Marketing.

Walking up and down main street talking to people whose opinions you may (or when it comes to progress in a small town – you may not) care about spreads the word about your business. Today you’re talking to Sally the hairdresser and Tom the barkeep, tomorrow Sally is chatting with her knitting girlfriends about your new bookstore while Tom is telling everyone buying a beer you: this crazy kid who came in with a new business idea.

These days it may not be Sally the hairdresser. For the family dentist in a larger community it may be participating in a parade, or a local kids fair. For the pizza parlour owner it’s sponsoring the two little league teams closest to his location. For the private school it’s doing kids events in combo with local high-end businesses. Whatever your business, getting involved in your community can make a big difference in your business’ bottom line. Here’s a few of our tried and true tricks for getting the bottom line to move in the right direction:

1. Stay close: whatever group or school or business you are going to team up with should be the closest one of it’s kind to your location. Don’t make your ideal client drive past all your competition on their way to your door unless it’s for a BIG payout. If you count on repeat business you must be easily accessible.

2. Keep it Simple: your logo can be a picture of you. Your flier can be 1/2 a page. Don’t over-explain what you are trying to do or what you want to have happen. Say who you are, what they get, and what they have to do to get it. No more (and no less – this just frustrates people).

3. Don’t be GIMME: if you are doing a program that involves “donating your services” DON”T make people GIMME a lot of information to get the program. People will think it’s a GIMMICK designed to obtain their contact info for Spamming – and you won’t get invited back. Be upfront with your community and they will respect you for respecting their intelligence.

Want to find some good community outreach programs in your area? Just ask your customers: the people who live close enough to come to you for services are the same people you want to market to.

Here’s why: anybody +everyone = nobody

If you cannot give me an example of the perfect person to refer to you, then I am unable to mentally search the roster of 2000+contacts I have to find a great potential client for you. If you the business owner cannot narrow your focus, how can I the colleague that wants to help you out, do it either?

So try a few suggestions that will help you to not only craft the perfect 30-second commercial, but also better enable me the faithful referr-er to send you gobs of business leads:

1. Pick 1 or 2 “sample customers” to talk about. Maybe one is a really “successful business” example, and the other is less so (if you walk around telling everyone your ideal client is pathetic, who would want to admit they need you?).

2. Think of 1 or 2 of your best clients from recent years. What did you do for them that was so spectacular and how did it make their lives better for working with you? The happy ending stories are what people want to hear – doom and gloom marketing doesn’t make people want to hang out with you.

3. Pick 1 or 2 companies that you want as your client and ask everyone you know to introduce you to them. Even if the room your talking to doesn’t have that referral, they will think of a company just like your sample and want to help you with a connection. trust me.

4. Don’t be afraid to focus. A little focus will go a long way in building meaningful relationships. On a business management level, focus in a particular industry or market segment can help you to measure results, and then you can have an educated understanding of whether or not the selected industry or market segment can work for you. I’ve worked with dozens of people who thought their ideal client was xyz, but discovered they had the best working relationships with abc… but they didn’t know either way until they focused on each segment and measured the results.

5. You are forgettable. So am I. If we don’t make an impact and give our audience(s) something to associate with us as business, as a business owner, or as an individual, we will be forgotton. Focusing on 1 or 2 examples gives a cornerstone for people to remember you by. This is why taglines are so useful. Try a few out and see what people respond to. I’m the marketing maven because someone teased me once and called me a maven, I used it a couple of times and people remembered me, and so now it sticks. I didn’t pick it, but it helps people remember me, so I’m sticking with it regardless.

Now that you know these tips and tricks – please share them! Let’s kill the “anybody” and “everyone” schpeal, for everyone’s sake!

-pun intended-

R

Walking the Show Floor

In addition to checking out the competition, walking the floor is a great practice for a multitude of reasons. Booth Setup. No matter how many years or how much money you spent in developing the perfect booth,  times change. Cruising the aisles is a great way to stay current. What booths are the busiest? How does the layout encourage people to hang out in the booth? What colors and styles are showing up more and more? Many people forget to also look for what doesn’t work. It never hurts to keep an eye out for the items in a booth setup (or in the way the staffers are interacting with patrons) looking for where people get bored and walk away. You don’t do that, ok? Learning from others both positively & negatively is the way to go.

Meet your Neighbors. You never know what new product/brand will be the next overnight success, just because you do or don’t like it, doesn’t mean the whole world agrees with you. Meeting your neighbors (aka networking) can give you buddies for future shows, tips on new shows to attend, and even connections for growing your business. The newer your product or service is, the more proactive you should be in getting around and meeting the neighbors.

Before The Show

Many people totally miss the boat on this one. The organizers of your show have a myriad of resources you can take advantage of. I’ve never attended (or even heard of) a show that didn’t do press release distribution to the press pre-event. Many shows even have online tools that allow you to go through and search attendees and exhibitors to setup meetings and events. I’m a big fan of downloading the Exhibitor list in advance and highlight the ones I want to visit at the show (colleagues call it the disneyland map – my show floor map with booths I want to visit highlighted). More often shows are even putting together cocktail parties or other networking events, these can be fantastic opportunities to meet attendees, exhibitors, and members of the press – without the ‘sales’ setting of the show floor. NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO please for the love of all business hopes everywhere, PUT YOUR PRESS KIT IN THE PRESS ROOM. Some shows these days are going digital – so you don’t even have to print this stuff out. Should a press person happen to stop at your booth – GIVE THEM SAMPLES – treat them like the avenues to advantage that they are. I’ve seen soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many exhibitors completely blow it here. If keeping your samples at your booth just in case someone wants to place an order is more important to you than 20,000 people reading about your product – your business is in MUCH MORE trouble than a couple of orders can cure.

Post Event

Call the people you said you were going to call. Send thank you notes to the folks that let you borrow their ladder during setup, or shared their power hookup with you. Email the visitors you collected cards for. Send a note to your connection at the show. Debrief your show team about how the event went and what you want to do about it next year – write it down, put it on the calendar, and get it done…. before you get back to the office if possible. You spent all this time and money getting ready for the show, you ought to be just as diligent when wrapping it up.

Hopefully some of these tips make it through to the folks I see at every show complaining about how slow it is (while one row over is hopping – because their staff isn’t so busy complaining they can’t pay attention to the visitors), and some of the folks I see that are almost-famous can get that edge they were looking for. Trade Shows are a valuable part of the marketing plan for 95% of the business world, it just takes the right show with the right setup for all the elements of success to fall into place.

Cheers,

Rebekah King