Last week I attended the Design West trade show in San Jose. The exhibit floor was packed with design engineers looking for new embedded technologies and solutions (attendance looked to be up from the previous year), however I was utterly astonished at the ways in which some exhibitors wasted their marketing dollars. Care to join their ranks? Here are top ways to waste money exhibiting at a trade show:

Fail #1. Have a lousy company website. Trade show attendees, especially engineers and scientists, research exhibitors’ websites ahead of time to determine which booths to visit. If your website does not immediately communicate what you do, how it is relevant to your site visitor, and provide a decent impression of your brand, you are very likely to be passed over on the show floor.

Fail #2. Place a big trade show logo on your home page.  Unless you combine the logo with a headline or copy with a direct tie-in to your company’s value proposition, accompanied by a meaty show landing page, this logo does absolutely nothing to influence a potential booth visitor (or web prospect, for that matter). Instead you’ve wasted prime web real estate, which could have instead be used to promote something compelling, such as a software demo or case study.

Fail #3. Sit on a stool, frown, and play on your smartphone. Your lack of enthusiasm and engagement gives me a very poor impression of your company. While I am combing the show floor for a solution to my engineering challenge, you seem to be tired and are clearly not interested in talking to me.

Fail #4. Blow off social media. “Engineers don’t use social media,” right? WRONG! Events are one of the best times to engage in social media, especially Twitter and LinkedIn. There were very active Twitter threads, using the event hashtag (#designwest), about the conference and expo. Exhibitors show attendees, and the trade press were all engaging together virtually. The reach extended well beyond the walls of the show, as others following Design West who could not attend were no doubt interested in the buzz and could follow through their social media accounts.

Fail #5. Use Twitter as SPAM. There were a select few exhibitors who drove us all CRAZY by posting banal messages, such as “Stop by booth xx for a free recycled shopping bag,” which don’t add real value or help show attendees learn or find solutions. The worst offender would send the exact same message 10 times in succession to fill our newsfeeds with this garbage. Marketing FAIL!

Fail #6. MIA. I have two categories of MIA. 6a. Put some literature and a demo board on a table, and then leave the booth unstaffed. This approach guarantees you will bring home a full box of lit and no leads. 6b. Forgo the booth backdrop, relying on the show organizer’s small stencil sign to serve as your banner to the world. This sends a “my company is broke and does not really care about this trade show anyway” vibe. And since the stencil signs are too small to read, you are almost guaranteed that no one will know that you were at the event anyway.

Ok, so now that you’ve heard my list of how to waste money, I’ll leave you with a few images of smart trade show tactics from my time at Design West.

Synapse Wireless created CapNet, the “world’s largest wireless network of propeller beanies,” and heavily promoted this in their booth and social media. The beanies created much buzz and had big staying power on the heads of attendees during the show. Synapse did a great job tying in another exhibitor, Altium, whose software was used in the design of the beanies.

Not only did the Silex booth staff know their stuff, they were so friendly and energetic I just had to jump in a photo with the group!

Stonestreet One did a great job of demonstrating their partnerships with bigger companies, such as Texas Instruments, through hardware on display.

Rohde and Schwarz held short product seminars inside their eighteen-wheeler, parked on the show floor

TREW can help you create a smart event strategy, from planning promotion, design execution, and post-show lead nurturing. Contact us today for more information on trade show marketing.

Related blog posts:

Trade Show Media Relations Do’s and Don’ts

TREW’s Top 5 B2B Trade Show Items & New Ideas to Boost Your Booth Traffic

6 Smart Trade Show Tactics Seen at Design West 2012

This past week, the TREW Marketing Crew gathered in Austin Texas for a 2-day team retreat. The goals of the retreat were to get together as a team and strengthen relationships while discussing how we can deliver excellence to our clients. Here are a few highlights for our time together.

We started off with an ice breaker – the Great Egg Drop.

Using straws, tape and popsicle sticks, we had to build a structure to protect our eggs when dropped from a high elevation.

Unfortunately, none of the eggs survived the big drop – clearly we need our engineering customers’ help!

After the ice beaker, we got down to business. Wendy and Rebecca kicked off the retreat with our 2012 successes.

The team was excited to hear we had a year end revenue growth of 50 percent.

Day one finished up with happy hour and white elephant gift exchange.

Here’s a a glimpse at some of the great gifts.

Day two’s topics included marketing successes and goals, as well as HubSpot demos from each team member.

In between presentations we kept up the hard work, taking advantage of our time together.

We found the retreat to be a great success and can’t wait to gather again in 2013!

Last week, the TREW Crew headed to Boston for a full-court press of training on HubSpot software and inbound marketing best practices. This follows over 50 hours of training by the team this past summer, culminating in TREW being named a HubSpot Certified Partner just two weeks ago. Here are our top takeaways from the week – look for lengthier posts to come diving into these and other topics from the conference.

1) 1+1=3

During Inbound 2012, HubSpot announced their latest 3.0 software release themed around cool new features combined together for a greater impact (or the more catchy articulation of 1+1=3).

Dharmesh Shah on stage at Inbound 2012 showing off the features of the 3.0 release

Of these new features, there are a few stand-outs that the Hubspot-Certified TREW Crew is excited to implement right away. (For illustrative purposes, we will discuss these features using a fictitious TREW prospect named Larry).

• Smart Calls-to-Action (CTAs) – Larry has already visited TREW Marketing and downloaded the Smart Marketing Guide for Engineers, so the next time Larry visits the site, he would see an offer for our white paper, Inbound Marketing: 5 Keys to Generating Leads on Your Website.
• Smart Forms – When Larry returns to the TREW site for more fantastic TREW downloads, we will remember his information and not ask for the same personal information again.
• Contacts timeline view – Not only can we learn about Larry from what he has shared with TREW, as well as by viewing his social media activity, the new HubSpot timeline view provides us with a visual story of the actions Larry has taken on the TREW site and lifecycle status.
• Social media management – HubSpot 3 makes social sharing easier, providing us with the ability to post to multiple accounts and platforms. It has built-in scheduling (and timing suggestions) so that we reach Larry when his is more likely to be plugged into his social accounts.

These are just a few of the many new cool features in Hubspot 3. For more about this new release, visit the Hubspot website.

2) Marketing Math – Calculating Visits to Leads to Sales

We all would like to formulaically know how many visitors to our website it will take to convert the right number of leads to generate the revenue our business needs. Up to now, that has been difficult, but with HubSpot’s automated and highly analytical inbound marketing tools, it gets a lot easier.

Mike Volpe, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of HubSpot, shared his process for doing just this, using an example revenue goal, sales data, and analytics from his HubSpot marketing tools. By knowing his average revenue per customer, and historical data on his lead-to-customer and visitor-to-lead conversion rates from HubSpot, he gladly signed his marketing team up to do their part to support sales.

Look for another post to come that goes into much greater detail about this example, including formulas and real numbers. In the end, his marketing team needed tens of thousands of leads to generate less than one hundred more customers for sales – and the key to marketing doing this job is a continuous flow of new content, distributed across marketing channels. To read more about this and whet your appetite, check out our new Inbound Marketing white paper.

3) Content is Still King.

We’ve said it in blog posts, we’ve said it books, and we’ve said it in probably every client meeting over the last five years:

Content. Is. King.

According to everything we learned at Inbound 2012, content is still king. But, marketing best practices have to adapt, because as Gary Vaynerchuk said (with much more *colorful words), “As marketers, we take every good idea, every great new technology, practice, and tactic, and we ruin it. We use it and we squeeze the life out of it until no one likes it anymore.”

Drastic statement? Think about traditional mail. Surely our grandparents were excited to get mail. Are you excited? Probably not, because it’s full of junk and ads. Marketers ruined it. We use a spam blocker to filter our marketing emails and a DVR to skip commercials. Mass-produced, generic content has been squeezed pretty hard, but content is still important.

So how is content evolving? With context. Content is still king, but it needs to be in the right context for the audience. Marketers have to understand what their customers and potential customers want, what their interests are, and provide content that will appeal to those customers best in order to succeed.

4) Try again.

The slide above is from Rand Fishkin’s, CEO of SEO software company SEOmoz, keynote speech on SEO tactics. In this new age of inbound marketing, we feel a sense of duty to constantly pump out content and make it go “viral” – to reach new audiences by blogging and sharing via social media.

Rand’s example of his guide, “SEO: The Free Beginner’s Guide From SEOmoz” was a great case study of how he launched and re-launched this guide. On the first try, it did not generate much traffic nor did it capture the top spot on Google’s results page. He then revised and re-launched it two, three, and even four times to finally earn the top ranking spot on Google, which now effectively drives traffic back to his website.

The lesson here is that you can launch a revised white paper year over year at the same URL. With each new version, Google will see the new signals accruing at this URL and will increase its ranking in the search engine results. Also, don’t be afraid to blog about the updated version, and post it on social media multiple times. If your first attempt failed, no one will care if you revise and repost it…because no one saw it to begin with.

“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:

Which event attracts over 3,000 of the world’s brightest engineers, educators, and scientists from around the world each year? Answer: NIWeek – a premier event on graphical system design organized by National Instruments.

TREW clients Alfamation and Cyth Systems participated throughout NIWeek, from the keynotes to technical sessions and the exhibit floor. TREW Marketing put our events and PR hats on to help with the wide breadth of marketing planning and execution at the show.

Alfamation

A key event of Alfamation’s 12–month marketing plan, developed by TREW Marketing, was planning and executing participation at NIWeek and showcasing three new product launches:

• SuperNova – a Test Development Software for NI TestStand
• FlexMedia VA-01 – a PXI-based high-speed LVDS HD Video BER Analysis module
• FlexMedia AM-01 – a PXI-based  automotive infotainment test module

Alfamation logo designed by TREW Marketing

TREW created technical product brochures and flyers for Alfamation’s products – SuperNova, FlexMedia VA-01, VG-01 and FlexMedia AM-01.

With years of trade show experience, we planned and executed the trade show marketing, from designing and producing Alfamation’s booth to developing the promotion strategy for driving traffic to the booth – one of them being iPad give aways for the NI sales force and NIWeek participants. Members of the TREW Crew helped staff the booth and bring energy and excitement to encourage attendees to stop in.

Alfamation and the TREW Crew also enjoyed showcasing the new products during in-person meetings with editors from some leading trade magazines -ECN Magazine, Photonics Spectra, Electronic Products, Desktop Engineering, and Evaluation Engineering.

Alfamation engineers leading product demonstrations in the booth at NIWeek

The Alfamation and TREW team effort paid off, with total leads exceeding set goals, new sales opportunities identified, and productive meetings with top-tier press throughout the week.

Cyth Systems

Cyth Systems had some very big news to share at NIWeek, and hired TREW Marketing to help. With a short time to build and execute the strategy, TREW worked with Cyth to position and launch their new product Circaflex – a low-cost, ready-to-use embedded control system for Life Sciences applications, such as bioprocess, biomedical, and biotech. The product was strategically launched around NIWeek so that Circaflex could be positioned at NIWeek and presented to key partners and customers.

TREW Marketing created various collateral elements for the product launch:

• 1-Pager for parnter sales force on how Cyth’s domain expertise can be leveraged in product marketing
• One page flyer detailing product features, key applications, and benefits
• Presentation slides to succinctly introduce Circaflex for to customers, partners, and press

Cyth Systems Circaflex Product Flyer

TREW also implemented various PR activities for Cyth such as improving web visibility and SEO, and pitching targeted in-person press meetings.

Leading trade magazines Cyth Systems’ met with during NIWeek to share more about their new Circaflex embedded controller.

Some other marketing activities that TREW executed for Cyth were:

• Developed a compelling customer testimonial for use in booth, online, and in parnter sales and marketing meetings
• Wrote and distributed Circaflex product launch press release
• Worked with NI to add Circaflex to 3^rd party partner website

Cyth and Alfamation Announcements Featured on ni.com

In addition to developing and executing the marketing plans for its customers, TREW was directly represented at NIWeek by co-founders Rebecca Geier and Wendy Covey, who presented the 5 Most Important Marketing Investments to an audience comprising small to medium-sized engineering product and service companies globally. The 5 investments highlighted during the presentation were – Website, Content and Collateral, Search Engine Marketing, Co-Partnering, and e-newsletters.  Read more about this presentation at the Building Stronger Partners blog, published by Jack Barber, NI Alliance Program Manager.

As the fall trade show season approaches, contact TREW Marketing to discuss how we might help your organization develop and execute a targeted product launch and trade show strategy.

This article will appear in the next issue of Greenlights for Nonprofit Success e-newsletter, Power Steering.

Are you considering hiring an intern to help with marketing projects?  When you have a lean staff, interns can help fill the void, bringing creativity and a fresh perspective to your organization.  They can also be a huge time investment and distraction, depending upon how you’ve structured their work.

Here are a few best practices pulled together from our experience at TREW Marketing:

1. Recruit and hire as you would a full-time employee.  Conduct a formal interview, ask probing questions, and as you make your hiring decision, think to yourself, “would I hire this person as a full-time employee someday?”

2.  Set clear expectations of the internship.  This includes compensation, duration, work hours, work location, and attire.  Given that this may be the intern’s first professional job, be as specific as possible.

3.  Pay your interns.  Ok, I’ll admit that I’ve heard of several free intern situations that worked out just fine. In the past I’ve paid interns, which I believe in turn helped set clear expectations of professionalism expected. We have given raises for returning interns, as they were more valuable to us and it was a nice reward for their past good work and loyalty.

4. Define a project(s) for the intern that are hands-on with a well-defined scope where they can work autonomously (see #6 for more ideas on ideal projects).

5. Make sure the project has a defined timeline with a clear start and end date.

6. Pick the right project.  Try to find projects that are important to the organization but you may just not be able to get to them; also try to find projects that will not be detrimental to the organization if they blow up – examples include competitive analysis, technology recommendations (social media for instance), new collateral or content development, media or event research, etc.

7. Assign a mentor (may be you).  Set up weekly meetings where you provide the structure, but they run.  The intern should come with an agenda, and prepared updates of progress, obstacles they’re facing, and support they need as well as what they’ve learned and are enjoying/not enjoying.

8. Have interns present their work.  Have interns present the findings of their project at the end of their internship – this is really important because they not only learn much by going through the process of developing the presentation and presenting in a professional setting, but their work is then nicely packaged for you.

9.  Conduct a formal performance review.  Depending upon the duration of the internship, perhaps do this twice — in the middle of the internship and at the conclusion.  You can even provide performance review criteria to the intern at the beginning of the internship in order to be very clear about your expectations.

10.  Have some fun!  Be sure to take your intern out to lunch or happy hour with the staff and help them feel like they are part of the group.  Remember how intimidating it can be to start a new job with new people, especially at the very beginning of your career.

We recently attended the 2009 Gala for the Children in support of the Children’s Medical Center Foundation of Central Texas.  Events such as these sometimes struggle to strike the delicate balance between communicating information and raising funds while providing opportunities for fun.  I am pleased to say this wonderfully-executed event struck the balance with excellence, raising over $700,000 for the children.

We began the evening by peeking at the live and silent auction items up for bid.  After imbibing in a few adult beverages and some wonderful appetizers, the program began.  We heard of many firsts and accomplishments of the Medical Center from the past year, including being named the only hospital in the world to be Leed Platinum certified, and watched an incredibly moving video of patient stories.  

We had the opportunity to dine with the nice folks from Austin Suburu who played a significant sponsorship role of the gala and were touched by their commitment to the Children’s Medical Center.

The gala also featured a killer band, casino, and crazy fun photo booth courtesy of Say Cheese.

TREW Marketing Co-Founders Wendy Covey and Rebecca Geier, plus spouse Randy Covey enjoy the Say Cheese photo booth during the gala

Congrats to the Foundation staff for putting together a memorable night for all, and for raising over $700,000 for the children.