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How to Maximize Your Trade Show ROI
April 09, 2008
Turning Three Day Into a Year's Worth of Sales
By Charles Epstein
A typical trade show offers a brief three-day window to capture attention. And while focusing trade show efforts solely on customer acquisition may get you a stack of leads, that stack oftentimes leads to disappointment. However, complementing sales and marketing efforts with a carefully planned media strategy will deliver significant returns before, during and long after your booth has been dismantled.
A well-orchestrated media program—one that gets the right message into the right hands at the right time—can turn a trade show into a uniquely powerful marketing opportunity. Where else can you get in front of all the top editors and reporters from the leading publications serving the market, demonstrate your products and share your company vision?
Creating and Executing a Strategy
The key to a successful PR campaign rests on the ability to generate a steady stream of integrated activities, which will deliver better and more ongoing results. In short, you need to identify blocks of editorial, advertising and trade show exhibition opportunities that consistently get your company and its message in front of focused audiences over a sustained period—typically beginning at least three months prior to the trade show. The following offers an example of the key stages of an integrated program:
• Identify an editorial opportunity with a publication that is slated for distribution at the trade show and secure your company, product or service as part of a feature article in that issue. Keep in mind that publications may assign editorial content at least three months in advance of the issue date.
• Place a three-month ad buy to coincide with the feature article/issue. Listings in print and online buyer's guides provide another avenue for getting your name in front of prospects.
• Distribute a media advisory at least two weeks prior to the show offering a "sneak preview" of any key announcements that will be made. Perhaps your company is launching a new product, announcing a service enhancement or partnering with a new distributor. These advisories present an ideal opportunity to secure appointments at the show for product demos or interviews.
• Publicize if someone from your company is a featured speaker at the conference associated with the trade show. Get the word out in an e-mail blast to attending media representatives at least one month in advance. Think of the media as an extension of your customer base. Make sure you have hard copies of the presentation on hand at the show along with contact information for the speaker(s).
• Prepare a press kit for distribution at the show. Typically, a press kit will include a company backgrounder, product information, news clippings and case studies. Most important, the press kit should include a formal press release with an exclusive dateline for the trade show. Make sure you leave an ample supply of press kits in the media/press room on the opening day of the show.
• Send personalized follow-up e-mails to prospects two weeks, and no later than three weeks, after the show. The e-mail can excerpt your bylined article and/or case study that appeared in the trade publication and include a message that reinforces your value proposition.
Company Branding: The Giveaway that Keeps on Giving
No trade show strategy is complete without the ubiquitous giveaway. Who can resist a freebie? I can recall at least two occasions where I was almost mowed down by temporarily deranged senior executives lunging for a free t-shirt. However, few freebies are thoughtfully woven into—or support—an overarching PR and marketing strategy. Ideally, the giveaway brings in traffic and has a life beyond the show. One of our most successful giveaways involved a set of toy antlers—an image that was carried through every piece of our client's marketing and PR collateral leading up to the show. Not only were the antlers quickly snapped up, attendees actually wore them as they made their way across the show floor. And because they were the centerpiece of the company's marketing campaign, they were immediately identifiable and linked back to the company. Two years later, the antlers continue to be a popular giveaway at trade shows around the world.
(Consistency + Repetition) x Third-Party Validation = Sales
There's an adage that sales are made one handshake at a time. Although times have changed, sales success has and will likely always be measured one customer at a time—regardless of the product or service, buyer (consumer or B2B) or channel (face-to-face or Internet). Marketing and PR, however, are an entirely different story. They are not one-hit wonders. For example, cashing in on an editorial opportunity and getting a mention in an article is not, in and of itself, likely to make the phones ring and the front office jump. Effective marketing and PR relies on a strategy that delivers a consistent message to a targeted audience across a variety of channels over a sustained period. These channels—i.e., national, trade, and vertical market publications—can also provide a critical element—third-party validation from an objective source.
Too many companies take a hit or miss approach when it comes to their overaching sales and marketing strategy. Likewise, they do not strategically prepare for their trade show initiatives. Exhibiting at a trade show can be costly and certainly disruptive as it requires the reallocation of critical resources, i.e., senior salespeople who would otherwise be in the office coordinating the sales team or out in the field making key sales calls. In order to maximize the return on your trade show investment, you need to build a strategy that integrates PR to deliver your message consistently and effectively to your targeted audience, taking advantage of each customer's touch point. For companies large and small and across all industries, an integrated approach is the surest way of maximizing sales and marketing ROI.
Charles Epstein is the President and Founder of BackBone, Inc., a public relations, marketing communications, and business development firm. He is a widely cited authority on business communications and mass media. When he is not consulting with clients and developing marketing and PR strategies, he is co-host and Executive Producer of Jockstraps, a news parody show airing over Sirius Satellite Radio, and Executive Editor of Sportsman's Daily, a sports parody Web site that is also distributed via CBS Sports Online. You can contact him at 561-470-0965, or by e-mail at che@backboneinc.com.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
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