One of the greatest challenges for event marketers is standing out from other booths at a trade show. The obvious way is to have the biggest badest booth in the expo hall, but with tightening budgets, spending more may not be an option. A more low-cost approach is to have a theme.

Here at ReachForce, we have a history of getting attention (mostly good) at DreamForce, salesforce.com’s annual user group conference. Each year we have a different, fully integrated theme to help attract more booth visitors. Last year our theme was Let’s Make a Deal (you know the old game show hosted by Monty Hall).

If you don’t remember the game show, I’ll give you a quick rundown. Monty Hall, the host, bartered with contestants dressed in costume and would allow them to choose their prize from behind one of three curtains or from one of several envelopes. The contestants always had an opportunity to trade in their prize for another mystery prize.

We decided to play Let’s Make a Deal to drive more booth traffic and engage attendees. If you attended DreamForce last year, you may remember seeing Fred and Wilma Flintstone; that was us. Fred and Wilma walked the floor handing out envelopes with $1 bills and told attendees that they could trade in their envelope for a chance to win much more at the ReachForce booth. Those of us working the booth were in costume as well (yes, I was Little Bo Peep). Booth visitors could then play a game of Let’s Make a Deal. To do so they had to take a demo of our latest software offering.

In the end, we reached all of our goals for capturing leads and gave more demos than expected. And people still remember us. One lesson learned was to consider who you are putting in costume. Our sales guy had more than a few people tell him they just could not take him seriously while he was dressed as Fred Flintstone. Be sure to draw attention but not at the cost of distracting from your message.

Different areas where you might consider incorporating a theme:

• Pre-show promotion
• Post-show follow-up
• Giveaways
• Costumes
• Booth signage

Written by Cody Young, ReachForce Customer Success Manager

I count it as good fortune … a big part of my job involves talking to dozens of different marketers every week about lead generation. Lately, I have kept my ears open for signs of downward second half ’08 pressure on budgets due to the economy. And while my report is hardly scientific, I am happy to say the majority of companies I’m in touch with seem to be in tune with the fact that the best formula for sales and marketing success (in any economic situation) is:

Sustainability + Execution + Accountability = Marketing ROI

In real world terms, if you’re driving somewhere, you’ve got to keep your foot on the gas and your car on the road at the same time. Marketing accountability (direction and measurement) are equal to those white lines we all strive to stay between no matter how fast or slow the speedometer says we are going at any given time during the trip. So when companies do knee-jerk reactions to economic news and paralyze their sales and marketing efforts by raiding the marketing budget, I’ve always equated it to driving by those bad planners along side of the road who have run out of gas …you feel bad for them, but at the same time you can’t help but wonder how in the heck they let that happen. Did they really think they could get to where they wanted to go, without keeping enough fuel in the tank?

Taking the gas analogy one step further – in an economy where responsible marketers need to be doing more with less – I equate an over reliance on tradeshows for lead generation to rushing out and buying a Humvee. Sure, the “let’s have a parade” factor is there. The big tires, shiny grills and overhead lights look cool. You can paint logos on them and go like a bat-out-of-hell for two days. You’ll have plenty of conversations with lots of bleary-eyed people about how rugged, yet chic it all looks … but at the end of the day, poorly executed trade show campaigns are about the most wasteful thing I can think of from a lead generation perspective.

I’m keenly aware that trying to steer some folks away from over relying on trade shows for leads almost means talking them into a complete redo of their very persona on a professional level. The success of too many marketers are gauged by how tricked-out booths look, or how efficiently they can ship dozens of boxes from one city to the next. Most large companies have full time employees who do nothing but register for events, manage shipping and logistics vendors and fight – oops, I mean “coordinate”- with the sales team about who to send to this or that event with exhibit hall passes, matching $60 golf polos and thousands of dollars worth of bags and trinkets that everyone forgets in their hotel room on checkout day. Then finally, the two hour meeting with finance weeks later about whether sales or marketing is going to pay for the expense reports. Sound familiar? You know who you are.

For these people I’d like to I’d propose a few things that can be done as part of your trade show production to ratchet things up accountability-wise. The goal is to go beyond counting how many business cards are in your fishbowl, or the number of badges you’ve scanned with your $300 per event “rent-a-scan.”

1. As far in advance as possible, begin processing event attendee registration lists as if they were an operational database. That is, weed out irrelevant contact data, then research, segment and prioritize relevant targets. Add this data to your CRM and marketing automation systems. Then direct pre-show, at-show and post-show calls-to-action at them with embedded “key driver” messaging. It’s really about knowing who you want to speak with before your team goes to the event, instead of passively waiting for people to visit your booth after the show has started.Many events these days offer incomplete contact data for trade show registrants and/or have limitations about how it can be used. As this trend grows, a good approach is to use custom contact database builders like ReachForce to quickly research the companies who are sending attendees and provide you with names and contact information of those who are most relevant to your sales efforts. Very often these results track to same people who have registered. If not, it’s still nice to have the right names when you speak to their co-workers to arrange getting your sales people networked in.
2. Game-plan each event as if you were a basketball coach. Consider the entire exhibit floor as the field of play with the understanding that no basketball team ever won a game with all 5 players standing under the hoop (in this case, around the booth). Depending on how many people you have going, you at least need 1) a good Point Guard (someone working the entire court, driving activity toward the goal/booth 2) a good Defensive Forward (someone working the entire court, talking to competitors, their customers, media contacts, consultants and analyst) and 3) a solid Center (someone – not a booth babe – who can deliver value proposition, demos, etc. in an intelligent and memorable way. Think of this as someone who instills confidence, with whom the visitor would want to personally do business.)
3. Once you have these players in place, make sure they all have measurable objectives to shoot for. Give them a leader and mission and make known in a post show report to executive management whether or not objectives were achieved. In other words, have a solid event execution process that holds people accountable for their individual assignments. This is a good way to avoid the perception that trade shows are junkets.
4. Rather than doing free-form sales pitches at your booth, strive to quantify what visitors think of your product or offer (usually after a demo) by using an ‘asked and answered” approach. A kiosk-based survey system can be used to pose “key-value” and “key-driver” questions with multiple choice questions. Assign point values to each response choice and tabulate them in a way that can be mathematically analyzed after the event to “score” each visitor. If you’re going to give away trinkets make them good ones, and give them to survey-takers.
5. Set media coverage objectives for each event (by doing proper preparation work, setting interviews, etc. with attending media contacts upfront) and measure effectiveness in terms of ad value equivalency. I.e. measure what same coverage would have cost if you bought an ad from each outlet. This is not really a pure lead generation issue, but tradeshows are useful for creating thought-leadership buzz, if done correctly. It’s important to craft a compelling, newsworthy pitch such as a new product launch, or stories linking important key drivers with how your company is positioned to address them. And if you don’t have a couple of client/promoters who are willing to be a part of anything you pitch to the media, don’t even waste your time. I don’t know too many reporters willing to write a story unless there are solid use cases and customer testimonials to back your claims up.On this same note, try to coordinate the timing of your more meaningful press releases with your event schedule. A strong story released with a dateline from a major industry event is a good way to compel media contacts to meet with you there. It also helps give your presence at the event a theme to work with, which is also helpful in creating buzz.
6. As a final dig (I just can’t help myself) always bring a fire extinguisher to each event. That way you can put out the flames from all the budget dollars you are burning when it starts to get out of hand.

We have discussed event marketing quite a bit on The B2b Lead. With tightening budgets I was curious what other marketers are doing to draw attention and make the most out of those leads gathered. I interviewed a variety of marketers at MarketingProfs B2B Forum in June. Check out this video to see what marketers from Marketo, HubSpot, Manticore, Enspire Learning and IDC have to say. See how they answered the following questions:

1. What is the craziest thing you have seen at a trade show?
2. What is your lead management process for leads gathered at trade shows?

Ever 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 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.

As we are fast approaching mid-year, it is a good time to look back at the investments you have already made this year and look for new ways to leverage these investments.

This is a time to make the invisible visible.

Most B2B Marketers have invested in either search engine optimization, paid search advertising or both this year. My guess is you were probably hoping for more quality leads from these investments. Have you considered these ideas to get more bang for your buck?

• Identify visitors that didn’t announce themselves (the companies they originated from). Your web analytics tools can help with this or check out ReachForce Convert for more segmentation level data and visitor patterns.
• Now that you’ve got the companies identified, do you have the right contacts to reach out to and play offense? Consider reaching out with an offer call to action relevant to the pages they viewed.

How about your current customer marketing? Are you doing everything you can to get more from what you already have?

• Is your customer database up to date and complete? 2% of data goes bad every month. Which 2%? Who knows. Your customer database is a great place to start a data refresh project.
• While you’re refreshing, do you have the right buying contacts for additional products or services? If not consider adding these to the customer records so you are ready when you have new or updated product offers.

Many of you invested in events in the first half of ’08. Have those leads been followed up on? According to SiriusDecisions, only 10% of trade show leads are followed-up by Sales. Are you, as a Marketer, nurturing the other 90%?

• For those leads that are non-responsive, make sure that you have the right contacts in those companies. Think about the role of the person you are targeting? Think about the multiple folks involved in a purchase process at your target and their role. You might need different offers or calls-to-action for each member of the decision making unit.
• Continue to nurture leads not ready for sales – dialog is important, it takes 5 to 7 touches to turn a lead into a prospect.

Webinars seemed to have only increased in popularity in 2008. Although the event happens live, the recorded content can be repurposed.

• Did you record the webinar and post on your website? Are you campaigning around the event even though the live version has already happened?
• Have you considered using services like Insight24 to syndicate your webcast to over 13 million viewers?
• Don’t forget about the podcasters. You can easily turn a webinar into multiple podcasts. Make sure short, bite sized content is available for those always short on time.

Summer is often “down-time” for marketing and a time to plan for the blitz of lead generation post Labor Day. This summer instead of “getting ready for what’s to come”, consider spending a little time repurposing what you’ve already done, in between the down time of course.

Event budgets are typically pretty spongy. They are usually handed out in lump amounts with very little success measures put in place around these events. Here are a few ideas to drive real leads from event spend.

• Make sure each person attending the event has goals assigned to them. Some examples include– X # of people scanned, X # of demos, X # of conversations had outside of the company booth, # of business cards collected. Use a little budget for prizes for the winners.
• Assign someone or a group of people to visit every other company participating in the event. You obviously have something in common, you are at the same event. Challenge team members to get other companies to drive traffic your way. Again, give away prizes to the company that sends the most people your way. Good use of $$ here, not only are you getting a chance to meet people who may not have stopped by to see you, you are also starting a new relationship with your forwarding friend.
• Ask each person that stops by your booth about the person responsible for using/buying your product or service. Give away another prize here to the team member that gets not only a name but also contact information and a referral from the person attending the show.
• If you have partners attending a show, put together a program that encourages people to visit your partner’s booth and vice versa.
• Once you return from an event and are getting ready to hand the warm and hot leads over to sales, STOP. Remember if you are passing a lead on there should be some additional information that goes along with the lead. Information that deems it Sales-ready. For these leads, use a little event budget and incent the Sales team to push these leads and to keep you posted on their progress. Everyone likes to be rewarded, a little piece of your event budget for prizes and everyone wins.
• Leads that aren’t Sales ready, divide those into 2 groups – those that you have the right decision makers name and possible contact info. These people are ready for a very targeted marketing program. For those that you only have the information of the person that stopped by and visited you at the show, invest in contact discovery for these. It’s worth the extra dollars to be able to turn otherwise dead event data into an actionable lead. These newly discovered leads will then be ready for your targeted marketing programs.
• Don’t forget to keep up with your spend. You’ll need this to calculate your ROI. You’ll also want to use this info. to measure the new tactics you are trying out.
• Tag event leads in your CRM system. This information will be used for follow up, for continued marketing with relevant messaging, and most importantly it’s needed to measure ROI of the event.

Got any more creative event spend ideas? Please share.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting an outbreak of the flu at recent tech conferences. According to the report here.

“The San Francisco Department of Public Heath this week warned of an outbreak of the Norovirus at the Moscone Center, where Sun Microsystems is currently hosting the JavaOne conference. The Norovirus is a highly contagious flu-like virus that causes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and some stomach cramping. A spokesman for the city tells the Business Technology Blog that the warning came after the public-health department received several complaints from attendees at Sun’s conference.”

Seems like there have been quite a few other events afflicted by the outbreaks including the recent RSA Security Conference I attended which was focused on a far different type of virus.

User group conferences are expensive and time consuming but are the best way to have your customers network with each other and for you to get real face time with them to update them on new products and features and gather input on where you should be headed next. I was speaking with a colleague about her user group conference. She has managed them in the past but wanted a better way to stay connected with customers after the conference. Her boss wanted her to create an online community because social media is so hot right now. However, an online community didn’t seem like a right fit because her customers wanted real answers from executives not just responses from whoever in client services happened to be monitoring the discussion boards that day.

I recommended that she continues to hold events throughout the year but to instead make them virtual. As part of the goody bags at the user group conference she could give everyone a web cam. Then, once a quarter, she could organize a live virtual conference on Skype (if Oprah can get housewives to use it, you can get executives to). Users may not be able to interact with each other as much, but an executive could be on hand to make announcements and answer questions. Now I am a firm believer in pushing your message through as many media as possible because everyone’s preferences are different. After the live web conference, she could turn the highlights into a webcast for those who couldn’t make it and send a newsletter with updates as well. That way people can digest the information in their own way.

The point here is that no matter what you do to stay in touch with your customers, do something. We learn in school the importance of keeping our current customers, “It is easier to keep a current customer than to gain a new one.” Somewhere along the way acquiring new business became the focus and we forgot that our current customers are our gold.

As a footnote, I have not executed a campaign such as this one. This was truly an idea I had in the moment when my colleague told me about her dilemma. I would love to hear from anyone out there who has done something similar!

If you are a regular reader of The B2B Lead, you have probably noticed us all talking more about events and tradeshows than usual. This subject has been on our minds because we are today announcing a new data service offering for events called ReachForce Capture.

Our mission at ReachForce is to reduce the amount of waste in B2B marketing. Current marketing tactics, including direct mail, email, trade shows and search engine marketing, have conversion rates of 10% or less. We introduced ReachForce Discover and ReachForce Refresh to increase response rates for direct mail and email from the industry average of less than 3%. ReachForce Capture will enable marketers to convert more trade show contacts and increase trade show ROI.

ReachForce Capture enables you to turn your trade show scans/attendees into actionable leads. At a targeted trade show, most of the companies will be a right fit but the attendees may not be the right decision makers. By identifying the right person or decision making unit by their role within an organization, not just their title, ReachForce’s approach to contact discovery is unlike any other data provider. Targeting prospects based on their role in an organization increases marketing results and sales conversions, ultimately driving revenue.