By Dave Jentz, Vice President, Exhibit Systems, www.exhibitsystems.com

Trade shows are the best place to discover the latest trends in your industry, launch new product and learn about the latest technical innovations. Trade Shows are great ways to get your products and services in front of your potential customers. Face-to-face selling, hands-on demonstrations and networking are still some of the best opportunities to expand your client base and to grow your business. Given today’s challenging economic times, it’s a good time to review your trade show marketing plans and get the most out of your resources.

First a few of the latest facts concerning the trade show industry from the past year, according to Trade Show Week –

• Net square footage of floor space has increased
• Number of exhibitors has increased
• Slight decrease in the number of attendees, a 1.3% drop
• While some shows have been cancelled, there have been several new shows launched in the past year

It is very important to evaluate the shows you’re interested in. Do a little research. Is the show the correct one for your product? Find out how it was attended last year and who is exhibiting. If your competition is there, don’t you think you should be there too? However, if there’s some question about exhibiting due to budget cuts, think twice about it. A cutback in the size and scope of your exhibit is far better than not being there at all. Your absence would be conspicuous and would send a poor message to your customers.

It is also important to know your customers. These are the people who will be attending. When you’re on the show floor, try not to talk only with your old friends in the industry, but stretch out and meet some new people.

Lately companies have been sending fewer people to trade shows. The combined costs of airfare, hotels and food always seem to be going up. Although there may be fewer attendees at the shows, the ones that are there are more qualified to talk business. While exhibiting at a trade show, you can expect to meet an average of 6-10 customers per day. That’s pretty good when you think that you don’t have to travel to their location to make your sales pitch.

Getting the attendees to stop by your booth is the next challenge. Give them a reason to find you. You can send pre-show mailings, e-mail blasts and use social media to let these potential clients know that you have a new product to showcase, or that you have special show pricing or are giving away valuable prizes. And when they are in your booth, make sure your exhibit is well-designed and serves your needs.

Don’t forget, you should have well -trained staff in the booth, looking presentable and ready to engage. Remind them that there is no eating in the booth, and to keep their cell phones on vibrate.  Use chairs only if you’re meeting with someone personally. 

A critical element to the success of your show is to follow-up your leads after the show.  If the show offers the badge scanners, it’s a good idea to pay a little extra and rent one. You’ll get a printout and a digital file so you can add the names to your mailing list back at the office.

Trade shows are still a very good method of finding new clients, reacquainting yourself with existing clients and building your network of leads and venders. Nothing can beat the handshake when it comes to doing business today.   

But for those who see the benefit of social media activities, there are many ways to promote them. Interestingly, organic or grassroots marketing strategies rank ahead of advertising when it comes to increasing target audience awareness. The prioritized list includes: corporate Web sites (76%), public relations (73%), updates to the specific social media accounts (66%), corporate e-mail signatures (47%), advertising (39%), comments on other blogs (37%).

Social Networking is Fastest-Growing Area

As social networking for brands becomes an acceptable and essential marketing tactic, 79% of Wisconsin companies entered the arena within the last year. Which social media trail behind Facebook and Twitter in terms of overall use? Survey participants listed YouTube, monitoring and publishing blogs, LinkedIn, MySpace and Wikis.

More than 60% of companies are following industry advice advocating that readers of blogs be allowed to post comments. One company indicated it received up to 200 reader comments each month. Therefore, monitoring blog traffic is a high priority. It appears that blogs will continue to be supported, as 57% are successful in delivering on the goal to “enable engagement with our target audience.”

Idea Sharing and Information

The core of social media is information dissemination. The marketing challenge lies in how a company chooses to package and integrate its complete marketing package to its target audiences.

Whether you embrace or vilify social networking or blogging, learning how each of the technologies touches your customers is critical to marketing success. If it takes seven points of impact for a person to absorb a message, one of those seven should include social marketing.

Stephan & Brady is an integrated marketing communications firm with B2B and B2C clients based in Madison.

By Michelle and Justin Fluegel, Fluegel Growth Consulting LLC, www.fluegelgrowthconsultingllc.com

Milwaukee was once known as the machine shop to the world, and while that title has been transferred to other areas, Milwaukee and the state remain a critical link within the world's manufacturing resources.  What is true about the growth of manufacturing, specifically in the Milwaukee area, is that entrepreneurs spring up with competitive products or services seeing a better way.  This spirit drives growth and transformations in Milwaukee.  Today though, small companies need to explore options outside their industrial or corporate park.  A great need we have found at Fluegel Growth Consulting exists in helping small businesses develop marketing plans, or revise their established ones, to generate the growth they desire.

Small business is the product of two inputs: self-confidence and the desire to perform better than those currently in the market.  It becomes clear after a few years that small businesses fall into two categories: those that are just an entrepreneur and those that are serial entrepreneurs.  An entrepreneur starts a company, achieves a level of success and maintains that level as normal operations.  This might be a sustainable model if the environment remains constant, but if it changes, it could result in desperate situations.  A serial entrepreneur is a company that develops itself and continues to reinvent itself over time.  The easiest method to tell the difference between the two is in their marketing plans.

We have found that many small businesses connected to the manufacturing base of Milwaukee are clear cases of an entrepreneur.  They lack a web presence and rely predominately on word-of-mouth lead generation and marketing programs.  This was successful decades ago when they started and the marketplace in Milwaukee was much different.  But because of the many changes that have occurred within the manufacturing industry, they are no longer competing against the company in the next industrial park or just down the road.  Increasingly these small businesses are facing competition from the next city, state, or country.  In order to compete successfully in this environment, their marketing plans need to expand even further to widen their market presence.

Some small businesses are clearly serial entrepreneurs having redeveloped their companies to better compete in the environment that currently exists.  They require a different service from a marketing consultant.  While developing strategies for marketing plans and translating that into growth of their business, they seek the knowledge of improved approaches and new trends that will continuously advance their business. 

While the economy in the Milwaukee area has changed over the decades, one thing has remained constant – a strong manufacturing base lies within the foundation of the community.  It might not be found in the business section of the newspaper or through reports in the news, yet Wisconsin has become the number one state in the country for manufacturing employment.  Many opportunities exist in supporting the small companies within manufacturing to expand their businesses through more effective marketing plans.