Key Criteria for Designing a Successful Website
3 January, 2018
Everything You Need to Know About Domain Names and Why They Matter
6 January, 2018
When done right, trade shows and events that offer space to showcase your product or service (a booth) can, in my view, provide at least
three major benefits for your business—and you should make the most of them.
These benefits are:
- Connecting with customers to understand and uncover their needs, and more.
- Introducing your brand to the market.
- Attract new customers.
Of course, one of these three will be the most important to you and become your main focus. But that doesn’t mean you should overlook the other benefits.
.
Connect with customers to understand and uncover their needs, and more.
You can take part in a trade show with just a product prototype or an explanation of a service, even if you don’t have anything ready yet. Why? Because you want to find out whether there really is
a need for what you plan to offer. And have you truly identified the benefits your prospective customers are looking for, along with the features that deliver them?
In addition to testing the market, this is an opportunity to find out whether trade shows are an effective marketing and outreach channel for the future—and whether they’re worth investing in and focusing on.
جهودك أو لا.
To make the most of this opportunity, engage trade show visitors at your booth and start conversations with them. Learn about and understand their needs.
Suppose you’ve booked a booth at a trade show about technology and how it can be used to teach children. You strike up a conversation with a visitor who’s interested in your app
for teaching children. During the conversation, they tell you they’re struggling because their child can’t memorize numbers. Naturally, you should dig deeper to understand the problem.
Understand the context in which the problem occurs. Are there steps before or after it? Does it happen only to people with one child, or to parents
who aren’t comfortable using technology? The better you understand your customer segment, the better you can develop your value proposition to meet their needs and
Craft your marketing campaigns in a language that resonates with your target audience.
But first, you need to convince visitors to visit your space. There will usually be a dedicated hashtag for the exhibition, so find out what it is in advance and prepare your advertising campaign.
For example, include this in your tweet: الهاشتاق An offer that reflects the value you provide and your brand. This will help you attract higher-quality visitors than those whose only goal is to
الاشتراك بمسابقة ربح ايباد
For example, if the exhibition is aimed at construction companies and your company is exhibiting, you can encourage them to visit your space by advertising on Twitter.
Use the event’s hashtag to find out where your space is, then offer a free five-minute consultation. After the consultation, you can explain that they can…
…sign up for the mailing list, where a new article with tips like these is published every week—for free. Of course, you can also give them gifts.
في التواصل مع العملاء لفهم واكتشاف احتياجاتهم وغيرهم“And others” is very important here.
Who does “others” refer to? I mean the following, for example, but not limited to:
.
- Reporters and editors at magazines or websites whose audience includes your customers, andInvestors they follow, whether online or offline.
- Bloggers you’d like to cover your service or product.
- Your existing partners, or those you’d like to partner with, such as distributors, suppliers, and so on.
- Even your existing customers—this is a great opportunity to get to know them and talk with them. It will help strengthen their connection to your brand.
- Make the most of the exhibition. That’s why connecting with these people is important: the exhibition gives you the opportunity to meet many people who are
difficult to bring together in one place or even meet individually.
Decide who you want to meet or interview—even if you only have 5–10 minutes. Schedule and arrange this well in advance of the event.
You could send an email with the subject line: “At [event name]: Could we talk for five minutes?”
Keep your email short, clear, and specific. Give the person you want to speak with ways to contact you besides email.
.
If you’re thinking, “We’re an unknown team or organization with no backing. Why would this person want to talk to us?”
اولاًDon’t sell yourself short.
ثانياًThere’s nothing to lose, as long as you’re professional, respectful, tactful, and not intrusive.
ثالثاً، Reporters and bloggers have a reason for attending these trade shows: they’re looking for content for their readers. That’s why they may be willing to meet with you for five
minutes if you can offer them useful content for their readers. Partners, meanwhile, want to grow their businesses, so it’s important to convince them in your email
that meeting with you is worth investing five minutes in.
.
Tips for your email:
- Keep your email short. Four to five sentences are enough. This is very important.
- Clearly state who you are, why you’re contacting that person, and what you want from them—all in four to five sentences. If they’re a journalist or blogger, look for an article they’ve written about
In relation to the points above, or if you find that their articles show an interest in a particular market, mention that and explain why you’d like to speak with them in that context. For example: “Hi Khalid, I’m Turki from [company name].”
“(...) participants at the (...) exhibition. I enjoyed your article about (...) and wanted to take a few minutes to talk with you, since you’ll be at the exhibition, about how our company (...)”
.
- Of course, the person will be attending the exhibition. The article you mentioned should relate to what your company does. If there isn’t a specific article, does this journalist cover
your market? If so, mention that, then connect it to why you’d like to speak with them.
.
- This message isn’t asking them to invest or trying to persuade them to buy anything from you. The main goal of this message is to spark their curiosity so you can arrange an
interview only! The goal is to get an interview.
.
Sign off your email with your name, a brief introduction, and your contact numbers.
.
This will help increase your visibility, especially if the editor’s publication—for example—is well-known and reputable. That can be a major advantage for you.
It will also increase your credibility with that service’s readers. Later, you can link to the coverage on your website and share it again across your social channels.
.
Build awareness of your brand in the market.
Do you have a clear, relevant description for your target customers of who you are, what you offer, and how you stand out from competitors and existing solutions in a distinctive, compelling way?
Does it make the customer feel they should use or buy what you offer?
Do the posts and all the content displayed or provided to visitors reinforce and clarify these points? Focus on the benefits, then connect them to the features you offer.
Customers don’t buy services or products for their features, but for the benefits those features provide.
It’s important to have clear, consistent answers to these questions that everyone on the exhibition team understands. The team’s message must be unified.
A special request: Please do not play with smart devices during the exhibition.
Put yourself in the visitor’s shoes. If a staff member is in their space fiddling with a smart device, would you expect the visitor to care about them if they don’t care about the visitor?
Respect visitors and value their time.
Remember this advice: Treat your exhibition space like your home. Welcome your guests and make their visit unforgettable.
Team uniforms should be appropriate and well-fitted, and should also reflect the brand of the service or product.
Giveaways should be memorable and worth talking about. Make them distinctive. This will generate free publicity and attract plenty of visitors. And remember to include
your company website—but on a dedicated page. I’ll discuss this point further in the section on attracting new customers.
Prepare brochures that tell visitors about your service or product and the benefits it offers. You can also prepare several branded USB flash drives
loaded with information about your company and product, as well as images in different sizes suitable for social media. These special USB drives are given
to journalists, editors, and bloggers. Why? Because you want to make it easier for them to write about you. You’ve also improved the chances that they’ll write what you want them to write, and provided
Images that align with your brand.
If you have investors, you can prepare a separate reference sheet tailored to the questions you expect from them—and do the same for people you believe could become partners.
Professionalism matters. Everything you do, say, and show others reflects who you are and what you stand for.
.
Attracting new customers
How much does it cost to acquire a new customer who buys your product, signs up for your service, or downloads your app?
The cost of acquiring a new customer who makes a purchase, signs up, or downloads the app is called Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).
This is usually easy when your customer acquisition channels are online and you can track and attribute the associated costs to each customer. But when
Customer acquisition channels aren’t always online, so we need to think outside the box.
When introducing your brand to the market, you mentioned adding your website. But instead of sending visitors directly to your homepage, direct them to a dedicated landing page.
For example, if your website is MySite.com, you could create a page specifically for trade show visitors, named after the event: MySite.com/Event2015.
On that page, you could encourage visitors to sign up with their email address, start a free trial of the service, or book a demo of the service,
download the app, and so on.
This lets you identify, with a high degree of confidence, visitors to the page as people connected with the trade show. You can also track costs against those who visited the page, whether or not they signed up.
This allows you to measure the exhibition’s effectiveness and how well you performed at attracting new customers—and how much it cost you.
To make it easier for visitors to access this page, you can place a short link—such as one provided by services like Bit.ly—on banners near your booth.
أو استخدام Some people also call it a Q Code..
.
Notes on this strategy:
Don’t use shortened links in your posts or on giveaways. Use the full page address instead. Yes to using MySite.com/Event2015; no to
using Bit.ly/MS-Ev15. This is because of brand building: you want people to remember your brand (your website) from those posts and giveaways.
.
Search Google or another search engine for services (there are many, and they’re free) that help you create your own QR Code. Once you’ve created one
Test them before printing them on those banners.
