Tips, Trends, and Tactics on Channel Demand Generation

In Part I of “The Dr. Seuss Approach to Tradeshow Success” I discussed the first step to getting the most out of your tradeshow investment. Little recap: Go for the WOW factor and knock their socks off! Well, their socks are off…now what?

B. Follow up WOW with POW!

While there’s no doubt über creative booths, big and small, will draw in the traffic; no amount of talking financial wizards in diapers, acrobatic Doritos-chomping Barbie dolls or Budweiser Clydesdales will keep an attendees interest if your overall presentation lacks substance.

For show attendees, there is an endless stream of gimmicks, gadgets and gags to glaze over their gelatinous optical globules and overly-occupy their orbital orifices, so what will really stimulate all their senses is the company who backs up their bling with cha-ching.

At the end of the day, every attendee wants to know “what’s in it for me (my company). Beautiful booth babes may attract the attendees your way, but if someone isn’t there to educate the prospective consumer and answer any potential questions in a thoughtful and personal way, leaving them with the feeling that they received special attention, and with a desire to want to know more, then all your effort was for naught.

If you’re giving a presentation as part of you booth, it should have real and effective meaning to the target audience. If you’re having discussions with attendees, the conversations should be center around who you are, who the potential customer is, and how you can help them. This may, in turn, lead to a more in depth “technical” discussion and/or booth demo of your products and services (show and tell never goes out of style) and you want to be ready to hit the customer (not literally people) with the one, two, WOW-POW combination that shows them not only are you creative and passionate, but skilled and knowledgeable enough to warrant consideration of their business. If they leave your booth with a handshake, a smile, and some genuine interest (less the deer in the headlights look), you’ve done your job… until the show is over…

C. Turn WOW and POW into action NOW!

Okay, okay, it’s not exactly “Green Eggs and Ham” worthy, but it is an extremely simple method of taking the interest garnered from your tradeshow and turning it into pipeline opportunity.

You’ve done the hard work of creating the booth that drew the attention that presented the script that led to a demo that lived in the house that Jack built…uh, I mean… that built the foundation for a number of potential new customers; now, you’ve gotta get ‘er done by following up with those leads in a very timely manner (initial post show contact should be made within 1 week of the close of the show). Capitalizing on the enthusiasm felt by show attendees who visited your booth soon after the show gives you the best chance to get ahead of your competition and further cultivate the consumers’ interest in your company and offerings.

As well, you want to ride the wave of buzz generated by the show and your booth with a solid Inbound Marketing strategy – an organic way to grow your business through a set of marketing strategies/techniques/tools focused on pulling relevant prospects and customers towards your business and products, including blogging, content publishing, search engine optimization, and social media marketing. Whether a trade show with 200 or 20,000 attendees, you simply won’t get to make a personal impression on every customer at the event, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t leave an impression, create a curiosity and the desire to learn more. Having a strong inbound marketing strategy gives those potential customers the means to find you easily and in turn gives you the means to help further develop their interest from curiosity to closed sale!

At the end of the day, or two, or three of trade show mania, potential customers will leave tired, mired down with bags overflowing pamphlets, business cards and goodies, and forgetting more than half of what they saw and heard. But what they won’t forget is the booth that made a lasting impression. The staff who gave them personal attention and showed genuine interest in their needs. The company who delivered a strong, clear and effective message whether wrapped around a babe, bobble, beer or bratwurst, and left them hungry (no pun intended but I’ll take the credit) to know more.

After all, Sam’s unsurpassed creativity (“Would you eat them in a house? Would you eat them with a Mouse… on a train, in the rain, on a box, with a fox…”) and unwavering persistence left the once adamantly defiant doubter with a completely new perspective, “I do like green eggs and ham, I do like them, Sam I am!”

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