Leverage Exclusive Events to Increase Trade Show Traffic - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #115
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008Ever notice how people will go way out of their way and wait in the longest lines to be part of an exclusive group or the first to experience something new, then word spreads and a frenzy ensues? Witness the iPhone phenomenon. Here are a few techniques for stimulating your own frenzy of trade show traffic.
In my last position, I wanted to call out all of the stops at one major industry event to take our booth traffic to new levels and stimulate huge buzz to raise brand awareness. I decided to leverage word of mouth techniques to accomplish this goal. So, my team produced an exclusive, invitation-only after hours party at a swank club in Las Vegas immediately following the close of the show floor.
We gave a small number of invitations to our customers and partners who were attending the event and they helped us generate so much buzz for the event that we had attendees lining up at the booth for a chance to get an invite to the party. Once inside the party, we lavished our guests with food, drinks, attention and gifts—one of which was a killer t-shirt that many wore to the show the next day which led others to visit the booth.
The event has now become an annual affair for NetQoS which more than 500 attending the last party in Anaheim. The event is no longer exclusive, but it does have a widespread reputation as the must-attend event at Networkers.
So, take a tip from New York club promoters and offer exclusives to get people excited about you and stimulate WOM. Invite your customers and partners and encourage them to spread the word for you.
Oh, and here’s another related tip for driving booth traffic: sponsor a keynote drop. What’s a keynote drop? Some trade shows enable marketers to produce cards or flyers that are placed on the seats at the Keynote presentation. It’s more targeted than a hotel drop and instantly actionable. If the trade show does not offering a keynote drop, that’s even better. Contact the show organizers and offer to sponsor it exclusively! They will be happy to have the additional dollars and you’ll be the only game in town.
Driving More Traffic at Trade Shows - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #113
Friday, June 27th, 2008Driving booth traffic at a trade show can always be challenging. With so many other booths vying for attention, how do you make sure that attendees stop by your booth? Sometimes you have to get creative to use a smaller budget than your competition, and have equal or better results.
Two years ago at DreamForce, salesforce.com’s user group conference, we utilized several strategies to drive more booth visitors. We created a theme to make sure all elements of our strategy tied together. Our theme was “No More Lists.” Being a provider of role-based contact databases, we wanted to end the use of traditional title-based list use.
Attendees knew about us before they even walked through the doors of the Moscone center. We hired temporary staff to be picketers on the sidewalk holding various signs with the No More Lists theme and chanting, “ No More Lists!” As attendees walked past, the picketers would hand them “No More Lists” buttons and direct the attendees to the ReachForce Booth to get cash.
I will note that in some ways this is a cautionary tale; we did have the cops called on us by the organizers of the event. The police actually sided in our favor, but we decided to drop the picketers for the second day of the conference to keep from ruffling too many feathers.
One of us also walked the floor to hand out more buttons and direct traffic to our booth. If an attendee came to the booth, we let them pick an envelope. Each envelope was filled with cash ranging from $1 to $50. If you are trying to figure out the most compelling giveaway keep in mind that everyone loves cold hard cash.
Our booth strategy was a success. We created lots of buzz with the picketers outside and exceeded our goals for booth traffic. We also generated enough revenue to pay for the cost of the show.
As you are developing a strategy to drive more booth traffic, keep these ideas in mind:
- Create buzz before attendees reach the show floor – this does not have to be outside the exhibit hall like our picketers. You can start the buzz on your blog, through Twitter, in a press release, a pre-show party, pre-show mailer or email.
- Have giveaways that people will tell their friends about – either have the latest must have gadget or a desirable giveaway for every visitor like cash.
- Make as many people at the show your brand ambassadors – we did this with buttons but you could also give away t-shirts or hats, anything people will wear – then reward them for wearing it.
The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word-of-Mouth Marketing - ReachForce Book Club
Friday, June 27th, 2008Lots of good stuff in this chapter. Examples and case studies are mostly B2C, but the concepts work well for B2B Marketing as well.
Emanuel Rosen defines BUZZ as “the sum of all comments about a certain product that are exchanged among people at any given time.” He goes on to list why buzz is powerful today – noise, skepticism, and connectivity.
- Noise – “Customers can hardly hear you.” Marketing and Advertising are everywhere. There’s no escaping it. We get it in the mail, we see banner ads online, when was the last time you searched Google and didn’t see a paid ad pop up? And let’s not forget all of the email spam we dread every day. As Marketers, we must figure out a way to stand out in the crowd if we want to be heard (or seen). This creates buzz.
- Skepticism – “Customers are skeptical.” This isn’t surprising. They have been bombarded by marketing and advertising everywhere they go, all promising to the best results. Who should they believe or trust? Rosen mentions a survey that illustrates this point - “37% of the public considers information from a software company ‘very or somewhat believable’.” Wow!
- Connectivity – Today people are easily connected. We all have access to new tools that enable us to better share information. As Marketers, wouldn’t we rather them talk about us to our face instead of behind our back? Create places and opportunities for people to speak out about your products or services. Be involved.
Rosen goes on to say “If you want to create buzz, you have to know who your customers are and how you are reaching them. Start by answering these questions:
- From whom do your customers typically learn about your product?
- What do people say when they recommend your product?
- How fast does information about your product spread as compared with competitors’ products?
- Who are the network hubs?
- Where does the information hit a roadblock?
- How many sources of information does a customer rely on and which ones are most important?
- What other kinds of information spread through the same networks?”
Not only will these questions help us create buzz, they’ll also be helpful as we are launching new products or services, introducing new features, and thinking about other social marketing strategies.
Generating buzz doesn’t just happen overnight. It takes planning, seeding and well thought out execution. A good seeding program can be the launching pad to huge success. Rosen listed four rules for building a successful seeding program, these are definitely worth sharing and talking about.
- “Look beyond the usual suspects. Identify social circles, industry segments, or academic disciplines in which people don’t talk about your product or service, and seed them.”
- “Put products in their hands.” Let your audience touch or experience firsthand what you are offering. If your solution isn’t one you can easily experience, offer a free demo or show real results via a proven customer success story.
- “Reduce the price barrier. Make the product free for seed recipients if you can, or at least offer a significant discount.”
- “Listen for silence. When you hear silence, the network is dead. Pay attention to dead networks and do further seeding to wake them up.”
Remember, the goal of seeding is to “plant the seed to stimulate discussion in multiple networks simultaneously.”
At ReachForce we are rolling out new SaaS tools that enable Sales and Marketing teams to better identify and target their market “sweet spots”. Here’s how we are trying to create some buzz around these new product offerings –
- We typically sell to Marketers but with these new SaaS tools Sales teams might be a better target audience so we are doing some test messaging via email programs to a custom role-based list of Sales decision makers.
- We are offering these people free trials of the real time analytics software. We started out offering the new tools bundled with ReachForce data services and decided that stand alone, the analytics tools added value and created a sense of wanting more (data services). So we now are offering the new tools free for a limited time. We are hoping this is going to create buzz for both the software and data services.
- We are also experimenting with some very targeted advertising programs. Hoping these are going to drive some awareness as well as generate some prospect engagement.
- We are tracking our buzz program by measuring how many people actually log in and try out the free software tools. So far so good and we’re just getting started!
With all of these things we are trying to create buzz that ultimately turns into measurable revenue.
Anyone else actively working on a B2B word-of-month campaign? If so, I’d love to hear all about it.
Make a Memorable First Impression - Marketing WTF?
Monday, May 19th, 2008Check out these amazingly creative business card designs. When it comes to Marketing today, half the battle is just being remembered. These card designs are so effective because they are not only memorable, but relevant. Most of them, anyway. As the “Made to Stick” brothers Chip and Dan Heath describe it – they are “sticky.” They connect with their audience because they are not only unexpected but relevant. They describe it as “unexpected in the service of core messages.”
“The most basic way to get someone’s attention is this: Break a pattern. Humans adapt incredibly quickly to consistent patterns. Figure out what is counterintuitive about the message—i.e., What are the unexpected implications of your core message? Communicate your message in a way that breaks your audiences’ guessing machines.”
Early Warning Guerrilla Marketing Idea - Marketing WTF?
Monday, April 28th, 2008Now this has some really exciting possibilities. And, a low, low price tag. Check out Flogos, floating ads and messages generated by re-purposed artificial snow machines. The machines can pop one Flogo out every 15 seconds, flooding the air with foamy peace signs or whatever shape a client desires. Renting the machine for a day starts out at a cost of about $2,500.
Even better, it’s environmentally friendly as the material is derived from plants.
April Fools from The B2B Lead
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008In case you haven’t already figured it out, we played a little April Fools joke today. Google is not partnering with Second Life (unless we had some sort of unknown psychic premonition, or maybe we just gave them a great idea). We hope you enjoyed us having a little fun. We are always up for trying something new to drive more blog traffic.
Google Finds Nirvana Through Second Life - Marketing WTF?
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008In a bold move designed to fortify itself as THE King of All Advertising in both the real world and the virtual world, rumor has it Google will be announcing an exclusive agreement with Linden Research, Inc. (aka Linden Lab), the creators of the wildly popular online world Second Life, to become the premiere advertising medium within the virtual world. Code-named “Narnia”, the agreement details a two-pronged advertising strategy that will enable Google’s PPC-based AdWords technology to be ascribed to any assets within Second Life, including the Avatars themselves. The second and most interesting component of the agreement provides for the ability to “bridge” PPC advertisements and landing page interactivity between the “real world” and Second Life. Imagine an Adwords-enabled billboard in Second Life promoting a new sports car that, when clicked on, draws the user back onto the advertiser’s web site on the Internet, and vice versa.
What’s next? Is salesforce.com going to start tracking virtual leads? Are marketing automation vendors like Eloqua, Marketo, Vtrenz, and LoopFuse going to start allowing you to track virtual marketing campaigns to Second Life Avatars? If so, how will all of this integrate with our tracking and social media tools?
This is perfect timing for ReachForce, as we just announced our Convert software-as-a-service enabling businesses to turn web visitors into active leads, whether traditional or virtual.
Trade in an Bad Addiction for a Good One - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #80
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008Are you a Stumbler? I must admit, I find myself neglecting family and friends for my nightly StumbleUpon fix.
For those of you scratching your head, StumbleUpon is–according to Wikipedia – a web browser plugin that allows its users to discover and rate webpages, photos, videos, and news articles. These webpages are typically presented when the user—known within the community as a Stumbler—clicks the “Stumble!” button on the browser’s toolbar. StumbleUpon chooses which new webpage to display based on the user’s ratings of previous pages, ratings by his/her friends, and by the ratings of users with similar interests. i.e. it is a recommendation system which uses peer and social networking principles.
And, for B2B Marketers, a StumbleUpon addiction could actually be a good one. Here are a few cool articles and tools I’ve found while Stumbling:
And, a few of the more fun finds:
Now for the really good part. Turns out Marketers can pay to have their sites featured or served up to Stumblers. It’s called Stumble Upon Advertising and it’s really powerful, especially if you have the type of product or service that seems to be most popular with the StumbleUpon crowd. For pennies per view, you can target an audience with your website or blog. StumbleUpon then brings users directly to the page you specify and they rate your site. It’s a great way to drive web traffic and leads.
Make the Most of Your Tradeshow Investment Using Word of Mouth Marketing - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #76
Friday, February 29th, 2008Attention Conservation Notice: The following post provides a few tips on how to turn your tradeshow experience into a word of mouth marketing success.
When most B2B Marketers think of Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing, they think of online/viral campaigns or customer referral programs. But, tradeshows can be the perfect setting for some of the best WOM marketing campaigns. Where else can you get so many people of like mind together in one place, short of Internet forums.
There’s nothing like a good stunt to get everyone at an event talking about your organization which contributes to both brand awareness and demand generation if you handle the lead capture and nurturing process appropriately. The guys over at GamePlan Marketing have been praised for their stroke of genius, “Operation Blueshock¸ a guerilla stunt that involved sending 150 male and 150 female models dressed to the nines onto the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) show floor to talk up the Bluetooth Special Interest Group. For video of the stunt, visit http://www.gpexperience.com/work.php.
The results were staggering: on the day the models showed up at CES, the Bluetooth website had 18,500 hits– a 42-percent spike. In the post-show survey, 60 percent of respondents said they knew more about Bluetooth than just two days before.
So called “guerilla stunts” need not be one-hit wonders, however. A successful WOM event orchestrated by NetQoS has now become an increasingly successful yearly tradition. In an effort to catch the eye of Cisco and get a very target-rich environment to talk about the company, NetQoS marketers executed a WOM “stunt” at Cisco Networkers a couple of years ago. The company sent out invitations to an exclusive party at The MIX lounge in Vegas for an after-hours party starting at 11:00 pm. This generated a great deal of buzz on the show floor with attendees clamoring for an invite. Those lucky enough to attend were given shirts to wear the next day. This resulted in more than 200 NetQoS-clad advocates in sessions and on the show floor which helped to increase lead generation by 120% from the previous year. The next year, we expanded our presence further, booked the House of Blues and increased lead capture by more than 300%. We also gave out Flipcams to encourage attendees to spread the word via YouTube and the blogosphere.
How have you used WOM to improve your trade show experience?
B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #51 - B2B Marketers Can Get in on the Holiday Action Too!
Friday, December 14th, 2007At a recent Eloqua user group meeting, an attendee asked if anyone had any Holiday-related campaign ideas or plans to share for the B2B marketers in the room. No one raised a hand.
So that got me to thinking. Can B2B Marketers get in on the Holiday action that is so often considered the sole domain of B2C?
When it comes to taking advantage of end of year themes, and non-religious Holidays like Thanksgiving the answer is clearly “Yes.” ReachForce has done a great job of this with their Marketing Oh Crap Day and Use it Or Lose it campaigns. And, at NetQoS, we used this year’s Cyber Monday Holiday shopping fiasco to promote our NetFlow monitoring capabilities in this Network Performance Daily blog post. And, we are currently having some fun with a New Year’s resolutions contest for Network Engineers.
But when it comes to Christmas, Kwanza or Hanukah, it’s probably best to steer clear or go with the generic Holiday theme. Obviously, introducing religion into the business world is not a great idea. It’s not even a good idea for some B2C Marketers. Witness this controversial ad for (WARNING: If you are easily offended, do not click here) Red Bull. According to Reuters, a priest persuaded the soft drinks company to withdraw an advertisement setting its product in a nativity scene on the grounds it is disrespectful to Christianity. Many in the church labeled it blasphemous!
Got any other examples of Marketing WTF moments involving religion or the holidays? Share them with us.
