Get the Word Out Early

If you exhibit at trade shows as part of your business-to-business marketing strategy, you're in good company. About 18% to 25% of the typical B-to-B budget is allotted for trade show expenses.

Using direct marketing to promote your attendance at these events in advance can double, triple and even quadruple the results of your overall exhibition investment.

Trade show marketers often get so preoccupied with designing and building their booths that they forget to drive qualified traffic. There are a number of important reasons why an investment in promotion is critical:

• You can't expect show management to do your recruiting. Their job is to get plenty of people to attend these events. It's still your job to get the best prospects for your booth. If you just wait for them to walk by randomly, you'll likely miss more than one major business opportunity.

• Business buyers generally plan trade show time in advance. The Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) found that 76% of attendees use pre-show information for this purpose. You're competing with conference sessions, other exhibitors and outside attractions — especially in destination cities like San Francisco and Las Vegas, the locale for next month's DMA08 — so you must get on your prospects' calendars early.

• CEIR commissioned a study by Deloitte & Touche that proves this. Exhibitors that conducted a pre-show campaign raised their “attraction efficiency” — the quality of the audience they attracted to their booths — by 46%. Similarly, the conversion of booth visitors to qualified leads rose 50% when a pre-show promotion was used.

The most-cited goal of a pre-show promotion is to drive traffic to the booth. But not just any traffic: You need qualified prospects to front-load the sales process.

An effective pre-show strategy has two parts:

• Targeted communications to registered attendees

  Extract high-potential visitors from the trade show attendee population and encourage them to visit your booth or set up an appointment. The secret here is qualification. With the exception of highly targeted, niche trade shows where nearly all attendees are likely prospects, not everyone at the event is worth your attention. A blanket mailing inviting all attendees to stop by usually contains a lot of waste. The first step is to cull the pre-registration list you receive from the show organizer to eliminate non-prospects and competitors.

• Communications to the house file

  Invite your own customers, inquirers and prospects to the show — they're already interested in doing business with you. If they aren't planning to attend, your invitation might encourage them to change their minds. At the very least, it will remind them you're exhibiting and serve as a useful part of an ongoing relationship-building communications stream.

MULTITOUCH PROMOTIONS

Ideal pre-show promotions use a series of contacts leveraging multiple media channels. While it's impossible to make recommendations for every possible scenario, here are common pre-show multitouch contact strategies that are proven to work.

To drive qualified traffic to the booth, use the trade show attendee list to:

• Send outbound postcards to the registered attendee list. Show organizers generally don't offer detailed selections based on such qualifying criteria as job title, industry or company size. When you can't target the list as narrowly as you'd like, the best solution is to craft your direct mail copy to attract the qualified and turn off any others. An example of such a headline might be: “Attention, purchasing managers! Find out how you can save time and money in your search for the best widgets.” The creative thrust of the message should focus on why the prospect would benefit from a visit to the booth. The postcard should go via first-class mail and be scheduled to arrive a week to 10 days before the show. (But plan ahead. There's nothing more wasteful than a pre-show mailing that arrives after the prospect has left town for the event.)

• Send follow-up e-mail reminders to the same list. The message should be equally targeted and include links to a landing page from your company's Web site. The landing page should describe your plans for the event in detail, such as the new products you'll be introducing, any parties you will host, and sessions where your executives will be speaking.

To set up appointments with past inquirers:

• Mail a postcard announcing your company will be at the trade show, and explaining why this is important to the prospect. Is a useful new product being introduced? Is this a chance to meet with the product's designer? Give some reason why the prospect will benefit from the fact you're exhibiting.

• Make a follow-up phone call seeking to set up an appointment to meet a sales rep at the booth at a specified time. You might mention other attractions, like an executive panel session or a party you're hosting. The point is to arrange a meeting so prior inquirers can get together and hopefully be moved further along in the buying process.

• Send a confirming letter or e-mail, or both in succession, to remind the prospect about the appointment, and resell that prospect on the reasons why it'll be worthwhile. Perhaps include a pass to the show floor, with a sales rep's business card attached.

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RUTH P. STEVENS (ruth@ruthstevens.com) consults on customer acquisition and retention, and teaches marketing to graduate students at Columbia Business School. She is the author of “The DMA Lead Generation Handbook” and “Trade Show and Event Marketing.”

A Pre-show Promo Checklist

Business marketers have all kinds of tactics at their disposal for making contact before a trade show. Here's a checklist of ways to drive qualified visitors to your booth. Remember, an aggressive offer should only go to very targeted audiences. With less-qualified lists, use a message and offer designed simultaneously to draw good prospects and eliminate the rest.

• Print stickers with your booth number, the name and date of the trade show, and the city where it's being held. In the months before the event, affix the stickers to invoices, letters and packages.

• Create an electronic ad or tagline that can be dropped into your regular electronic communications (Web site, e-newsletters and solo e-mail).

• Set up a microsite that describes your planned activities at the upcoming event. Mention the Web site URL in all pre-show correspondence.

• Send the first portion of a two-part item, inviting recipients to pick up the other part at the booth. Try walkie-talkies or athletic socks — things that come in pairs.

• Send a letter plus a map of the exhibit hall, with your booth location highlighted.

• Advertise in pre-show issues of your industry's trade publications.

• Produce a show appointment book as a premium. Arrange meetings with your key customers and, as a confirmation, send them a copy of the book with the appointment handwritten inside.

• Offer a time-limited incentive to create a sense of urgency. (“The first 30 people to visit our booth will get a special prize!”)

• Use testimonials from last year's attendees.

• Develop a series of contacts using all media options available: letter, fax, postcard, telephone, e-mail, or a personal visit from a sales rep.

• Stress the benefit. Don't say “Visit us at booth number 123.” Say why. Why should recipients take the time to visit you? Are you offering a show special? Launching a new product? What's in it for them? Give them a good reason to act. — RPS