Trade Show Tips 'n Tactics: Getting The Most Out Of Your Trade Show Experience

By Karin Risko

These tips may be simple, but they're often overlooked. Don't put a table between you and trade show attendees. Make them come into your booth. In addition to promotional literature, have something in your booth that's innovative, memorable or fun and draws guests to your booth. It doesn't necessarily have to relate to your business. For example, turn instant photos into buttons or magazine covers in a frame (with your company info. imprinted on it of course). Or it can relate. If you're promoting a commercial pilot service, a flight simulator could be a fun and a sought after addition to your booth.

Give away really good premiums. However, don't just leave them on the table for anyone to grab. A successful financial planner I know hands them out only after carrying on a conversation with individual attendees and after getting their business cards. If they're very good premiums, people will seek you out and willingly hand over their cards.

Make sure someone is always at your booth. Don't ever leave it unattended. People don't like that. I think trade show exhibits work best with 2 or 3 people in the booth at a time. One person can get tired easily and lose his/her enthusiasm. With two or three people, the enthusiasm level remains higher much longer.

Make Please and Thank You part of your public relations vocabulary

Some of you may remember the magic words from your youth: please and thank you. Well, those words are still relevant today in the world of marketing and public relations. Not only is it still appropriate to say "please" and "thanks" to those who've helped promote your business, it makes good business sense.

Whenever you send out press releases or story ideas announcing a new development in your business that garners ink or air time, it's always proper to send a personal thank you note to those responsible. This is called relationship building. If you're nice, polite and grateful, chances are they'll remember you next time around and give your new press release a look.

I have seen people quickly shoot off letters to reporters and editors complaining about mistakes such as misspelled names made in news articles. These same people, however, say nothing when a story runs without errors. They take it for granted that they got press when that spot could have gone to many other worthy businesses or organizations.

Remember, reporters or radio / television hosts don't have to write or talk about your business. By doing so, they're giving you free PR, so be cordial and appreciative of their efforts. If a reporter has made an error, start off first by thanking them and acknowledging the positives. Then bring up the error.

When launching a new business or initiating a marketing campaign, I recommend that supplies include a nice big box of thank you cards! While gifts can be construed as payola and are not allowed by most organizations, a sincere thank you is always in style and appreciated.

Blogs, Web Site Tips-N-Trends: Is FREE always the best solution for your online marketing needs?

One of the ways non-profits and small businesses can cut costs yet remain visible is through free web site and blog hosting services such as blogger.com. Affordability and ease of use make these services attractive. Free isn't always such a great deal though as members of a non-profit recently discovered when their "free" service failed at a crucial time.

I've posted the non-profit's problem below and called upon interactive marketing guru Scott Burkey of Solar Velocity, an Atlanta-based full service marketing and technology firm to lend his expertise.


Problem

We've used a blog hosted by a community newspaper to promote our non-profit event. The blog worked well for us as we could immediately post information, set up the blog in a nice format that met our needs, and best of all, it was free.

For six months we posted articles of interest relating to our event, press releases and updated event information. Occasionally, we'd find that the blog links didn't always work, but it didn't seem to be a big deal and problems were quickly rectified. However, a few days prior to the opening day of our event, we received publicity in our local newspapers. The result, over 600 daily visitors to our site over the next few days. While the publicity was great, it appears our blog shut down numerous times as our contact person received many calls from people stating the blog wasn't working. This was a big problem as who knows how many people didn't attend because the blog was down or how many other members of the media chose not to pursue coverage as they couldn't access the site.

Soon we'll be planning for next year. How do we avoid this situation again? Do we blog or buy a web site domain? Also, when non-profits or small businesses are looking to set up blogs and/or web sites, what technical things should we be looking at to make sure the host can accommodate our traffic especially at critical times?

Scott Burkey's advice:

Free for most of the year doesn't amount to much if, when you need it, it fails you. That being said, the amount of traffic you are talking about isn't, from my experience, an extraordinary amount of traffic for any web-based application built by a professional to endure for a abbreviated period of time.

Here are a few thoughts:

1. If a blog, website or any piece of Internet technology is mission-critical then it should be tested on a regular basis to ensure it can handle anticipated usage. It seems silly to most, but situations where technology has to stand up to an increased amount of usage should be planned for and tested for.

2. If your blog or website gets very little traffic 99% of the time, but then has to handle an influx of traffic for an event promotion then there are alternatives that will only cost you an extra amount when you need it but not the rest of the time. Load-balancing sites is one option. Stripping down the weight of a site to allow for heavier use is another option. In
extreme cases the site may be cached for efficient retrieval during such times. The option you choose depends on many factors. One of the things my firm does in recommending a solution for a client is to always look at what the right balance of cost and availability. This takes a forward-looking mindset and some honesty with oneself.

3. Any organization needs to look at the reason they are putting up a blog or website when considering how much to invest. If the purpose is solely for information, then the cost can be kept at the low-end of the spectrum. If the site is an e-commerce site then it will likely be at the other end of the cost/feature spectrum. If the blog is "somewhere in the middle" then
that is a decision you're best off making with a guide that is experienced in such matters.

Thanks Scott for your valuable advice. I agree totally with Scott regarding checking your site frequently especially around times you anticipate increased traffic. Six hundred hits isn't a lot of traffic. Rather than the host server being down, the problem could be that a couple of the links are off and that could disrupt your blog or web site.

Anyone else face a similar situation, or any other experts care to comment? Please feel free to share your experiences.