Trade shows can be an amazing opportunity to network, educate buyers, and grow your business. However, the art of trade show marketing can be tricky and has become an ever-changing battle for the attention of the client. Through strong competition with surrounding booths for the show visitors’ attention, exhibiting companies have driven demand for a greater variety and increase in complexity. Every year new products, processes, and services are created solely around the need for a full and complete stop by a client or customer.

These products, which started from the most humble of beginnings, have grown steadily in complexity, expense, and interactivity as time has gone by. Originally, a free pen or pencil was enough to stop a client and draw his attention toward your literature or representatives. But now, even the most useful of office items is seen as trivial and uninspired.

In an effort to help your trade booth in the upcoming season, here are the top 5 trending B2B trade show items to help boost your booth traffic:

#1 – Eye catching USB 2GB Thumb-Drives

These little pocket promos are great for B2B tradeshows! Not only are they a useful office staple, but they are cheaply available in bulk, are made in any custom shape, size and color, and have two customizable print surfaces. Over all they take the number one spot for ease, affordability, versatility, and an easy creator of top-of-mind awareness.

#2 – Quality Reusable Tote Bags

Tote bags may seem like an old trick, but it is also a sure bet. Especially at large trade shows when there is a lot of literature, samples, and promotionals to hang on to. Totes are an easy way to guarantee a client will have your name on their person throughout the show and back home or around the office.

#3 – Combination Pen/Laser Pointer/Memory card Pens

The typical business professional is not interested in a normal pen. Even the nicer of promotional pens is still not something they are willing to carry around during the show. Which means, they are not willing to stop at your booth either. In order to still use the option of a cheaper promo, like a pen, you can enhance your offer with even more flash. The combination of a laser pointer and usb thumb-drive in a sturdy, sleek pen gives you both the convenience and unique qualities needed in a trade show promo to bring your target to a full and complete stop.

#4 – USB Tech Gadgets – Mini USB Presenter remote

This unique office gadget is great to flag down attention from your future clients. Not only is this a cheaper option for a high tech audience, but it is also something that almost every business professional needs. This pocket presenter is slim, compact, and avoids any argument against carrying “too many things around the show.”

#5 – Quality Breath Mints with case.

Mints may seem passé and obvious, but it is a staple for any trade show rep or prospective client. These high quality, affordable mint dispensers are perfect for getting people to stop and put YOUR name right in their pocket. Both mint tins and sheet dispensers have large full color print areas and are fully customizable to your specifications. When worst comes to worst, everyone needs a mint.

Although the promo “bait and hook” strategy is wonderfully successful when properly executed, there have been a few other trends in trade show marketing that have been very useful and exciting as well. Most recently, businesses are fixated on the “Win a Free iPad” raffle or drawing. This is, in fact, an easy way to get specific information from a client, such as an email or business card, and draw them into your booth. However, because this has become such a consistently used tactic, it has lost the excitement needed to truly capture the direct attention for your business needs.

In an effort to overcome these obstacles, here are some top trending ideas for interactive activities and re-imagined raffles that will steal the spotlight back for your business.

#1 - Skin It Web Tech Gifts

These gift-able, customizable, personal tech device covers are a fantastic give away for the tech-savvy consumer who wants a cool promo without any of the fuss. Skin It provides you with preloaded gift cards redeemable through a link that takes your client back to your company’s website!

#2 – Numbered Bag Raffles

By creating competition and camaraderie between your potential clients, you can create a lot of chatter and bring attention to your booth. One idea has been to give out totes, numbered by a tag, to clients. Each bag and number has an identical double, if a client finds the other client with the twin matching bag, and return to the booth, they will receive the prize. With desirable prizes this method has worked very well.

#3 – Rentable Engravary Machines

This is an easy and unique way to bring in booth traffic! There are numerous companies that rent out engraving machines at daily rates. This supplies both a unique draw and a custom product that your client will surely keep for a long period of time!

#4 – Rentable Token Powered “Raffle Game” Machines

Similar to the engraving machine, there are also plink-o machines that are available for rent by the day. These are fun, loud, and a much needed change from the monotony of usual show tactics. By giving out tokens for providing lead information, or participating in a demonstration, you can get your clients excited, interested, and involved!

In closing, as you move closer to your trade show date and are making the crucial decision of which product to invest in for your individual business, REMEMBER, just any product is not guaranteed to yield better results unless you can devise a way to loop these methods into your business or sales model. Your products and gifts will be most effective when the product relates to or directly promotes/reminds your buyer of your original business or product.

Need help planning your upcoming trade shows? Contact TREW Marketing today.

Related Blog Posts:

6 Smart Trade Show Tactics Seen at Design West

Trade Show Media Relations: Do’s and Don’ts

5 Marketing Activities for Trade Show Success

Landing pages, also called “lead capture pages,” are the gateway to your web conversion offers that create leads for your company. This is often the first page a web visitor sees when arriving to your site from a social media link, email promotion or paid search ad. At TREW, we are asked many questions around how to create a landing page that generates leads, thus the following post outlines some of our tips to guide you through the process of crafting an effective landing page.

When should I create a landing page?

Landing pages should be created to house high-value content for a targeted audience. Good examples of content that visitors are willing to give you their personal information for are:

• Technical white papers
• Webcasts/webinars
• Tutorials
• E-newsletters

The more valuable the content is perceived to be, the more personal information a web visitor is willing to give. For this reason, creating a compelling landing page is critical to generate leads.

What are the key ingredients to a great landing page?

With one piece of content to house, and one main call-to-action, “to download,” landing pages should be quick to develop. Avoid wasting time by creating a “kitchen sink” of call-to-actions on the landing page. Instead, follow this checklist of landing page content and wireframe example below:

• Lead capture form prominently placed above the page fold
• Page title and detailed sub-title highlighting  offers
• Brief 1-2 body paragraphs followed by bulleted reasons why the reader needs your content, and how they will benefit from it
• Company contact information
• Bonus points: embed a short video that further explains the content

Is less really more? What fields should be on the lead capture form?

Just like the page itself, lead capture forms need to be clear, simple, and concise. Studies have shown that companies with longer page descriptions and forms have a lower conversion rate than those with simple landing page descriptions and forms. By shortening the landing page text and form fields, one company saw their landing page conversion rate go from 32% to 53% (Hubspot, Webinar Redesign Strategy, 2010). If possible, develop the lead form with 4 fields:

• First and last name
• Email address
• Company name
• Open description box

My landing page is live, now what?

Consider your landing page as a living document. Allow it to run at least a month before making changes to it, while tracking visits and conversion rates. Based on its performance, you will need to decide how to make changes to improve the page.

Are lots of visitors landing and then not converting? This could mean that the page content needs tweaks to better explain your offering and compel the visitor to download, or it could mean your offer is not compelling enough for your target audience to leave their name. If the landing page seems to not be reaching its expected web traffic, try to increase reach with an email campaign, pay-per-click ads, or use as a next step after a trade show.

Overall, the purpose of landing pages is to help you convert a faceless web visitor into real sales opportunities for your business, and is an important component in your marketing strategy and website design.

For more advice on website design, see these related blog posts:

Microsites: Effective Marketing or Bad Idea?

Maximize your Online Impact with a Winning Web Design

Last week, TREW attended the Design West Conference in San Jose. Here, exhibitors demonstrated products and services with the common purpose of helping design engineers be innovative, efficient, and produce reliable, secure solutions. While walking the trade show floor, I spotted several effective marketing tactics for attracting booth traffic, conveying key messages, and sticking in my memory well after flying home to Austin.

1. Impactful, attractive, low-cost booth graphics.

Crank Software used a set of three lightweight, retractable graphics placed closely together to act as one image for a 10×10 booth. My eye was drawn to the lime green swoosh, which contrasted nicely against the gray and black elements. With a quick scan, I could tell that Crank offers HMI software – evident by colorful software screens and graphics that take the design engineer through the design phases of prototype, develop, and deploy. While there are some slight improvements I’d make to the design, such as de-cluttering some of the repetitious phrases, I think this booth graphic is a nice model for a small booth presence.

2. Direct mail – still alive and kicking

As a pre-registered attendee, I received several pre-show promotional emails, none of which I found very compelling. On the other hand, I received one (and only one) physical postcard, sent by Datakey Electronics. Attached to the postcard was a key with an embedded chip that contained data of which prize awaited me at the booth. It spoke to me on two levels –  I was guaranteed a prize, but more importantly it was an interesting way for Datakey to quickly demo their rugged, portable memory products. The Datakey staff measured their direct mail effectiveness over multiple years, sharing interesting results: 10-13% of mailed postcards are redeemed at the booth, and the mailer boosted their traffic by close to 50%.

3. Hands-on lab

Rohde & Schwarz, one of the larger Design West exhibitors, dedicated over half of their booth real estate for an in-depth, 30-minute hands-on lab. Each of the ~10 session attendees used demo equipment and prescribed exercises to explore Rohde & Schwarz’s instrumentation. A knowledgeable engineer guided their audience through the exercises, and answered questions. Attendees also enjoyed refreshments, a nice enticement for attendees during the long conference day.

4. Happy, dancing mascot

Ok, now I admit that not every engineer enjoys a happy, dancing mascot, but I will say that this little dude drew lots of attention to his booth, VIA Embedded. VIA extended the mascot’s presence with small stuffed versions of him that trade show attendees can take home to their kids. (Full disclosure: some bias might be involved, due to my year stint as a high school Tiger mascot).

As a contrast to the happy lime green mascot, another company hired scantily-clad women for their booth (sorry, I somehow neglected to snap a photo). One was even wearing wings, which as much as I could tell had nothing to do with the company’s key messages for the show. They did draw attention, but from afar – I think the booths directly across from the models saw a boost in traffic, as the show attendees were not keen to walk through the “interaction path” of these women. After a barrage of negative tweets (and emails, I imagine), the company wisely pulled the women from their booth after the first day of the show.

5. Interesting demo incorporating a product partnership

Cyth Systems had a demo stand within the National Instruments booth, where they showed off a bioreactor using NI’s embedded SBRIO technology. The demo was eye-catching and easy to quickly understand. It also did a very good job showcasing both companies’ products clearly and effectively, which is often not an easy feat in a partnership demo. And finally, because of this demo, I now know how Botox is made (yuck!).

6. …and a few final observations

• Social media: Several exhibitors, including Texas Instruments, did a fantastic job of tweeting specific, compelling content about their presentations and demos. A few others did not quite fare as well, with banal posts, such as “come by our booth and win an iPad.”

• QR codes: A surprising lack of QR codes were utilized by exhibitors. I can’t help thinking that this is a huge missed opportunity. Or is the adoption rate really that slow for people to use QR readers? However, I did see MANY QR codes used in the airport – TSA had them on practically ever sign as I went through security.

• Eye-popping shirts: Kudos to the LVDT folks, who I nicknamed “the purple people” for their memorable (but professional) booth attire.

• Big monitors for “mini-theaters” in smallish booths: this is a great solution when you don’t have the space for a large theater presentation. And theater presentations were a big hit at this show in all booth sizes.

Are you looking to marketing strategies for your next trade show? TREW Marketing has deep expertise in events. Contact us today to find out how we can help you improve your trade show program and increase your return on investment with every event.

Staying top-of-mind with prospects and customers is a challenge all companies face. E-newsletters are a great way to maintain a conversation with your target audience, promote valuable content, and help nurture your lead base to increase customer loyalty and move prospects closer to the sale. A corporate e-newsletter, done right, can be one of the most effective and strategic marketing activities a company undertakes.

However, e-newsletters that aren’t executed according to proven best practices often turn out to be a liability, causing valuable leads to dry up, or worse yet, anger potential customers. Some of the biggest e-newsletter mistakes a business should avoid include:

- Sporadic, inconsistent e-newsletter timing
- Mailing to a purchased list or unsolicited e-mail recipients
- Poorly-programmed e-newsletter design and layout that displays incorrectly in various email programs
- Too much content in the email
- Unappealing subject line
- Lack of subscriber management/opt out capabilities
- Lack of analysis of open rates, click-through rates

This 2-part blog post will help you avoid the e-newsletter missteps that result in unhappy customers and prospects, and use the power of e-mail for your lead nurturing efforts. In this first issue we will cover best practices for:

1. Design
2. Content
3. Mailing list

1. Lay a solid foundation
Your first step in starting an e-newsletter is design. After all, this is prime real estate for your company and brand and serves as a key tool to communicate who your company is and how your products and services can help readers. Here are several design best practices:

- The design should be consistent from issue to issue and have staying power for many issues to come

- Key to design is usability – making it is easy for readers to open, quickly skim and find articles and links that are compelling to them. The design example below, from TREW client Wineman Technology, includes large, easy-to-read headlines, a sidebar with compelling content, and a prominent feature story.

Ensuring the design is correctly programmed in email engine software is equally critical for display in numerous different email clients. Unfortunately, each popular email client in the market today – Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, etc. – displays images, columns, and other design elements a little differently. Outlook, which has almost half of the email client market, is especially picky and requires specific programming techniques for your e-newsletter to display correctly to your recipients.

With poor design and/or programming, you may find that what was once a beautiful e-newsletter in the conceptual planning stage has turned into a mess of misaligned columns, images and text once your readers open it up. Here is what Outlook can do to an email that is not programmed properly:

Test your design at emailonacid.com – a web service that, for a small fee, will run the design code through a tool that mimics all popular email clients, ensuring that you discover any issues with your layout up front, so you can fix them before mailing out to your audience.

2. Develop compelling content
It’s tempting to focus your e-newsletter content on sales-driven topics such as new promotions. You will better attract and retain readers if you minimize the sales pitch, and focus instead on creating and offering content that helps readers do their job better.

Here are 5 types of content we have found to be the most valuable for a technical audience, driving click-throughs and keeping readers coming back for more:

1. Industry trends

2. Tutorials or “tips and tricks” that help readers use your products more effectively

3. Case studies from customers doing something unique and compelling with your products

4. A “Top 5” list – such as questions new customers ask, with answers, or new applications for your flagship product. It may sound gimmicky, but a Top 5 list blends valuable content packaged in an appealing format– people love lists!

5. Event news or snippets from presentations you’ve recently given at industry conferences

Two more content best practices:
- People have short attention spans, so consider how much content you put in and remember, the shorter the better.
- Provide a compelling headline, a brief summary of an article, an image, and a prominent link to read more.

These tips on content types and design will help your readers skim quickly and select what they want to read, and it helps you push visitors to your website, where you can offer even more valuable content to your audience.

The below e-newsletter is a great example of keeping content brief and compelling, while pushing readers to their website to learn more.

3. Build your readership

Once you’ve designed your e-newsletter and have a clear vision for succinct, compelling content, it’s time to build your readership. While it’s tempting to mail every contact in your database and more, there is a smarter approach that will gain you more loyalty and better results.

Focus on only your most relevant leads – those who have contacted you in the last 12 – 24 months. Older leads are less likely to remember you or be interested in and open your e-newsletter. In addition, older leads commonly include invalid or outdated email addresses, and your e-newsletter will bounce back when sent to them.

Also, to follow e-newsletter best practices and privacy laws, there are several key points you should adhere to when building your contact list:

a. Never use a purchased list. This is considered unsolicited email, and an e-newsletter should only be sent to contacts who know your company and have engaged with you in the past.

b. Only send to individuals, not a group inbox used my multiple people. For example, an email address such as info@msn.com or sales@ibm.com should be removed from your list of contacts.

c. Always offer an unsubscribe link at the bottom of your e-newsletter, and be sure that if someone clicks on it, they will be taken off your recipient list.

d. Don’t forget to offer a prominent “subscribe to our e-news” link on your website. People who have willingly subscribed are some of your most valuable readers, and they are highly motivated to receive your e-newsletter.

Following these rules isn’t just best practice; it also improves the chance that your e-newsletter is not flagged as spam. In addition, sending your e-newsletter to only your most relevant and valuable leads improves your ROI with higher open rates and click-through rates, and in the end these are the metrics that will provide visibility into its impact on your business and the goals of improving loyalty and nurturing an ongoing dialogue with your target audience.

In Part 2 of this blog post, we’ll share insight into e-newsletter analysis and discuss tips for improving your e-mail open rates and click-throughs. Also, look for details on recent successes from TREW clients who have recently embarked on their e-newsletter efforts.

“Our partnership with TREW Marketing resulted in clear, consistent company, product-level positioning and messaging with a well-organized strategic marketing plan. Their smart, collaborative approach, flexibility with our evolving team and strategy, and a commitment to truly understand our business model enabled them to define and deliver our unique value proposition in a highly competitive market.” – Jon Pafk, Sr. Director of Marketing

Founded in 2006, Starmount delivers software solutions that transform the retail environment to a more connected and engaging store experience. Their mobile selling, interactive kiosk, and digital signage software brings the richness of the web and the power of mobile into the store, where retailers can create more personalized, relevant, and dynamic interactions while shoppers can learn, discover, and buy anywhere in the store. Starmount’s customers include leading retailers such as Pep Boys, Urban Outfitters, and Home Depot.

Starmount selected TREW Marketing to develop the company and product-level positioning and messaging “brain”, followed by a 12-month integrated campaign-based marketing plan to establish awareness and preference of Starmount and its products and services.

Deliverables:

• Developed core elements of the “brain”, including:
  • A clearly defined mission and vision statement
  • Company positioning and quick pitch
  • Distinctive and intriguing tagline concepts
  • Product- and services-level positioning and messaging
• Custom, integrated, campaign-based 12-month marketing strategy and activity plan, including:
  • Prioritized trade shows, recommendations to extend “event shelf life” with pre/post-show promotion
  • Content development plan to generate qualified leads through compelling, targeted content
  • Direct marketing centered on launch of a quarterly e-newsletter
  • A multi-tiered PR approach to maximize resources and target top-tier relationships
  • Search engine marketing analysis and recommendations across multiple campaigns, including natural search and pay-per-click reporting metrics
  • Recommendations for co-marketing with Oracle Retail to increase leads and become an aligned partner on events and news opportunities

Results:

• Communications Brain used as messaging guide for primary company and product communication
• Consistency and efficiency gains by using Brain vs. reinventing messaging with each new activity
• Scalable and integrated mix of low- and high-cost media investments to generate demand
• Creation of the company mission and vision statements:

• • Mission: ”Starmount solutions bring the richness of the web and the power of mobile to create relevant, engaging store experiences.”
  • Vision: “To transform the in-store shopping experience to make stores relevant and more connected than ever before.”
  • Taglines: “We make shopping sense.” “Don’t just serve your customers. Engage them.”; “Create relevant shopping experiences. Anytime. Anywhere.”; “Software that makes shopping local, mobile, and shared.”

Here are examples of the Starmount “brain” brought to life:

Since the founding of TREW Marketing, our focus has been on serving engineering and scientific organizations with smart, collaborative, and measured marketing services. While serving this uniquely defined niche, we offer a broad array of marketing services.

#1 – Exceeding expectations: To start, how about some data?

43% 3.9x 156%

Q: What do 43%, 3.9x and 156% all have in common?

A: They are all results that exceeded expectations for our clients in 2010:

• 43% = Open rate for trade show followup compared to industry standard of 15-18%

Alfamation’s email marketing response rate was 2.6 times greater than industry average.

The Alfa team taking care of customers and visitors to the booth during NIWeek 2010.

And no matter the project, our customers want to see results up and to the right. In 2010, we did just that:

• Exceeding expectations on individual activities, which led to…
• Customers growing their business with TREW, which led to…
• TREW growing as a team and company

• 3.9x = How many dollars over goal quoted for back-to-school campaign targeting control engineering professors as result of specialized microsite and database marketing efforts

• 156% = Growth in web traffic to Wineman Technologies’ website following our work on the company’s website redesign and search-engine-marketing campaign. In addition to quantitative traffic growth, we heard about a recent success story that speaks to the quality of traffic from this web and search marketing investment:

“One of our recent web leads went from new prospect to booking a PO for $250k within 3 weeks! Thanks TREW Marketing for driving qualified visitors to our website through search marketing.” – Darryn La Zar, VP of Sales and Marketing, Wineman Technologies

The Wineman team gave TREW Crew members Wendy and Irene a tour around company headquarters, including R&D and manufacturing.