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SHOW TIME: Getting the most from your trade show experience.
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SHOW TIME Getting the most from your trade show experience
WHITE PAPER
In today’s marketing environment, methods for reaching prospects abound. From traditional billboards and television commercials to social media and native advertising, marketers have more ways to convey their messages than ever before.
Yet sales experts agree that it’s hard to beat the results from personal, two-way communication. It’s not surprising, then, that trade shows continue to hold significant marketing appeal. Few avenues provide the face-to-face opportunities to communicate with pre-qualified prospects – both formally and informally – than trade shows do. That’s why, for many companies, trade shows represent a principal marketing strategy.1 Why are trades shows an effective use of your marketing dollars? And how do you keep trade show visitors engaged in productive sales conversations once they leave your booth – and after the event ends? In this White Paper, we tackle those questions with lessons learned while helping countless clients prepare for – and capitalize on – their trade show experiences.
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Trade shows provide a solution to audience fragmentation.
Mass-media advertising – the ability to reach much of the population through one or two predominant communication channels – has given way to more direct marketing approaches.2 Whereas television, radio, and newspaper once delivered the vast majority of advertising audiences, the Internet and social media – coupled with mobile technology – now offer limitless options for promoting products and services to prospective buyers. The result: a so-called audience fragmentation that challenges marketers to choose the most effective avenues for reaching their specific target groups.3 ! Of course, sending a message to a particular market segment is the easy part. Persuading prospects to respond – to meaningfully engage in conversation – is a more complicated task. However, both
undertakings are critical to turning prospects into customers. ! That’s why trade show organizers are increasingly focused on attracting visitors who match their exhibitors’ targeted audiences. Trade shows have long provided a dependable way to directly interact with potential clients. Now trade shows are evolving, from events where companies sought only to make on-the-spot sales pitches, to opportunities for networking and establishing long-term client relationships.4 ! When it comes to marketing, nothing is more effective than the interaction that occurs from personal one-on-one communication. And trade shows – where exhibitors can connect with visitors whose very attendance prequalifies them as prospects – help marketers reach willing listeners among audience fragmentation.5
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Narrowing the Field Start with the end in mind
Every January, Promotional Products Association International hosts a trade show in Las Vegas. The annual PPAI Expo draws more than 11,000 professionals from the promotional products industry who gather to check out new items, attend educational sessions, and network with colleagues. There are more than 3,300 booths representing nearly 1,500 companies. If you market goods or services to the promotional products industry, PPAI Expo is a good place to showcase your wares to thousands of potential prospects.6 ! Of course, the Expo’s large attendance size presents a challenge if you hope to meet and communicate with every one of the visitors passing by your booth. What’s more, until you speak with them, how can you determine which attendees are viable prospects for your unique offerings? ! Now let’s say you provide product safety testing to promotional products companies. If Expo visitors needing product testing had an identifiable attribute, you could allocate your time accordingly and greatly improve your odds of meeting likely prospects. Instead, you’re left to qualify visitors the hard way: by trying to talk with 11,000 people in five days. ! As it turns out, PPAI also holds an annual Product Responsibility Summit that is attended by companies committed to selling safe and socially compliant goods.7 Less than 200 people attend the summit, but every company represented has a stake in social responsibility – and, therefore, a likely interest in the testing product you sell. !
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! Our experience has been that starting with your target audience in mind improves the chances of successful visitor engagement. ! If you are a trade show exhibitor, concentrating on events that closely target your company’s typical clients is an effective use of your limited resources. Not only will you meet fewer prospects, but they will meet a limited number of vendors. And because your presence portrays you as an expert in their area of interest, there’s a good chance they’ll be open to contact after the show. ! For their part, organizers looking to increase attendance at events should consider helping exhibitors reach their targeted audiences. Adding topic-specific shows such as PPAI’s Product Responsibility Summit, or tagging on a day or two devoted to special subjects, can help increase overall turnout.
Getting visitors to remember your company’s name after a trade show is an age-old challenge. Luckily, promotional products can increase the likelihood that you’ll be hard to forget. ! Promotional products are especially effective for creating name awareness. Nearly 85 percent of people receiving promotional products can accurately identify the advertisers whose branding appears on the items.8 ! Not only do receivers of your branded merchandise remember your company’s name, they also feel more positive about your organization. Note that over one-third of recipients say they are more likely to conduct business with an advertiser after receiving a promotional item than they were beforehand.9 ! Passing out items containing your company’s logo at trade shows has tremendous reach after the event ends.
Promotional products tend to get regular and continued use, so visitors receiving your giveaways – as well as the people around them – will have frequent and long-term exposure to your brand. ! Consider logoed bags, usually the first promotional product received at trade show registration desks. In the two years that recipients typically keep a branded bag, it generates over 5,700 impressions among those who see it. With a third of U.S. consumers owning a logoed bag, no other promotional i t e m o ff e r s g r e a t e r exposure.10 ! Why wait for the show to get started? Research demonstrates that including a promotional product with a pre-event mailing increases the likelihood that attendees will visit an exhibitor’s booth. For even better results, mail an offer of a free branded item for those who stop by your booth at the show.11 4!
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RTSI When it comes to measuring trade show effectiveness, it’s important to evaluate both the tangible and intangible benefits the events provide. Tangible benefits include any immediate results, such as new customers signed, products sold, and vendor relationships established.12 Without a doubt, those types of tangible benefits provide instant gratification from the trade show investment. ! Intangible benefits, on the other hand, largely involve information that makes any future marketing to trade show visitors possible. In intangible terms, the value of a trade show is not in the event itself, but in the long-term usefulness of the information gathered. Experts refer to the acquisition and utilization of such data as the return on trade show information (RTSI).13 ! It can be argued that actual RTSI occurs after a trade show ends, when sales leads
are pursued and follow-up strategies are determined. Also worth remembering is that the potential value of trade show information diminishes quickly as time passes between the event and the next contact. ! We suggest identifying a key metric in your business and measuring how a trade show affects that metric. Take prospecting for clients as an example. Research suggests that obtaining an initial face-to-face meeting with a prospect costs less than $100 with a trade show lead. That is onetenth the average cost to obtain a meeting without a trade show lead.14 ! Employing metrics such as that and others allows you to gauge the overall value of participating in events, and to identify which shows produce the best leads for your business. From there it’s easy to determine the closed-sale ratio from leads generated at trade shows.
How do you measure Return on Trade Show Information?
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PACKAGE YOUR MESSAGE We’ve seen how promotional products can get trade show visitors’ attention and kickstart conversations about your company’s products and services. But what if your giveaways could help convey your marketing message – and prompt prospects to talk back to you? ! Adding packaging to your promotional products lets you do more than simply show off your brand name and logo. Packaging allows you to deliver messages that actively drive consumer behavior. ! Marketers have long understood the impact packaging has on consumer opinions concerning the products they buy. That’s why consumer packaging is a multibillion-dollar industry. The promotional products industry has caught on to this secret and, as a result, trade show SWAG is becoming an avenue for encouraging twoway communication with visitors. ! Imagine that you’re at a trade show handing out logoed water bottles to everyone who stops by your booth. If you’re lucky, you get a few minutes to chat and exchange business cards. Then your visitor is off to the next exhibit or program session, and you might never know the water bottle’s value to future business. ! Now what if your water bottle came packaged in a customdesigned box? Included within the box’s graphics is a shortened URL or a QR code directing recipients to your website, where they can earn a gift by answering a short survey. After completing the survey, visitors are prompted to enter their email addresses so you can send shipping confirmations for their gifts. ! Suddenly, your trade show prospects are actively engaged with your company. Their survey answers can provide insight into upcoming projects on which they might need your products. When collecting their email addresses, you can ask for permission to notify them about special offers. And you can invite them to follow your company’s social media updates. ! Promotional product packaging is an inexpensive way to extend you marketing message, engage trade show visitors, and increase your return on trade show information. ! ! 6!
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FOOTNOTES 1.! Kellezi, Jonida. “Trade shows: a strategic marketing tool for Global Competition.” Procedia Economics and Finance 9 (2014): 466-471. 2.! Pantano, Eleonora. “Cultural factors affecting consumer behaviour: a new perception model.” EuroMed Journal of Business 6, no. 1 (2011): 117-136. 3.! Bergstrom, Guy. “If You're Not on TV, You Don't Exist. Why Audiences are Fragmented, and What You Can Do About It.” Accessed November 18, 2015, http://marketing.about.com/od/publicrelation1/a/ massmediapr.htm. 4.! Berné, Carmen, and Esperanza García-Uceda. “Targeting efficiencies among trade show nonattendees.” Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing, no. 15 (2007): 146– 157. 5.! Kellezi, Jonida. “Trade shows: a strategic marketing tool for Global Competition.” 6.! “The PPAI Expo.” Promotional Products Association International. Accessed November 20, 2015, http://expo.ppai.org/attendee/Pages/why-attend.aspx. 7.! “Product Responsibility Summit.” Promotional Products Association International. Accessed November 20, 2015, http://www.ppai.org/education/productresponsibilitysummit/. 8.! “Global Advertising Specialties Impressions Study: A Cost Analysis of Promotional Products Versus Other Advertising Media.” Advertising Specialty Institute. Accessed November 23, 2015, https:// www.asicentral.com/Downloads/Public/impressionstudy/impressions-study-2014.pdf. 9.! Ibid. 10.! Ibid. 11.! “Increase Booth Traffic With Promotional Products.” Promotional Products Association International. Accessed November 23, 2015, http://www.ppai.org/inside-ppai/research/Documents/ Increasetradeshowboothtrafficwithpromotionalproducts_SaleT.pdf. 12.! Bettis-Outland, Harriette, Jane S. Cromartie, Wesley J. Johnston, and Aberdeen Leila Borders. “The return on trade show information (RTSI): a conceptual analysis.” Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing 25, no. 4 (2010): 268-271. 13.! Ibid. 14.! “The Cost Effectiveness of Exhibition Participation: Part I.” Center for Exhibition Industry Research. Accessed November 19, 2015, http://www.kallman.com/pdfs/CEIR-Report-Reprint-SM37_CostEffectiveness-of-Exhibition-Participation.pdf.
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