product, its features, and its benefits.
One method you can use is my three-step copywriting exercise. This exercise (detailed in Tuesday Marketing Notes #3 at this link) is a systematic method for helping you inventory, detail, select, and rank your product’s major sales benefits.
Executing deliverables for the trade show: Doing all the things you need to do to get your company into a show can be a hectic task, especially when it’s your first marketing project for a new market. And, when you add in every logistical show detail, such as shipping your booth and materials to the show, travel arrangements, etc., execution of these key marketing deliverables often gets pushed off to the last minute.
The key to keeping trade show execution from turning into a train wreck is to start production first for those trade show deliverables requiring the longest lead times:
1.) Booth sales video: Of all trade show deliverables, booth videos take the longest time to script, shoot, produce, and edit. Start by writing the script for the sales video first, which also helps you work out your selling presentation to your new market. Once you have a script, you can then hand this over to your video producer, decide on the visuals you’ll need, and then turn your producer loose on your project. Your booth video will require 2-4 weeks, or longer, to produce from start to finish;
2.) Printed collateral: While your video is being produced, use the sales copy from your booth video script as the basis for developing copy for the printed collateral—sales kits, flyers, and brochures—you’ll be using at the show. Printed collateral requires at least 2-3 weeks to produce and print;
3.) Booth Backdrop: If the only copy you’re printing on your booth backdrop is your company logo and sales tagline, then the only time factor on your backdrop is design and layout, which takes about a week. Add another two weeks to print the backdrop and you’ll need at least three weeks to produce your backdrop;
4.) Booth signage: Next, pull your main sales benefit bullets out of your three-step copywriting exercise, and work these into your booth signage. These smaller signs can be produced in well under one week, and sometimes in just a day or two, so they’re a fast project to execute.
Start with the date you need to ship all of these deliverables out to the show site, and then back each of these activities up by the number of weeks required for each to set a realistic schedule for the production and execution that’s required for your show.
Give yourself—and your marketing team—the time all of you will need to do your best work on your trade show project, and you’ll get a better end result, with fewer headaches due to last-minute fire drills caused by lack of advance planning.
Additional trade show execution resources: If you’d like more information on trade show execution, check these previous issues of Tuesday Marketing Notes, at the following links:
Next week, we’ll cover Internet and online marketing methods used for launches in new markets . . .
Comments? Questions? Send them to me at: eric@realmarkets.net
___________________________________________________________
Attention Marketing Managers:
Get a Second Opinion on Your Marketing Program. . . FREE
Think you should be spending less and getting more from your current marketing program? Tired of hearing empty “branding” promises from your ad agency that never seem to translate to actual, measurable sales results?
Or, have you been losing out on important new selling opportunities due to poor execution in your marketing projects?
Let us give you a second opinion on your current B2B marketing program and deliverables, at no cost or further obligation.
For more information, contact us at: ericgagnon@verizon.net or click on this link below:
_____________________________________________________________
Eric Gagnon (eric@realmarkets.net), is president of GAA (www.realmarkets.net), a sales and business development consulting firm, and is the author of The Marketing Manager’s Handbook, the master study guide for the Business Marketing Association’s Marketing Skills Assessment, Skill Builder, and Certification (MSA/B/C) programs.
For more information on The Marketing Manager’s Handbook, available to BMA members at a special discount, link to:
http://www.businessmarketinginstitute.com/book.html
_____________________________________________________________
Test, Train, and Build Your B2B Marketing Skills for Better Sales Success: BMA Announces New Assessment, Training, and Certification for B2B Marketing Managers
For more information on the new BMA Marketing Skills Assessment, Skill Building and Certification (MSA/B/C) training and professional development program, visit http://www.businessmarketinginstitute.com
