Source: Trade Show Display Industry Creating Most Waste

Here’s a link to the complete blog post:  Social Media and Trade Shows

Pre-trade show marketing is critical

• Your Facebook business page allows you to set up an “Event Page” to educate your customers and friends and advise them that you will be attending a particular trade show and invite all to visit you at your booth.
• Another pre-trade show idea would be publicizing the event on the company twitter account with a #hashtag and start a twitter trend about the tradeshow!
• Next look for other relevant vendors, customers, competition, media sources and follow all of them.
• Make your exhibit a check in location on Foursquare so attendees are able to check in and find one another. All your social networks should be easily found as a button to click on from your website.

There is no time like trade show time

• Post the trade show attendees and customers’ questions for you on your company Facebook and Twitter account.  It is a great way to engage your audience in conversation and while you are at it, update your Event Page for the tradeshow to let people know that the first 15 people in your booth receive a 10% discount or prize.
• If your company has a blog, it is a great time to provide updates on what is happening at the show and provide live footage.
• The live footage can also be posted on a company’s YouTube channel to give those who missed the show a chance to take a peak of what your company is showcasing.
• Even if your staff gets busy with the show it is imperative to provide a few updates on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin.

“From Salespeople to Bubble Gum
It’s fascinating that this effect occurs across many different domains. The first experiment in the latest batch had subjects evaluate photos of “salespeople” – pairs of males, females, and teams. When the subjects were asked about their preferences in a questionnaire, they showed no difference in their evaluation of each pair. But, using an implicit association test, a technique to measure subconscious preferences, there was a significant difference in favor of the first-viewed person or team. (For more on implicit association, seeThe Secret Voter in Your Brain.)

The second experiment showed subjects two similar brands of bubble gum. When given a chance to think about their choice, the subjects chose each brand about half the time. But, when instructed to choose quickly, 62% chose the first-viewed item and only 38% chose the second.

Both experiments indicate a bias toward the first item seen. This bias doesn’t overwhelm all other considerations, and the more a person thinks about a choice the less significant it will be. Still, to use my pet terminology, it’s a NeuroNudge that could help a customer finalize a choice.”

Yes, he does point out that the more a person thinks about a choice, the less significant this first observation will be in their decision making.  And, with an open island design it becomes difficult to control where people enter and the order in which they see items.  Even so, at trade shows, it’s not only a matter of controlling what people see FIRST, but helping them to sort through all of the sensory inputs to put their focus on any one item at a time.  For these reasons, product location is a critical factor in using that expensive exhibit space as effectively as possible.

The following video from Buyer Behavior Metrics shows an example of how a company positioned their key product front and center on the aisle, for easy access to demos, while lesser important products were located further back in the exhibit.

So the question is not only what do you want attendees to see first, but how do you want them to engage, and are you positioning products in your exhibit to encourage this engagement?  See Dooley’s complete blog post here:  Why First is Best

Dan uses guest bloggers and while the content isn’t super deep, each post offers a few good tips.  Here’s a few titles:

7 writing tips for personal brand building success

Setting BEST Goals For Your Best Personal Brand

Be Careful What You Call Yourself

In his eTrak session, speaker Marc Goldberg encourages participants to define a personal brand as a key career strategy.  “As companies continue to downsize, many are choosing to outsource what they consider the logistics based functions of trade shows.  To stay in the game, exhibit managers need to redefine themselves as strategists and their role as strategic members of the marketing team.”  In his session Marc guides participants through some of the key questions to answer regarding professional branding, and branding for the exhibits program.

Join us on Thursday August 23rd at 1:00 central for Marc’s session  511 – Advanced Learning Session: Becoming Strategic Increases Your Personal Brand

1.  Be the earliest responder.  When you monitor buzz you can be the first responder to any negative comments.  This will help to manage overall perceptions through the show.

2.  Clarify when necessary.  Maybe you launched a great social media contest, but the idea or concept is getting a bit skewed by participants.  Keep the focus in place by responding and clarifying as necessary.

3.  Monitor competitors.  This is simply another form of competitive intelligence.  Monitor both what competitors are pushing out, and what participants are saying about them.

4.  Measure results.  Social  media exposure can be an addition return on objectives when results are measured in a consistent manner.

And here’s some great advice on handling negative feedback from business strategist and author Carol Roth:

For better or for worse, with the internet and social media, nearly everyone can (and does!) get online to voice their opinions about just about everything to anyone and everyone that will listen. And while all of the positive feedback can be great for business, resulting in increased sales, referrals and recognition, the negative feedback, even from just one person if not handled properly, can be amplified and cause a lot of damage. So, here are a few easy tips to handle criticism effectively:

(1) Be in the Know
In order to be able to respond to negative feedback, you have to know what is being said about you and your business in the first place! Aside from comments posted on your own websites, blogs or articles, you can set up Google Alerts for free, so that you are notified whenever you or your business are mentioned online. I personally use a solution from Yahoo!, a client of mine, called the Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard, which you can also set up for free. This will allow to you quickly reply to anyone that has left negative feedback or criticism, so that you can diffuse the situation before it gets out of hand or even turn the situation around (see points 2 and 3 below). And if you were unable to turn the situation around, you can at least explain your side of the story and leave it for others to decide for themselves.

(2) Walk in Their Shoes
When we first hear any kind of criticism, most people’s gut reaction is to respond with emotion-based defensiveness. But in business (or in our personal lives too, for that matter!), you really need to take a step back and remove yourself from the equation to truly see the issue from that person’s perspective. Take a true rational, objective look at where the other person is coming from, so that you can understand how to best resolve the issue. If it’s something that you are feeling personally attacked or offended by, take a few minutes to calm down, so that you can respond from a rational place to get the best outcome.

(3) Kill ‘Em with Kindness
After you have calmed down, be as empathetic and nice as you can possibly be in your response. You’ll be surprised at what an impact a genuine personal response can have and just saying “thanks” or “sorry” can really go a long way. Humor (when appropriate) is also a great way to ease tension and works especially well when handling face-to-face criticism. Offering a real solution can turn a negative into a positive can be even better for your business in the long run, as everyone can see the positive way that you handled the situation.

(4) Find Your Happy Place
Even just one piece of criticism or negative feedback can really weigh heavy on you. Even if you have received 100 compliments, just one criticism can blot out all 100 of those wonderful things that others have said. So, keep a list or box of all of the positive comments, notes and feedback that you and your business have received. Read over it before you deal with negative feedback or if a particular criticism is getting to you, so that you can be more rational when responding to it.

These are just a few easy tips to handle negative feedback. What other tips do you have? Please share them below.

Thanks to Sandra Rand of ShareAndTell Pro, Janet Christy of Leverage & Development, LLC, Francine L. Trevens of TnT Classic Books, Therese Pope of Zenful Communications, and Paula Pant of AffordAnything.org for the inspiration behind some of these ideas.

“Twenty-something buyers are twice as likely to use social media somewhere in the buying process (49%) than 31-40 year olds, and almost 4X as likely than those aged 51+. The report highlights the big impact this will have in upcoming years.”

You can check out his blog post and summary here:  How B2B Buyers Really Use Social Media.

Jon used the following graphic from the report and made a few more comments:

• “Responders said that “word of mouth” (WOM) is the most useful source of information, and it is used at every stage of the buying cycle. However, different-aged buyers think of “word of mouth” differently.  Those over 30 are much more likely to ask for opinions and recommendations in person or over the phone or email; those under 30 are actually more likely to define word of mouth as something that happens socially.
• When social networks are used in the buying process, they are most commonly used in the last stage of final buyer selection. This is especially true of Twitter, presumably where buyers tweet looking for final opinions and recommendations before making a final decision.”

The report teases out the question that is being both ignored and pondered in a variety of ways.  The growing participation in social media channels among both event producers, and exhibitors, appears to be a mix of strategic effort and following behavior (we have to do it because our competitors are doing it.)  This will likely sound familiar to the trade show exhibitor as an age old reason that companies use to justify the show spend.  Because, really, if people are not using LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to make spend decisions, a business has to ask why they are invested there.

HOWEVER, clearly there is a trend afoot.  This is not news to anyone in marketing.

The strategic question is, where on the curve do you want to participate?  Or where are you ABLE to participate based on available resources?

First, with the term “word of mouth” definition is important.  Jon points to this.  While buyers over 40 may say “WOM” and mean “a conversation in person or by telephone, or even email,”  a person in the 20-30 range may say “WOM” and mean Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter recommendations from friends and associates.  That’s an important distinction in the study.

Second, whether WOM as a definition is clear or not, the people who will be moving into positions of authority around purchasing in the future appear to be using social media channels as part of their decision making.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA CONNECTED WITH TRADE SHOW AND EVENT MARKETING?

Strategically, exhibitors have choices about where they want to be on the curve.

Perhaps a recognition of this trend could mean, strategically, getting started and watching how customer and prospect behavior specific to your company is trending around these tools.

Perhaps it means getting out there on the front end of the curve and waiting for your industry to catch up.

Or it could mean a more conservative approach, testing the waters, and participating at a level that allows you to move forward as your industry moves.

This information seems to provide an opportunity to take a step back and make some strategic decisions about how to invest in social media as part of a trade show program.

Here’s his 5 Price Traps. Head over to the blog post for Joe’s tips on how to beat them The 5 Price Traps Airlines Set for Flyers.

The loyal-flyer upcharge

Delta Air Lines was recently forced to admit that business travelers who logged into Delta.com with their Skymiles frequent-flyer account numbers were quoted higher fares than casual Web surfers. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that Delta is alone. In recent years, savvy business travelers have noted price discrepancies large and small on all of the major carriers.

The code-share conundrum

For decades, airlines have routinely slapped their “code”—a unique two-letter or letter-and-number identifier—on aircraft and flights operated by other carriers. But just because airlines share flights does not mean they charge the same fare for the same flight. One representative example: United Airlines puts its UA code on flights between Denver and Toronto that are actually operated by Air Canada. The fare at United.com for a Denver-Toronto flight today and a return next Wednesday: $1,598 roundtrip. The price on AirCanada.com for exactly the same flights: $1,068 roundtrip.

The Web-browser discriminator

Orbitz.com was recently embarrassed when we discovered that the big online travel agency was serving up hotel choices based on the browsers and computers we use. Travelers using Apple Macs were routinely showed higher-priced properties than customers who surfed to Orbitz.com using a Windows-based machine. Orbitz’s defense—Mac users are bigger spenders on average than Windows users—is officially called data mining, but a lot of us consider it Web-browser discrimination.

The “don’t-ask, don’t-tell” trick

Airlines, hotels, and car-rental firms are masters of limited disclosure. The entire travel industry’s economy is based on discounts off a usually phony “full retail price,” so there are any number of deals you can find based on age, affinity groups (some as broad as the AAA or AARP), corporate rates and other factors. The industry’s websites are rarely set to show all prices to all comers, however. If you don’t know that you qualify for a special deal, the travel provider isn’t likely to alert you.

The class-complexity caveat

You’ll have to trust me on this one: The fastest way to embarrass an airline C-suite executive is to ask him or her to explain “class mapping.” This price gouge is so obscure that most top executives don’t even know it exists. Yet it is fundamental to how carriers price their tickets.

When you think of the word class, you naturally think of first, coach, or business class. In other words, the types of in-flight services that an airline offers. But there is another category of airline class: the “fare class,” industry jargon for the types of prices it charges and the purchase restrictions imposed. On any given flight, there are dozens of “fare classes” within each category of in-flight service. And here’s the nasty reality: If you book a higher fare class on one leg of your journey, the computers will automatically default to the same fare class on all other segments of your trip—even if lower prices exist. This “mapping” may add hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of dollars to a multiflight itinerary.

SEO  marketer Joanna Lord wrote a great blog post at Entrepreneur Media about five ways to improve customer loyalty.  Here’s the intro, and the five improvement suggestions.  There’s more copy and a variety of resource links on her post.

I’ve added a few comments about how this applies to trade show marketing.  (My comments in green.)

“In this age of social connectivity, customer loyalty has become more valuable than ever. Consumers share stories of their interactions with businesses on social media, meaning that word-of-mouth marketing is especially valuable.

Since customer loyalty can be critical to making a sale, ask yourself what you’re doing to cultivate it. When was the last time you spent money or resources on making your customers feel appreciated? Many might argue that a focus on customer appreciation isn’t just a best practice — it could mean the difference between failure and survival in today’s word-of-mouth driven economy.

Here are five ways you can take customer loyalty up a notch:

1. Improve your ‘Thank You’.  Trade shows offer a great opportunity to thank loyal customers, with recognition, a small event, or a special gift at the exhibit.  What have you put into place within your trade show program to assure that existing customers are recognized, acknowledged and thanked at the show?

2. Optimize your feedback channels.
Are your inquiry forms set up to also record feedback from existing customers?  When discussions produce suggestions, ideas, or complaints, do they just stay with the person who had the conversation?  Or is there a method for both soliciting and recording feedback?

3. Go beyond cancellations as a performance indicator.
While you need to know how many of your customers are cancelling, it is a reactive performance indicator. In addition to monitoring your customers loss, you can gauge loyalty by watching your company’s “net promoter score,” frequency of customer interactions with your business and the length of time between customer visits. By tracking how engaged customers are and how likely they are to recommend your company, you can get a more complete measure of their loyalty.

Are interactions that occur at trade shows even factored into performance indicators that your company uses?

4. Assign someone to manage it.

Is there a person at your company assigned to manage customer loyalty?  It seems that if there is, working with them to see how trade show participation can contribute to this important metric would be important.  It also raises another idea.  Might it be useful to have someone at the show assigned as a customer liaison;  the person who is responsible for any tactics put into place around customer loyalty?

5. Evangelize the gains and losses.
While customer loyalty should have a dedicated advocate, it is a company-wide effort.  To show the importance of these interactions to customer retention, you can share with the rest of the company the results of your loyalty measurements, whether good or bad. This makes it a company-wide priority, and only then are you really taking customer loyalty to the next level.

And if someone within your company holds this responsibility, sharing your tactics and resulting successes from trade shows could have a ripple effect that benefits both trade show and customer loyalty efforts.

Joanna Lord

Joanna Lord is an online marketing expert, startup enthusiast and director of customer acquisition and retention at Seattle-based SEO and social monitoring service SEOmoz.

Exhibitor or Trade Show Coordinator  Average Salary $49,820

• Determine/help determine strategy
• Plan pre-show/pre-event meetings,
• Supervise setup
• Coordinate logistics
• Manage/work booth or event
• Supervise staff
• Select/evaluate suppliers
• Develop budgets
• Plan/execute promotions
• Plan trade show events

Exhibit or Trade Show Manager  Average Salary $70,703

• Determine/help determine strategy
• Plan pre-show/pre-event meetings
• Supervise setup
• Coordinate logistics
• Manage/work booth or event
• Supervise staff
• Select evaluate suppliers
• Develop budgets
• Plan/execute promotions
• Plan trade show events
• Implement staff training
• Select event venues
• Arrange hospitality events

There aren’t many discrepancies there.  It’s hard to believe that trade show coordinators don’t also implement staff training, select event venues and arrange hospitality events.  But that’s not really the point.  The point is, if the job functions are so similar, what is the difference that creates a $20,000 salary discrepancy?  I reviewed education levels, # employees supervised, #years in current position, percentage of job devoted to trade shows, and number of annual trade shows.  While I didn’t run a complete statistical analysis, generally, in all categories the job title “manager” earned $10,000 – $20,000 more than the job title coordinator.  So, is it just the TITLE?  If you are a trade show coordinator, would you be equally qualified to seek out a job as a trade show manager and look to a potential salary increase?  Interesting question.  Check out the salary survey in the July 2012 issue of Exhibitor, or order a copy here:  Exhibitor Magazine Annual Salary Survey.

It points to the topic for our next eTrak session 511 – Advanced Learning Session: Becoming Strategic Increases Your Personal Brand, on Thursday August 23 at 1:00 central.  In this session Marc Goldberg walks you through the process of looking at your personal brand, thinking about how to take a strategic view of your job, and deciding how to operate from a more strategic perspective.  It appears that defining yourself as a manager rather than a coordinator could have some significant impact on financial opportunities.