The Exhibitor's Resource – Trade Show Marketing Blog

Lana Calloway, President of Exhibit Resources, presented “The Value of Face to Face Marketing” at WBON-Cary’s August luncheon on Wednesday, August 5th 2009.

Marketing budgets are often on the chopping block when recessions hit.  But the trend over the past few years has been for marketers to move tighter budgets away from advertising and mass marketing and instead allocate those dollars to customer-facing and lead-generating endeavors.  It appears that this trend will continue. 
 
At the luncheon, Lana explained how to:

·  Leverage this trend in your own marketing practices
·  Use steady marketing as a tool to INCREASE your sales during a recession
·  Make gains in your market that will last for the next few years
·  Get the most value out of your face-to-face marketing efforts    
 
About Lana Calloway
Lana Calloway is President of Exhibit Resources, a Raleigh-based full-service exhibit design agency that designs, builds and manages trade show exhibits for clients throughout the Southeast.  Lana has over 25 years of experience in trade show and event management, and her company, Exhibit Resources, will be celebrating its 18th year in business in September of this year. 
 
Ms. Calloway was among 25 winners honored by The Triangle Business Journal at the 2000 Women in Business Awards Ceremony.   She accepted a Pinnacle Business Award from the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce in 2005 on behalf of her company, which was recognized as one of five established Triangle businesses that have exhibited exemplary success in staying power, business growth, community involvement, and innovation.    In November of 2006, Exhibit Resources was honored with a Fast 50 Award, and most recently was also named one of the top 100 Small Businesses in North Carolina by Business Leader Magazine.

About WBON-Cary
Women Business Owners Network (WBON) of Cary meets the first Wednesday of every month, 11:30 AM, at the Matthews House, located at 317 W. Chatham Street in Cary. WBON-Cary was founded in 1995 as a non-profit organization comprised of women in leadership positions.  We welcome all women in the Triangle Area who are owners, part owners, and prospective business owners, or are employed by businesses that support women in business. 
 
The mission of WBON-Cary is to provide experiences that educate, enlighten, inspire, support, motivate and foster growth professionally as well as personally.  Monthly meetings and guest speakers provide a forum for discussing issues and experiences relevant to professional women. Networking and local philanthropic projects help stimulate individual development and provide a positive presence in the community.  For more information about WBON-Cary, please visit the WBON-Cary website or contact Ruth Drum at Crossroads Business Center at 919-424-3801.

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Exhibit Resources was recognized at the 2009 Top100 NC Small Business Event at the Sheraton downtown Raleigh tonight. President and CEO Lana Calloway accepted the award to cheers from fellow small business leaders and their guests.

Business Leader Magazine named Exhibit Resources to the list from more than 260 nominations based on its business success and community leadership over the past year. The publication limited the criteria to include only companies with fewer than 100 employees and that also do a majority of their business in North Carolina. The full rankings will be published in Business Leader Magazine’s June issue.

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As an event marketing manager, you may be asked to justify the costs of face-to-face marketing. Here is a quick list of the benefits of event marketing that no other marketing effort can offer:

Start a dialogue. A two-way conversation is better than mono-directional broadcasts, and face-to-face marketing on the trade show floor, or at other events is the best way to begin that communication. Of course you’ll want your booth staff to be on-message, but because it’s a conversation, they will be able to give the visitor best-targeted message.
A personal connection builds trust. Meeting face-to-face, with your company’s brand and message on display around your, a prospect is likely to be comfortable being approached and learning about what your offer is. A trade show exhibit space is one of the few places today where a “sales pitch” isn’t taboo.
Access to a receptive audience for your message (they are likely there to learn about emerging trends in their industry).
Immediate fulfillment of prospect requests. Booth staff can answer questions, provide information, deliver catalogs, and set up accounts on the expo floor. The interested client doesn’t need to wait for a returned call, a sample to ship, or a sales person to schedule a meeting in order to get the process started.
Establish or reinforce brand awareness and industry prominence. Even if your company is lucky enough to enjoy a dominant position in your market, it’s wise to reinforce that lead position and stay top-of-mind for your existing clients in addition to maintaining or enhancing your brand awareness to those who haven’t yet joined the majority.

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Trade show marketing requires a lot of preparation, coordination, and imagination. To make trade shows pay off in this new, over-saturated marketing world, an exhibitor must change the way they define their goals and how they execute their plan. As mentioned in previous posts, pre-show communication with prospects AND clients to get them to stop by your trade show booth is essential, as is having something to show them when they ultimately show up.

But an exhibitor can extend the payoff of their trade show investment into the future in the form of press releases, blog posts, photos, video footage and other buzz created while at the show. A trade show presence is an irreplaceable venue for interaction with key industry players, but it’s also a wonderful place to get in front of the media. Reporters from media outlets throughout the country, and indeed the world, attend trade shows looking for trends to report on. The better prepared you and your staff are, and the better your trade show display looks, the more likely you’ll be featured in a news story from the trade show floor.

And you can create your own media splash from the event yourself. An emerging trend in trade show marketing is for companies to launch a new product, announce a new service, or feature exciting demos within their trade show booth space, and document it all with photos and video footage. They then use the content they captured from that blitz across all the media formats and outlets they can. They immediately add posts to their blogs, send out press releases, and distribute the video. The trade show display acts as the stage in many cases, making sure their name, their brand, and their unique offer is seen and understood by whoever sees the photos and watches the clips.

Pulling that sort of coordinated marketing effort together may seem a daunting task, but have no fear, there are resources available to help you. A trade show consultant from an exhibit design firm is a great start, and can help exhibitors develop a strategy, create a design that supports your show activities and goals, establish a budget and help you stick to it, and handle all of the logistical details of the show itself. Because a seasoned trade show consultant has managed many exhibiting programs, they can suggest best practices to save time and money and help exhibitors catch potentially disastrous problems before the show. Exhibitors that work with trade show consultants have more time to devote to other planning for the show, such as rehearsing that demo presentation or energizing the sales professionals that will be staffing your exhibit.

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The best investment an exhibitor can make in addition to exhibiting at a trade show, is to get the word out ahead of the trade show that they will be there. There are several effective ways for exhibitors to do this. One is to send out a pre-show mailer or email campaign. A postcard or blast announcing that your company will be exhibiting at an upcoming show, complete with your trade show booth number is a start, but you can further entice prospects to visit with a special offer such as a giveaway. Many exhibitors have found that they have success with promoting special in-booth presentations or new product introductions during the expo. In addition to mass-marketing efforts like those, you should also mention your show presence to each prospect AND client you speak with in the months or weeks leading up to a show. It can even be a good reason to place another call to that prospect you haven’t heard back from. Sales staff can personally call and schedule in-booth visits with key prospects and existing accounts. Even if it’s just a mention of when that sales person plans to be in the booth, such personal invitations are highly effective.

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Exhibit Resources will be hosting the 2009 WorldQuest for Business event on Thursday, March 26th.

There is no question – the world has changed and continues to change. For better or worse, we are all being pushed into the global arena and must be quick on our feet. WorldQuest for Business is your best opportunity in the Triangle to grow your knowledge of world affairs and culture. And because WorldQuest for Business is comprised of four-member teams, you and your colleagues will benefit from the opportunity to work together toward an end goal. You’ll also enjoy outstanding networking opportunities among companies of all shapes and sizes as well as local professionals who register individually. Best of all, you’ll have a GREAT time!

WorldQuest for Business 2009

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