by Elizabeth Hines | Mar 29, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Follow these four steps during the trade show to ensure you’re getting the most out of your lead generation efforts.
This is the second installment in our three-part series about generating leads around a trade show.
As you enter the convention center, you feel confident in your preparation for the trade show. You have been setting goals, researching your audience, advertising, and creating fresh content to distribute at the show.
But now you are focused on how to stand out amongst the other attendees. How do you promote your brand while you are surrounded by your competitors?
It should go without saying, but having personable, knowledgeable staff that are excited about the show and eager to educate customers is the foundation for trade show success. If potential customers enter your booth, and they are not immediately greeted with a friendly smile and a helping hand, you are missing opportunities for leads.
Once you have established which staff best suits your trade show needs, you can focus on standing out on the floor. Here are four tips to ensure lead generation success while attending the trade show.
Engagement and lead generation at the trade show
1. First impressions last
According to the Harvard Study of Communications, 55% of first impressions are based on visual cues. The way you look, the way you dress, and the appearance of your booth are saying a lot about your brand and products before you even open your mouth.
The visual displays at your booth should sell your brand as much as your staff. Invest the time and money into shirts with your company logo for staff to wear. Have tablecloths that represent your company’s image. And develop presentation boards that highlight new products and services. First impressions are so important because they last. You want to make sure that every person that walks by your booth gets the right impression about your brand.
2. Extend your reach with a giveaway
Cost-effective promotional items not only provide brand exposure, but also can attract quality leads to your booth. Get creative with your giveaways and use them as an opportunity to spread your logo throughout the trade show.
Giveaway items should be unique and useful. For example, promotional products guru Cathy Houston suggests a money clip for your smart phone. “This slim silicone pocket attaches to the outside of any mobile device and is perfect for storing driver’s licenses, credit cards, hotel keycards, business cards, and cash. … It can be useful to attendees right away.” With people constantly checking their phones, this giveaway will be a visual reminder of your booth across the trade show floor.
3. Create an experience
It’s not enough to simply promote your products and services at a trade show. You need to get attendees involved by creating an interactive booth.
The more hands-on, the better. Live demonstrations of new products allow potential customers the opportunity to try out what you are selling. Creating games or contests also gets attendees involved by having them answer questions or engage with your staff. While interacting with attendees, make sure you are capturing their contact information and leading them to your landing page (that you created before attending the show).
4. Make your attendance known on social media
You already have used social media to let prospects know you are attending the trade show. So keep up the posting and tweeting while you are at the show.
Use time-sensitive giveaways to boost booth attendance and promote special sessions and upcoming presentations live from the trade show floor. Videos and pictures of your live demonstrations and contests are sure to create a buzz amongst attendees. Use these posts to continue to push your landing page and let potential customers know what you are up to throughout the trade show.
Creating a presence at a trade show gives you a powerful platform for meeting new customers, reconnecting with existing clientele, and building a more established brand. Exhibiting at a trade show gives you unparalleled access to important prospects, who are taking the time to learn about your products and services. These four tips can help you get the most engagement from your attendance, while collecting leads that will ultimately grow your business and sales.
Other posts in this series:
by Elizabeth Hines | Mar 28, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Follow these four steps ahead of the show to ensure you’re getting the most out of your lead generation efforts.
This is the first installment of a three-part series about generating leads around a trade show.
As thousands of us prepare for our travels to Chicago to attend ProMat 2017, many are wondering: How can I maximize my time? What can I do to stand out? What will help me generate the most new business?
These are important questions — ones that deserve careful thought and strategy. So we created a three-part series to help you make the most of your next trade show.
In this first part, we will focus on the prep work you can do before heading to your trade show that will set you up for success.
Pre-show prep in 4 steps
With over 850 exhibitors attending ProMat this year, it is important to start the work of nurturing leads before you even leave your office. Strategically planning for this event can help you get the most out of your trade show experience, and get you the leads to grow your business and increase your sales.
Here are four tips to get you started on the right track.
1. Set clear goals
Why are you attending ProMat? What do you hope to gain from your attendance, in addition to leads? Understanding why you are attending a trade show is the foundation for creating what you want to achieve from your presence.
For example, if your goal is to boost your social media presence, make sure every handout, landing page, and face-to-face interaction includes a request to like your company on Facebook (or other social media sites). Or if you are hoping to educate potential customers on a new product, work on creating exciting new marketing handouts and presentations that can be displayed during the trade show.
2. Research your audience
Focusing on who will be attending the show can give you invaluable insight into the motivation behind their attendance and how you can best capture their attention.
Performing prospect research using the list of attendees — including anyone who has given you their contact information through social media, your landing page, or website — provides added awareness about your target audience. You can also go one step further and reach out to high-value prospects on your social media sites to step up a meeting time during the show.
3. Advertise, advertise, advertise
Your company has spent valuable resources to attend the show, so make it known that you’ll be there. Reach out to customers, attendees, and contacts through your social media outlets. Most trade shows have event-specific hashtags (#ProMat) to help spread the word on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Make sure to include your booth number and location, if possible. Get creative with fun teaser videos to engage with potential customers and get them curious about your new products. Creating an event-specific landing page to channel your prospects into one location, giving you a place to answer questions, create a running list of leads, and continue to promote your presence at the trade show.
4. Create content to distribute
It’s imperative to have content (brochures, templates, etc.) that highlights your brand and products. You should create content that can be distributed during the show that supplements your booth staff, helping them to educate and answer questions.
For example, you can create copies of a presentation you are giving. This allows attendees that cannot attend the presentation to still obtain the valuable information and affords you the opportunity to expand upon the presentation. Preparing these handouts ahead of time allows you to skip the last-minute scramble and focus on being present at the show.
These four tips can get you started on your journey to a successful trade-show experience. Using inbound marketing and social media tools, you are already ahead of your competitors before you even arrive at the show.
Other posts in this series:
by Elizabeth Hines | Mar 27, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
Here are the major headlines happening in social media news, specially curated for the supply chain, as of March 2017.
It’s not easy keeping pace with the latest happenings in the constantly evolving social media landscape — but it’s a must for your business. To help keep you up to date, here’s our monthly rundown of social media news for the supply chain.
Facebook algorithm ranks reactions higher than likes
Facebook announced earlier this month that it has tweaked its algorithm so that reactions “will affect post ranking slightly more than Likes.” The company cited its finding that reactions are an “even stronger signal” of what content users would like to see, but clarified that all reactions will continue to be weighed equally to one another.
YouTube introduces YouTube TV
After last month’s expansion of mobile live streaming and launch of super chat, the video juggernaut has now introduced YouTube TV, “with about 40 networks onboard to stream their live broadcasts and cable feeds to its subscribers.” The company and participating networks are set to sell ad inventory and share revenue, and the service will be based on subscriptions.
Google launches Meet by Google Hangouts
This one could be big for your business’ internal operations. Meet by Google Hangouts is a new video conferencing application designed for HD video meetings, joining Google’s lineup of business products known as G Suite. The product is “aimed at making it easy to access these calls while on the go, including dial-in numbers for those who are traveling, links you can join with just a click, and integration with Gmail and Calendar for G Suite users.”
Facebook globally launches Messenger Day
The company has launched a new way to share photos and videos “as they happen” in the Messenger app. Be sure to check out this Social Media Examiner post on how to use this new feature to market your business.
Twitter introduces analytics for Twitter Moments
The company has announced that analytics for Moments are now available to all Twitter users, allowing publishing partners and brand advertisers to track their content’s performance and gather insights on post interaction.
LinkedIn adds profile photo filters and editing tools for mobile
LinkedIn has introduced “a quick and easy way to enhance” profile photos with editing and filters right in its mobile app. Users can now “crop and edit the brightness, contrast, saturation, and vignette,” as well as choose from filters to enhance their profile photos.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Mar 20, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing
If you want to connect with your target audience, make storytelling a part of your content strategy.
If you want content marketing to make a big impact on your business, your audience needs to connect with your content. You need to engage them. You need to grab them emotionally and intellectually. You need to get them thinking.
The best content feels like a great story. That’s because stories do all those things and more.
Content that reads like a great story will facilitate engagement and brand loyalty with your audience, which, in turn, will lead to content marketing success. Here are some tips to incorporate storytelling into your content strategy.
Make your brand tangible to your audience.
Statistics and graphics have their time and place. But real people and real experiences are the best way to connect with your audience on a deeper level. Tell real stories — how a customer benefitted from your product, for example — to get your audience to understand what your company can do for them.
When you engage readers and get them involved in your story, you create long-lasting customer relationships. Storytelling makes them form an emotional bond with your company, which drives brand loyalty.
Greg Hadden, executive creative director of Motive Made Studios, sums up the power of this strategy: “What often gets lost is the fact that good storytelling is potent stuff. It has the power to make people want to believe and to belong, which is the goal of all storytellers. We’re all selling something, be it an idea, an exploration of the human condition, or say, a vacuum cleaner. It’s no mistake perhaps that good stories often create products.”
Humanize your content.
Yes, at the end of the day, we’re all selling something. But your content should not be a sales pitch — it should speak to your audience rather than at them. It should connect with them on a human level.
Your content should represent what you do, what your customers stand to gain, and how you are making life better for your customers and those around you. It should convey genuine enthusiasm for your work.
One of the best ways to tap into this enthusiasm is by thinking about what your company stands for and building content around those principles. Is sustainability at the core of your mission? Does your company pride itself on improving customers’ productivity and efficiency? These are messages that can humanize your brand — and that your audience can believe in and relate to.
Whole Foods is an exceptional example of a company using content to connect with its audience and establish itself as a lifestyle brand focused on healthy eating and living. It curates content, for example, about how to save money while still eating healthily. While not directly related to its products, this kind of content understands the needs of the target audience interested in Whole Foods’ products. Further, its content conveys the company’s passion for earth-conscious living and uses proactive language to allow readers to feel like they have an active role in that mission.
Successful content begins with connection. The more you can walk the line between telling a story and promoting your brand, the more connections you’ll make. Start by being yourself and talking about what drives you in your content. The stories you share will be authentic and tangible to the target consumer who is interested in what you have to offer.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Mar 15, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
A supply chain company published one more blog post per week and gained a new customer in one month.
Companies in the logistics and supply chain industries have been hesitant to adopt digital and content marketing because they are unsure about the benefits. We hear it all the time: Who is going to read a blog about my business? How is that going to get me more customers?
Something else we see all the time? How content marketing works for supply chain companies.
You see, the B2B buying process has changed. The vast majority of buyers now go online to research products and services they want to purchase. The proof is in the numbers:
- 94% of buyers reported using online research at some point in the purchasing process.
- 62% of B2B buyers say that a web search was one of the first three resources they use to learn about a solution.
- 95% of B2B buyers are willing to consider vendor-related content as trustworthy.
- 67% more leads were generated by companies with an active blog last year.
- 47% of B2B buyers consume 3-5 pieces of content prior to engaging with a salesperson.
- 51% of B2B buyers rely more on content to research and make B2B purchasing decisions than they did a year ago.
I could go on and on.
Blogging frequency matters
Here’s the rub: Blogging every once and awhile isn’t going to get you results. You need to publish quality content on a consistent basis to attract prospects to your site.
The reality is that the more often you blog, the more traffic and leads you’ll get. Search engines consider posting frequency in their rankings. What’s more, every time you post, you create a new opportunity to be found, to be shared, and to be linked to by other sites.
That being said, you don’t need to post five times a week to be successful. In fact, small steps can go a long way.
Try one more post per week
We often encourage our clients to increase their blogging cadence by just one more post per week. Though some are skeptical of the impact this will have on their traffic and lead-generation efforts, they inevitably find that such a small step can make a big difference.
Take one client of ours, for example.
We suggested moving from publishing one post to two posts per week. The client was unsure this would have any impact, especially for a company in the supply chain industry. But the immediate results spoke for themselves.
After just one month, the client saw the following successes:
- Web traffic increased by 23%.
- Social reach increased by 252%.
- Sales leads doubled. 90% of those leads were sourced from organic search.
- A lead converted to a customer.
All of these results were directly related to the increased blog frequency.
Test it out
The trouble in publishing more posts is balancing resources so that you’re publishing frequently but maintaining value and quality within your content. We’re big advocates of testing to find your personal sweet spot for the amount of posts your organization is able to publish to maximize traffic and leads.
Try publishing one more post per week for one month. Track your KPIs, calculate ROI, and assess whether increasing the blogging frequency is right for your business. You may be surprised at the results.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Mar 14, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Keep these best practices in mind when determining how often to post to social media.
Creating valuable, relevant content in a strategic and consistent manner creates demand for your products and services and drives profitable customer action. But as BuzzFeed’s Jonathan Perelman said, “Content is king, but distribution is queen and she wears the pants.”
It’s not enough to just create interesting and pertinent content; you have to put it out there to reach your target audience. Moreover, the content needs to be delivered consistently over time, at the right time, and in the right place.
With social media networks changing daily, it’s hard to keep up with where to distribute content, much less how often. Countless studies have attempted to solve the social-media-frequency equation. And while audiences vary across industries, best practices give us some general guidelines.
Here’s our assessment of social media posting frequency.
Twitter: 40 per day*
*Big caveat here: 40 tweets per day is what we’ve found works for us and most of our clients. Let me explain.
Socialbakers suggests that posting to Twitter three times per day is the ideal frequency for brands. Buffer posts to Twitter 14 times per day. Fronetics happens to tweet 40 times per day. So last spring, after seeing the Socialbakers and Buffer stats, we conducted a month-long experiment to see how dropping our posting frequency closer to their benchmarks would affect our engagement.
As we’ve written about before, it wasn’t pretty. We confirmed that our engagement, web traffic, lead generation, and other key performance indicators are at optimal levels when we tweet 40 times per day.
Your company, or your marketing partner, should conduct due diligence and determine what the right frequency is for your business. Yes, you may realize a significant decline in engagement in ROI during your experiment. On the other hand, you may realize an increase in engagement and ROI — captured with lower output in terms of time and resources.
Facebook: 1 per day
Most companies find that posting 1 time per day is their sweet spot for most social media networks. Facebook is no exception: The network’s algorithm values quality over quantity, so the more engaged your followers are with your content, the more likely they are to see your posts. This also means that posting content that does not facilitate engagement can actually decrease the likelihood that followers will see your posts.
One sure way to encourage disengagement is by overwhelming your audience. We all have that friend or company we follow that posts too much — don’t be like that person.
Remember that the lifespan of a Facebook post (about 5 hours) is significantly longer than that of a tweet. So you don’t need to provide a constant stream of content to get your audience’s attention. Your focus should be distributing the most relevant, interesting content you can, at a time when most of your audience will be on Facebook.
Instagram: 1-2 per day
There’s an unwritten rule among Instagramers that a user shouldn’t post more than once per day. We generally agree for the same reason we don’t think brands should post more than once a day to Facebook: Don’t overwhelm your audience because the lifespan of your posts is pretty long. In fact, a Union Metrics study found that many Instagram posts continue to receive engagement for days — even weeks — after posting.
Most brands end up posting 11-20 posts per month. If you focus on compelling images with strategic messages, that’s probably a good benchmark to stick with. It’s important to note, however, that another Union Metrics study suggests posting consistency is more important than frequency. Again, taking the time to test the Instagram posting frequency that works best for your business is a worthwhile endeavor.
LinkedIn: 1 per day
A more formal and technical social media network, consider LinkedIn a platform for business-related content. Don’t post here more than once per day — and consider posting only during the workweek. Many professionals don’t check LinkedIn on the weekends, and your content could easily be missed.
Buffer reports that posting 20 times per month (once a workday) allows companies to reach 60% of their audience. To provide the most value for your LinkedIn followers, content should be less promotional and more heavily focused on industry-wide trends and insights.
At the end of the day, optimal posting frequency for your company rests heavily on the audience you want to reach. Experimenting with different social media networks and posting frequencies will give you greater insight into your ideal distribution approach. With these best practices as a guide, let your own analysis be your guide. Maintaining a dynamic and fluid posting strategy will ensure that your social efforts drive followers to action, rather than drive them away.
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