Additional Trade Show Questions... Did you know?

Part II

Questions: 1) What makes a tradeshow so special (in what way is it different to events)? 2) What are the main marketing tools in trade shows marketing (next to the theater style)? 3) what are the main challenges in a trade shows and what are it's weeknesses (concerning products and services marketing)?

Answer:
1. Trade shows are unique for a number of reasons. First and foremost, they attract the decision makers in a particular industry or industry segment. Each industry offers trade shows throughout the year where industry professionals go to learn about their vocation, new technologies, products, and so on.

Additionally, trade shows afford vendors the opportunity to put their products and services in front of their desired audience. When key prospects and customers are in a single location, it increases the opportunity for marketing, sales, and brand building.

2. The key marketing tools, in today's trade show environment include booth related marketing tools, and non-booth. The booth tools include power point presentations/product demos, collateral, promotional giveaways, and sale people who can answer any product or sales related question. Non-booth items are usually available via sponsorship and include insertion of your materials in the trade show bags, logo on bags, badges, sponsorship of Cyber Cafe, breaks, meals, banners, speaking opportunities, and receptions. Marketing professionals can also buy lists of trade show attendees.

3. The main challenges in trade show marketing include: expense, time limitations, and follow-up. Trade shows, if supported appropriately can be expensive. Not only do you need to purchase booth space, but you must also pay for electric, internet connections, carpeting, and so on. These expenses add up in a hurry. Add the travel and entertainment expenses of your sales reps, and many shows could cost as much as $10,000. There are regional trade shows that cost less, but your pool of prospects will generally be smaller.

The other challenge you face is limited time with prospects and customers. Many trade show exhibit halls are only open for blocks of time throughout the day. This means that traffic is often feast or famine.

With many people passing your booth and browsing your products or services, it's difficult to spend a large block of time with each one. This makes having an in-depth conversation that moves your prospect through the purchase decision process fully quite difficult.

Follow-up is a real challenge for many businesses. Although many leads may be generated from a trade show, not many companies do a good job of following up with their leads. As a result, a positive return on investment may not be realized.

Trade show weaknesses are similar to their challenges. Expense is on of the greatest - meaning that depending on the success of the show, it could be more difficult to show a positive return on investment.

The other weakness is that trade shows require a lot of preparation and coordination. Without dedicated staff, trade shows may not prove to be a productive use of your marketing budget.

The final weakness (as noted in challenges) is that trade shows don't always give you adequate time to communicate product/service benefits to prospects. Although you may take your time with one prospect, there are others who will pass you by because there's no one to speak to or answer their questions. This results in a lost opportunity.

Email Marketing - Developing an Effective Program

If someone tells you that email marketing is dead, don't believe them. Email is still one of the most productive marketing tools you can use to sell your products and services. Email in extremely valuable for developing a one-on-one relationships with existing customers, delivering valuable content, and up-selling your services.

Those who don't believe in the efficacy of email are not using the email medium effectively. Chances are these are the same individuals who send out mass emails without segmentation or an understanding of the purchase decision process.

Here are a number of key factors to keep in mind when engaging in email marketing.

1. Build your own email list. Emails that receive the highest open and click-through rates are house-lists. Simply stated, a house list is a database of email addresses that you've collected from individuals exchanging information with you on your website.

The easiest and most efficient way to build your house list is to offer an email sign-up (for a newsletter, promotion, or access to valuable information) on every page of your website. The more individuals who opt-in, the greater your database and chance for building profitable customer relationships.

2. Be relevant. This may seem obvious, but if you're sending the same email to everyone on you email list, you may have fallen into this trap. Relevancy is more than delivering a message that recipients find valuable, it's also timing your message according to a recent action, event, or behavior.

For example, if someone has recently singed up for a newsletter, engage them immediately. Even if you next newsletter doesn't come out for another month, provide them with the existing month's newsletter or access to your newsletter archive. If someone is taking the time to raise their hand and opt-in for your information, which is clearly relevant to their wants, don't make them wait.

3. Provide something of value. If you're not providing something of value, you'll quickly find your database of email subscribers dwindling. Users will only open your email if you provide valuable information, tools, resources, or content that they find useful. When developing your email program, be sure to think it through and solicit feedback from your audience to continually enhance value.

4. Don't ignore CAN-SPAM. Be sure to post your privacy policy. If you don't have one, use a sample Click here and customize it with your site's information. Additionally, be sure to list your company's address at the bottom of your emails and provide a way for users to opt-out. When a recipient chooses to opt-out, make sure you remove their name within 10 days of the request.

5. Develop an opt-out page. It still amazes me that many marketers are still using a generic opt-out. Smart marketers are using an opt-out page with between 8 and 12 opt out options. For example, is the user opting out of "important updates regarding their account"? Or maybe just "the monthly newsletter"? The key is to offer options so that users get the information that's important to them and you retain the right to contact them.

6. Effective email takes focus. In the past decade, I've seen my share of effective email as well as email that costs more to deliver than return. The most effective email comes in the form of a well thought through campaign, utilization of email best practices (like having an accurate from line, subject line, designing for the preview pane, having a link for those who can't read your html, CAN-SPAM compliance, and so on), and technology to deliver emails in a disciplined and organized fashion.

If you are sending emails whenever you feel like it or without a specific purpose, then you're not getting the most out of your email program. You should think of email as a medium that requires daily management. Messages should be relevant, consistent, and provide value to the recipient.

Delivering effective email campaigns can be learned. The one thing to keep in mind is that if you want to get results from your email, than work through the consumers purchase decision process (by product, by segment). If your email program can move individuals through this process in an effective way, email will be more than electronic messaging – it will become a revenue driver!

For more valuable email marketing tips, visit MarketingScoop.com.

Promoting Products vs. Services at Trade Shows

Question: Kathrin Hoesli askes, Products vs. services- How do a company's goods and services influence it's trade show appearance? Can you provide some information concerning the difference of service and product presentation and how this influences appearance at trade shows?

Answer: When presenting at a tradeshow, there are a number of factors to consider. The first, and most important factor is, "How important is this tradeshow to your overall marketing strategy?".

If this is a key show, where many of your buying audience will be in attendance, then you must consider how much of your budget will be allocated to an overall show presense.

For example, many vendors of products or services will take advantage of sponsorship opportunities that include a large booth space (10 X 20 or 20 X 20 island), large overhead banners, advertisements in the tradeshow guidebook, inserts in conference bags, sponsorship of badges or conference bags, receptions, etc. The purpose of sponsorship is to draw attention to your brand, product, and/or service.

Once you have decided the level of spend you are committed to, it is time to focus on your booth set up and presentation. For companies who are showcasing products, a number of opportunities exist for informing prospects of your product, product benefits, and how to order. Additionally, companies often focus on meeting with customers to renew existing sales or to receive feedback.

When presenting a product at a tradeshow, most vendors will have the product or products on display. One of the most productive ways to showcase your product is in a theater style setting where a speaker provides a demonstration of your product at intervals throughout the day.

These presentations are often accompanied by product collateral and ordering instructions.
Booth staff is available to answer any questions regarding the product. Sales staff should be equipped with product knowledge and an understanding of key benefits. Many product vendors will have some way to sell the actual product at the booth (take orders) as well as gather leads to be followed up with after the show.

When offering a service, companies may take a slightly different approach to marketing at tradeshows. Even if a service business decides to take advantage of sponsorship opportunities, they do not often have a physical product to show or demonstrate. As a result, they often benefit by communicating a service explanation through signage, power point displays, and knowledgeable sales people.

Due to the lack of a physical product, many service businesses will generate a pre-show mailer to inform and attract prospects or customers to their booth. Additionally, service businesses - as well as those selling products - will often provide a raffle or free giveaway for their product or service.

Collateral offered at the show will generally provide more information about previous work completed and the customers who have successful experience the service offered. This orientation is developed to generate interest and persuade a prospect to move through the purchase decision process.

After tradeshows, effective organizations rate the warmth of a prospect and follow up accordingly. A business that offers a service may require an additional conversation with the prospect to secure a purchase.

These are some of the fundamental differences between product and service orientations at tradeshows and events.

Using Article Marketing to Generate Affiliate Traffic

Are you running an affiliate program or trying to get more traffic to your affiliate products? There are many ways to increase traffic to your site. In this article, I'll provide some details on how to use article marketing in a very specific way to generate a steady stream of qualified prospects.

The first step is to develop an article that is clearly written, provides value, and builds credibility. A clearly written article ensures that readers do more than skim your article. It also provides an "easy read" resulting in a high level of engagement.

To keep your reader's attention, your article must provide something of value. An example might be an SEO related article that shows readers how to write an effective "Title" tag for their webpage. A valuable article would first explain the concept then follow with examples – giving readers something tangible to represent each concept.

A result of a clearly written article that provides valuable information is that of credibility. The concept of credibility can be subtle but is very important if you wish to drive the most traffic to your affiliate product. Some suggestions for building credibility include: injecting your experience into each article, providing references to findings from recent studies, offering facts, providing quotes from industry experts, and so on.

Once you've written a compelling article, you can weave a mention of your affiliate product into the text. However, be sure to do it in modest way. Some examples are:

• "I've used a number of products that weren't any good… but I did have some success with the [insert product name here]."
• "I've used [product 1], [product 2], and [product 3], but found [insert product name here] to be the cheapest and the best."
• "Personally I use [insert product name here], but any [product descriptor] will do."
• "I'm not an expert on [product descriptor] but know that [insert product name here] is quite popular."
  

Too often I see individuals using article marketing with a hard sell. This doesn't work. People don't like to be told what to do, what products they must use, or rely on the opinions of those they do not trust. So your best bet is to begin with a clearly written article, provide something of value, and use your newfound credibility to generate referrals or sales.

Now that you've written your article, here are some tips for "on-page" optimization. This will ensure that once your article is posted, it can be seen by the major search engines and is easily crawled.

Tip #1 Place your keywords in the title of the article. For example, if you're promoting email software, let's call it, "Email Management Software" then work it into your title. Here's and example…

How to Use Email Management Software to Improve Results.

And try to limit your title to about 7 main words. This is how you optimize your article from the beginning. Now we'll talk about some other ways to increase your on-page optimization factors.

Tip #2 Use your key word term or phrase in most of your paragraphs. You certainly don't have to use the phrase in every paragraph of your article, but it helps to use it frequently. Many engines count the number of times the keyword or keyword phrase is used. However, you do not want to over do it. This will turn off many of your readers and negatively affect your credibility. Find a good balance between using your keyword phrase and an appropriate amount of content.

Tip #3 Bold your keyword phrase at least once within the article. It doesn't matter where you bold your keyword phrase, just be sure to bold it at some point in your article and or when you post your article online. This provides emphasis and shows the search engines that it's important to the content on the page.

Tip #4 Italicize your keyword or keyword phrase once in the body of your article. Again, providing a treatment to the text signals its importance and value to the rest of the content on your page.

Tip #5 Use your keyword phrase in the first 25 words of the page and last 25 words of the page. This is essential for on-page optimization and again signals the search engines that your phrase is relevant to all of the content on a given page.

Now that you've written your article, what are you going to do with it? There are a number of article directories on the Internet, but which ones should you choose? I personally use those directories that have a high Google PR. If the article directories are favored by other popular sites, they will most often have a good deal of traffic. Article Directories with the highest Google PR (that are any good) include:

Article Central PR7

About.com PR6

EasyArticles PR6

Go Articles PR6

EzineArticles.com PR6

ArticleAlley PR5

A number of these directories are also favored by major search engines like Yahoo! Some allow affiliate links and others do not. Be sure to read the submission policies carefully before submitting your article. For some directories, you may have to include your affiliate link in the "About the Author" section. This is okay as many article directories allow multiple links in this section. The added benefit of inserting an affiliate link in this section is that other webmasters, who repurpose articles from article directories, will include these links – giving you the benefit of viral marketing.

Article marketing is a great way to promote your affiliate product or affiliate program. By writing an article that delivers value and offers a subtle mention of your affiliate product, you're well on your way to getting the proper exposure for your promotion. Add the on-page optimization factors we talked about, and you're sure to get noticed. Give article marketing a try and you'll be surprised by the results!

Popular screen resolution

See the chart below for the popular display resolution people are using. Note that around 1/5 of internet population are still using 800x600 and more and more people are using 1024x768. However, webmaster should understand his/her target audiences to decide a right resolution to use for the his/her website.For example, if your audiences are people with low technical background in developing

Browser Statistics: Firefox is getting more popular

When you design a webpage, you should not only optimize it for Internet Explorer. Although it is still the most popular web browser, Firefox is getting more and more popular, especially in Europe, and amongst the techie and Macintosh users.Check out the statistics below, which I obtained from http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp, you can see the total market share of Internet