StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article | How to Prepare for Trade Shows and Conventions

How to Prepare for Trade Shows and Conventions

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article | How to Prepare for Trade Shows and ConventionsThere are key events throughout the year for all industries and most of these come in the form of conventions or trade shows. These mass gatherings are an opportunity for businesses to promote their extensive list of products, usually with a focus on the latest releases. They also provide a chance for industry professionals to mingle and lay the groundwork for potential future collaborations with other companies as well as personal career progression.

If you are a new business or an individual that is new to the trade show and convention experience, here are some things you need to keep in mind in the months leading up to your event.

Select the Right Team

You won’t be able to manage a busy schedule that could include meetings and presentations as well as hosting your exhibit booth on your own. Even a small business will need at least 2 to 4 people attending these events to keep up with all the flurry of activity that tends to take place during conventions and trade shows.

However, you must select the right people for the job. You will want people who have strong social skills and the ability to engage passers-by in conversation and interest them in your booth. Perhaps some members of your sales and marketing team would be best for this. You will also need them to be punctual, reliable and efficient to ensure you can best present your business to other industry professionals.

Make Your Booth Amazing

Although you might make the best products on the market, if your exhibit booth looks dull and fails to catch people’s attention, it could have a detrimental effect on your business. One of the purposes of this type of event is to spread the word about your company and promote the business and its products. Therefore, you must make your booth look incredible, even if you have one of the smallest ones at the trade show.

For those who have a bigger budget, consider getting a double deck exhibit booth as these stand out from the crowd and provide plenty of space for storage and private meetings. If these are out of your price range, get creative and think of cost-effective ways you can decorate your booth to draw people in. However, remember to discuss this with the venue and find out what the health and safety codes are as there are likely to be restrictions to what you can do.

A good idea to work around any physical or health & safety restrictions is by using screens or monitors. This will allow you to display colorful graphics that grab people’s attention, while also opening you up to other forms of entertainment. Using something like the Spin Wheel for Trade Shows can help you play games with attendees, allowing them to spin a virtual wheel on the screen that goes round and round. Pick prizes for every segment on the wheel and you’ll soon have a long queue of people keen to come to your booth. Screens are also super helpful at displaying cool product videos, promo materials, etc. 

The bottom line is that you want to attract as many people to your booth as possible!

Prepare Marketing Materials

Again, the whole point of these events is to promote, promote, promote! You might have your products on display, but with no additional materials or further information available, this will be pointless. As a business, you should have already developed a marketing campaign for your products; therefore, you should have marketing material for these things at the ready. If you want to revamp your campaigns before you attend these events you can do, but this will depend on your budget and how much time you have. Whatever you do, just remember to bring those marketing materials with you to share with potential customers and clients at the event.

Booklets, pamphlets and sales brochures that people can take away with them are all brilliant items to have. You may even want to consider making up small gift bags with various marketing materials for your products and perhaps include some free samples where you can.

Secure Meetings

These events are usually sales orientated and many meetings that are business to business or business to client are held to secure deals and contracts. As a smaller, lesser-known business, you might find trying to secure these meetings a bit daunting and difficult, but you should still attend.

These meetings are an opportunity to widen your customer base and increase your business’s visibility across the industry. Even if you fail to secure as many sales as you would have liked, at least more people are becoming familiar with your company and know what you do. It’s also a chance to learn how you can improve your sales tactics and marketing.

Presentations

If you are going to give a presentation at one of these events, make sure it is engaging and memorable. Don’t rely on boring PowerPoint slides and monotone speeches. Instead, prepare a fun, interactive presentation that doesn’t allow your audience the chance to let their mind wander or to fall asleep while you’re on stage. If you’re not giving a presentation this time around, it’s still worth going to see others that are happening during these events as you can learn from other industry leaders and innovators, helping to keep you up to date and relevant as a business.

Although they are work-related events, trade shows and conventions can be great fun to attend. There’s always a lot to see on offer from other businesses and they’re great networking opportunities. If you’re lucky enough to attend one abroad, there’s also the chance to travel! Just remember these key points to help you prepare for your next big trade show event.

Six ways to be a better business leader

No matter what industry you work in, becoming a better leader in your area will be the career goal, many people aspire to fulfill. Some skills that many of the best figureheads have can be learned, or just come naturally to them. Either way, you can use them as examples of how you can improve your own performance.

Some of these top leadership skills can be very subtle yet hugely effective – but performing them in just the wrong way can have a negative effect on how people see you in the workplace. However, analyzing some of these behaviors (a few of which are listed here) will help you on your way to becoming the business leader you want to become.

Communicate effectively

The most successful business leaders will most likely be master communicators. The key to becoming a better leader will realize how to put your ideas across effectively – and persuade and inspire others. It is also essential to be able to listen keep an open mind when it comes to receiving feedback, for instance, so you can gain valuable insights.

Keep learning

Make sure your own knowledge does not become old and outdated, as this can affect both your professional development and your brand. Business is evolving at an astonishing rate, so you need to know about the latest techniques and trends.

That includes finding out more about the economy, your industry, and competitors, plus your own team. You should also work on the skills related to your role’s responsibilities and may consider enrolling in further education or taking a management course.

Take responsibility

A characteristic you should not have is to blame others when something bad happens. Accepting your role in your team’s actions – and the consequences – will help you get respect and trust. This means you will create a culture where you learn from mistakes and improve.

You can also take responsibility by ensuring errors don’t occur: you could check your company’s IT system is secure by working with brands such as INFINIT Consulting, Inc. This will help identify potential issues before they arise by using a managed IT service.

Be positive

Transformational leaders will have an optimistic attitude that is inspirational for followers: otherwise, team members may become uninspired if a leader seems apathetic or discouraged. You should also try to stay positive even when things look bad. That does not mean you should see things using rose-tinted glasses, but instead maintain that feeling of optimism even with challenges ahead.

Encourage creativity

Teams should be encouraged to use their creativity. As an effective leader, offer new challenges with the support they need to achieve these objectives. These goals should be within the abilities of your team – so they can stretch their limits but are not discouraged by barriers to success.

Be a role model

You should show the qualities that you want to encourage within your team. If you do, then these group members will admire you and will work on mirroring such behaviors themselves. Using idealized influence is also one of the main components of transformational leadership.

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, How to Boost Web Traffic to Your Company Site

How to Boost Web Traffic to Your Company Site

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, How to Boost Web Traffic to Your Company SiteWhen you’re trading online, you need customers to visit your website. When they do, they browse your pages, get to know your brand, understand your products, and begin doing business with you. It stands to reason, therefore, that when you have fewer individuals visiting your website, you end up with lower profits and fewer sales. In this article, you’ll learn how to boost traffic to your website. Using the tricks of the trade, you’ll bring in more consumers to your website, where you’ll be able to convert them into paying customers.

Digital Advertisements

One of the first solutions you’ll consider when you’re trying to drive traffic to your website is to simply create some marketing material for use online. This can feel like a simple solution, but it can actually take a lot of time to draw up an advert – whether a still image or a video – and make sure that your content is linking back to your site and giving off the right impression. It can also be costly to advertise online. As such, you should only use this option when you can be sure of the return you’ll get on your investment.

SEO Strategy

Meanwhile, you can also employ the strategy of improving your position in search through search engine optimization. This strategy is a long-term one and requires you to identify which search terms people might use to find your business. By identifying these terms and using them in your site copy, you’ll boost your visibility and climb up Google’s rankings on these specific search terms. If you feel you need a helping hand with this strategy, you should contact local business SEO experts at lbmsllc.com to build your strategy alongside you.

Social Media

As always, social media remains one of the greatest assets to small businesses everywhere. With its grassroots feel and free interface, social media is one of the most important assets that you can leverage in order to bring new individuals to your website. It’s absolutely imperative that you set up pages on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter – as well as new apps like TikTok – in order to find the right audiences to advertise your products and services to. It helps to hire a social media-savvy individual to help you guide your content to the right people over time.

Linking to Other Sites

Finally, if the above tips seem a little adventurous, and you’re looking for instant results without all that much effort, you may find that linking your website to other websites – and their reciprocating – can help share customer bases between allied businesses. This strategy works best when you know the business owners you’re going to cross-pollinate with – so for local businesses in a town, city, or district, this is a great option to share your customer base and your web traffic with companies that you would like to partner with.

There you have it: four important tips for anyone looking to boost their web traffic over the course of 2020, bringing more customers and profits to your business.

StrategyDriven Risk Management Article | How to Protect Your Organization From the Amazon of Your Industry

How to Protect Your Organization From the Amazon of Your Industry

StrategyDriven Risk Management Article | How to Protect Your Organization From the Amazon of Your IndustryThe trend towards consolidation in industry has become a threat to any business whose leadership has a desire to maintain its own identity and strategic path. If you think you, your company, or your industry is immune, I urge you to look at the telltale signs.

If you are one of those business owners or leaders who have invested many years of your life building a brand, then you most likely have a vision for that brand for the future that exists beyond your involvement. Sure, you could decide to sell the business or have it acquired by another organization, but the control of the decision should be yours.

So what do you do if you’d like the company to stand alone moving forward?

The Hidden Threat That Many Do Not See

Many signs of corporate consolidation are apparent; we read about them in journals and online every single day. XYZ corporation announces the acquisition of ABC LLC, etc. Mergers and acquisitions have been around forever, but there is a new legal form of conquest that is allowing organizations to steal market share from well-established businesses. Does it exist (yet) in your niche?

The menace of which I speak is the digital marketing organizations that are springing up in most industries, offering services on a pay-per-lead basis. If you are an established business, you likely have encountered one or more (or your marketing department has), and perhaps you have even paid for their services. These organizations spend their resources online, gaining a marketing edge, and then sell you (or your competition) the data on the leads. It seems like a win-win relationship at first.

But consider this. Isn’t this type of behavior, by you and your competition, outsourced marketing? No big deal, right? They spend money to generate consumer information, and then you buy it. Outsourcing frees you up to focus on things other than creating new business opportunities. It’s a true parasite-host relationship, where your organization serves as the host, and the digital marketing organization serves as a benevolent parasite.

Over time, the parasite will get large and robust. It will more than likely service many companies, not just your own. When they hit a point of market saturation, who do you think will be the most prominent brand known to the consumer? You? A competitor? No! It will be the digital marketing company that has been growing its reach across digital channels.

I believe that at this point, the digital marketing organization will have the leverage, and it is then that the parasite begins to consume the host. They raise the price on your cost per lead. If you refuse to pay, they merely sell the information to a competitor. Or worse, they quit selling information exclusively; instead, they sell the same information to multiple organizations. Once they are large enough in the eyes of consumers, they have the leverage to do this.

Would you like some real-world examples of this? Look no further than Zillow in real estate or Homeadvisor in the home services sector. These marketing-only organizations started simply with a website, but now each is the biggest name in its field. Zillow is now buying homes and working directly with home sellers. Can it be much longer before they have a buyer service available?

How To Avoid The Digital Marketing Parasite

If you own, lead, or manage an organization, acknowledge that the primary task of any business is the generation of new customers. You cannot outsource marketing, or it will put your company in a position to finance the organization that will one day put you out of business.

Take care of the parasite when it is a pest. Ensure that you run a learning organization that evolves its marketing strategy to utilize the same channels and processes that the parasite would use to unhinge you.

The parasite exists in every location and every field. Do not make the mistake of outsourcing business generation responsibilities. Instead grow your digital marketing solutions so that your company can thrive and grow into the future.


About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Joe ManausaJoe Manausa is CEO of Joe Manausa Real Estate in Tallahassee, Florida and author of The Business of Getting Business: The Digital Marketing Guide for Small Businesses.  After observing industry giants move to a digital-first marketing approach, Joe made the transition within his own company, which resulted in over $10 million of revenue from the business’s website.  For more information, please visit lidpublishing.com or https://www.digitalmarketingforbusinessbook.com/.

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article | 5 Ways to Increase Post Engagement on Your Facebook Business Page

5 Ways to Increase Post Engagement on Your Facebook Business Page

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, 5 Ways to Increase Post Engagement on Your Facebook Business Page

Are you using Facebook as a platform for your business? Do you notice your post engagement losing some steam?

Post engagement is one of the key metrics that say how effective your Facebook business page is. It measures your followers’ loyalty to your brand.

With 80% of businesses using Facebook in their marketing strategies, you need to increase your Facebook page post engagement. But how do you do it? What are the techniques that you need to start practicing?

Continue reading below as we look at five effective ways to increase your post engagement.

The Value of Post Engagement

What is post engagement on Facebook? As we mentioned earlier, it is a metric that measures the activities your Facebook posts generate.

But why is it important?

Facebook engagement helps increase your social media reach. Your brand will get more exposure. In turn, you will generate more leads faster.

Furthermore, post engagement also serves as a cost-effective way of marketing your products. Instead of paying for expensive TV ads and billboards, social media engagement will cost you very little.

5 Techniques to Boost Your Post Engagement

Part of learning how to grow a Facebook page is managing your posts. Here are five effective ways that will boost the number of interactions on your Facebook account:

1. Timing is Key

Don’t just post on Facebook anytime you want. Instead, schedule your posts accordingly. Post during times when most of your fans are online.

Use a Facebook scheduling tool to determine the best times to publish your posts.

2. Create More Videos

Do most of your posts involve plain text? Try upping the ante by posting more videos.

Users love watching videos. They find it more engaging than plain text. But you need to make your videos entertaining and informative at the same time.

Moreover, post the videos directly to your Facebook page. Avoid posting a link to your videos coming from your YouTube account.

Also, consider publishing interactive Facebook posts. Try doing a Facebook Live once a week. Users love it when they can directly interact with the brands they follow in real-time.

3. Boost and Recycle

Remember your top posts from a month ago? Consider boosting them to increase engagement. Boosting will only cost you a minimal fee.

Alternatively, you should consider recycling your top posts.

When recycling them, tweak the posts a little. You may add a question or incorporate a video or image.

4. Brevity and Quality

Another effective way of increasing engagement is to shorten your posts. Keep them brief as much as you can, as longer posts may bore users.

But make sure your posts do not fall short in quality. Try using witty statements or ask them quick questions.

5. CTA Matters

Last but not least, you need to include a call-to-action (CTA) to your posts. A CTA sends the message that you want to hear from them. Throwing a question at the end of your post is a good option.

You may also create polls to see how they feel about a certain topic. You can go here to learn how to create a poll on Facebook.

Take Your Facebook Business Page to the Next Level

By increasing your Facebook post engagement, you can build your brand faster and create new leads for conversion. But post engagement is only one area you must work on.

Learn more strategies by reading our different articles. We discuss other techniques that will help take your social media pages to the next level.