Dude, It's Marketing

Can Tradeshows Still be Effective for Marketing?

You don't need to look too far to see the effect that online marketing, social media and other tactics have taken on the tradeshow industry. Some have disappeared altogether, like Supercomm; many have gotten smaller, like Interop; and others have changed their name to reflect an expanded scope, like VoiceCon to Enterprise Connect.

But despite this changing landscape, some tradeshows, like RSA Conference, have continued to not only live on but thrive. However, after each and every tradeshow, marketers question whether it was worth the considerable investment or is it a must attend event? In fact, it was 2 years ago that I asked if tradeshows were worth it?

Recently, I was at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain (photo above), which, for those of you who are not familiar, is THE event for the mobile industry with over 1,400 exhibitors and 60,000+ attendees. It attracts CEOs and senior executives, which is rare for any tradeshow, from all the major mobile operators.

My company had a demo station in the booth of a major technology vendor. We had committed to the event because we were launching a new offering and wanted to build awareness with mobile operators not to mention the fact that our partner is also a key channel for us so we wanted to get awareness with their sales team too. Despite this obvious fit, I was still skeptical whether the investment, while minimal, would pay off. 

As it turns out, the event was very successful for us. We were able to show the demo to hundreds of prospects, we met with key account executives in the sales team, briefed a few media and analysts and got the word out in many other ways. It definitely surpassed all of our expectations.

But when I got back, I started to think about why this tradeshow had been so successful for us whereas a couple of years ago, I was swearing them off in terms of a marketing tactic. Here are my top 5 reasons how this show was, and others can be, effective from a marketing perspective:

1. Choose the show for your industry: With fewer shows there is one must attend event for your industry. That's the one to do, but...
2. Make sure your prospective customers are there: If this is not the case, then don't do the event. You need to meet with prospective customers for the show to be effective.
3. Set up meetings in advance: This is crucial as you then guarantee meetings with some key prospects and do not need to rely on walk up traffic.
4. Work with a partner: It's a great way to minimize costs but if you are a startup working with a larger, more established company will help you stand out.
5. Have a great demo of your product: Prospects want to see your product in action and the more compelling your demo the more likely they will remember it.

Tradeshows have fundamentally changed. They really had no choice. The good ones have created an event that the industry must attend. If you can follow some of the tips above and make it cost-effective then the right tradeshow could be a great venue to launch or promote your new product. Now, I'm not saying that you have to do a tradeshow as part of a launch but with the right investment they can be effective.

However, it's not about spending the most money and having the biggest spectacle to stand out. They are still very expensive but to be effective you need to be focused on meeting with prospects. Think of it more around meeting with a lot of different prospects in one place at one time. If the event will do that for you, then it's worth attending as you may even save money on travel in the long run.

Don't Forget to Always Have a Call to Action

I am still surprised that to this day there is one aspect that is missing from many marketing tactics that could make the campaign much more successful. In particular, this one element is absolutely critical to lead generation and nuture campaigns -- it is a call-to-action. 

A call-to-action is an image or text that grabs the visitor's or prospect's attention and directs them to what you want them to do. In the case of a lead gen campaign, the call-to-action would direct the person to a landing page where you can collect their info in exchange for the offer. There are many different calls-to-action and the place where it directs them will depend on the goals of the campaign. 

While this may seem obvious to some, take a look around and see how many emails, web pages, blog posts, ads, etc. don't tell the reader what to do next. This simple element is so often missing and it will make the difference between a successful marketing campaign and a failure. Studies show that tweaking this element properly can make the difference between a good and a great campaign. 

So where do you start? For a call-to-action to be successful, you need to make sure it links to a compelling offer. That's why it's important for you to look through your most recent campaigns and see which offers did the best in terms of conversions and create more calls-to-action for them. Or, you may need to develop a new offer for a new campaign.  

You'll also want to have multiple offers that map to the different stages of the sales funnel so that you can continue to have calls-to-action through subsequent follow-up and lead nurture activities that directs those prospects to new content that will continue to move them along the sales funnel. 

Once you have these offers lined up then you need to add calls-to-action in as many places as possible, as it's difficult to have too many calls-to-action. Some obvious pllace are on your website, on your blog or in blog posts, in presentations, in emails and as part of ads, direct mail and other offline activities. You should also include calls-to action in the content itself, in videos, in your email signatures, and using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

It is this last one, social media, where you do need to limit the number of calls-to-action as many will stop following you if that's all you do is promote in your social media stream. But don't go to the other extreme either and not use it for calls-to-action either.

All of this work around creating offers and placing the calls-to-action will be for naught if your calls-to-action are not compelling enough so your prospects will click on the link or button and convert. There are a few key aspects to a compelling call-to-action including:

• Make it clear in terms of what the visitor needs to do and what the offer is if they do it.
• Make sure it stands out whereever it's placed and that people don't need to scroll on the web page or in the email to get to it. If people don't see it, then it won't be clicked on. 
• Make sure the call-to-action is relevant to the page, where they are in the sales funnel and that the offer is the right content for that call-to-action. Remember the key is to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time.

If you follow this process, then you will be well on your way to some compelling calls-to-action that convert but after you've gone this far you will want to continue to optimize the call-to-action and the landing page. That's why it's equally important to measure the effectiveness of the call to action including the click-through-rate (CTR) and click-to-submission. With these results you can experiment with and keep testing different offers, landing pages and different aspects of the call-to-action including text, colors, images, etc.

The call-to-action is a pivotal part of any marketing campaign. While your objective may be different for the call-to-action, in this post we focused on using them for lead generation, the need to have them never changes. If you don't have them, then you might as well skip doing the campaign in the first place and not waste the time and resources.  

Don't Rely on Social Media for Lead Generation

There is little doubt that social media is one of, if not THE, buzzword in marketing. But, as I've written about before, social media is still only a tactic and not the only tactic you should use. Recent findings show how crucial it is to build an overall marketing strategy that uses multiple tactics if you goal is to generate and nurture quality leads (and who doesn't want to do that). 

As reported by ZDNet, a recent study by Demandbase and Focus.com showed that corporate websites were the top online lead source and second overall to personal connections and referrals. But even more telling is that corporate websites were 7x more effective than social media. Here's the breakdown of top lead sources:

• 41% - Personal connections and referrals
• 23% - Corporate website
• 14% - Email
• 7% - Advertising (banners and search engine marketing)
• 3% - Social Media (including video)
• 12% - Other

Some may be surprised by these results but it shows that social media is not always the best tactic and for B2B lead generation other tools are better. So despite the buzz around Twitter, Facebook and Google+, you need to look at all the tactics and carefully select the right ones to meet your marketing goals and objectives. 

Hopefully, less surprising, was that your corporate website still is one of the most important sales tools that you can build and is crucial to your lead generation efforts. I believe some have moved on and focused their efforts on social media rather than their website which as you can see does not make sense if you goal is lead generation. You need to continue to invest in your website and build targeted messages and landing pages for each audience in order to engage prospects and move them along the sales funnel. 

Now it could be argued that social media drove the traffic to the corporate website and isn't getting proper credit for generating the lead. This wouldn't surprise me in the least as I do believe social media is a good tool for sharing information and taking prospects back to your website for even more compelling content is a great approach.

The important point here is that relying only on social media, especially if your goal is to generate leads, will clearly lead to failure on the marketing front. You need to pick the right tactics for the job. It is only by integrating multiple tactics that your marketing strategy will deliver results.

Mapping your Content to the Sales Funnel

Over the last few posts, I've looked at how creating content and getting found are the most important components of any start-up marketing plan. In the last post, I added how you also need to nurture the leads through the sales funnel. In this post, I wanted to tie these concepts together by bringing in the sales funnel.

Producing compelling content on a regular basis is the key ingredient that you need to nurture leads and mapping the content to the sales funnel will help you know what to create and when to move your prospects along.

For example, you don't want to send detailed technical specs to the prospect nor do you want to send an introductory eBook when you are in the call-to-close phase. Equally important is that you don't want to send all of your content to the prospects at the same time. Delivering the right content at the right stage is abolutely cricital to nurturing leads.

There are many variations of the sales funnel and the one illustrated here is just a sample to illustrate how you can map content to the sales funnel. Your sales funnel may be different as the most important part of any sales funnel is that the stages are agreed upon by sales and marketing in your company. This sales funnel can be used as a template to map the content you are creating against the stages in your funnel.

Generally speaking, you will want to send more educational content at the earlier stages of the funnel and not send the more detailed product information until the much later stages. I've placed social media, like blogging, Twitter and Facebook, at the top of the funnel as they are also key content vehicles for getting found but social networking could be used throughout.

In some cases, it's the scope of the content that would dictate where it is placed. For example, I mapped webinars and white papers at the prospect stage as they are also good for getting found and can help you determine the more qualified leads through a registration process. However, if the webinar and white papers are more detailed and technical then they could just as easily be used at the qualified lead or opportunities stage.

You may not produce all of the content outlined here and certain pieces of content may be at different or multiple stages. I don't believe that this mapping can and should be set in stone. What is important is that you have different pieces of content at each stage and that you continue to deliver new and compelling content regularly to nurture the leads through the funnel.

Generate and Nurture Leads After Getting Found

I wrote a blog post a few months ago that the start-up marketing plan can be summarize in four simple words: create content, get found. While I was trying to really simplify the marketing plan for companies that don't have a lot of resources, in looking back I was missing a key part of the equation. Once you get found, what's next?

So, I want to add to the start-up marketing plan the concept: generate and nurture leads. To generate leads, you can use tactics like the get found tactics I outlined previously so for this post I want to focus on lead nurture and revise my simple marketing plan to be: create content, get found, nurture leads.

I've seen many companies that are good at generating leads and sometimes have thousands in the sales funnel but then nothing is done with them. They either pass them immediately over to sales and when the prospect is not ready to buy, the lead gets discarded and the company never talks to them again. Or, even worse, they don't get classified as a qualified lead, so they are not passed to sales, and languish as a prospect forever.

It's no secret that a certain percentage of these initial prospects and leads that get passed to sales but quickly discarded will eventually need and buy a product that solves a problem similar to the one you offer. The sales cycle for some companies, especially in the B2B space, can be very long so the time between identifying them as a prospect and when they buy can be months or even years. That's why nurturing leads is so critical.

The good news for start-ups is that many of the tactics we discussed in creating content and getting found can be leveraged to nurture leads. In fact, compelling content is absolutely critical to nurturing leads and mapping that content to the sales funnel will help you know what to create and when to move your prospects along. I'll explore this mapping in an upcoming post.

Even though compelling content is critical, the cornerstone of lead nurturing is an email list. Even in this age of social media, email communications is how you build on the relationship in a more private setting and take the prospect through the funnel. If I had to collect one piece of info from every prospect it would be their email address. That's why you need to create many opporunities for the prospect to give you this critical piece of information.

Once you have this email address, then you can follow-up on an ongoing basis with eNewsletters, links to new content, updates from your blog, industry news that would be of interest, and the list goes on. However, this content needs to be valuable to your prospects and educate them through the buying process or give them additional advice to solve their problems. It cannot in any way be perceived by them as Spam or they will unsubscribe and be lost forever. So avoid product pitches and plan your timing of emails carefully.

Many marketing plans focus on generatng leads but some of your best leads may be prospects from previous compaigns where enough time has passed that they are ready to buy. If you don't nurture your leads though, when they are ready to buy it will be a solution from your competitor. That's why nurturing leads is as important a concept as creating content or getting found to the start-up marketing plan.

How Marketing for Start-ups is Different than Small Businesses

Recently, I looked at how start-ups and small businesses are different. Unfortunately, I didn’t want to make that post any longer so I promised to follow-up with a post that would explore what this meant to the marketing of start-ups. As I mentioned, I don’t have a lot of experience marketing for small business so I asked if someone would like to contribute a post in that area since I can’t contribute the meaningful content I would like on this topic. This offer is still open.

In that post, the two fundamental differences I came up with between start-ups and small businesses are that start-ups aspire to be large companies and how each is funded with the start-up often relying on venture capital (VC) or angel investors that are not tied to the day-to-day activities of the business in any other way.

In terms of the impact on marketing, the funding of the business has the biggest impact in my opinion and it’s a double-edged sword. For start-ups that have received funding from a VC or other sources, the money is quite often a large sum which gives the start-up the ability and luxury of hiring some dedicated marketing resources and also allocating money to marketing programs.

It’s rare for the small business to have a dedicated marketing resource. Many times, the owner adds marketing to his or her already long to-do list. Having a marketing expert on staff definitely has its advantages, especially if the founder or CEO trusts that expertise and allows them to develop and implement an integrated marketing plan.

In addition to resources, this money also allows the start-up to run more comprehensive marketing programs as they can spend money on many different tactics and media to get the message out there to prospective customers. Having said that, many start-ups do tend to watch their money carefully so the budget may still be quite limited but with new social media tools and other tactics, you can put your start-up on the map without the million dollar budgets of the 90s (BTW - I can’t believe I just wrote that).

The downside of this influx of money is that the source of it usually has the objective of getting a large and quick return on that investment so new pressures are put on the start-up to deliver now. Combine this with the promise to grow big and start-ups need to land customers quickly and grow revenue fast in order to meet expectations.

Now I’m not saying that small business don’t have these same pressures to get customers and increase revenue, but they sometimes have the luxury to grow at a slower pace and don’t always have to answer to an outside source of funding if the business is self-funded. It’s a different set of pressures is all I’m saying; not that one is more pressure than the other.

From the perspective of the second difference, that of aspiring to grow large, the start-up needs to run more extensive marketing programs to reach more people quickly rather than the small business that may be able to focus on one small geographic area for instance.

If we look at the lead generation aspect of marketing, then the start-up marketing person (it’s unlikely to be a big team) needs to generate thousands of prospects so that the sales team has hundreds of sales-ready leads to pursue. The numbers can be staggering and have to be generated in an ongoing fashion to meet ever rising revenue goals.

If the marketing budget was increased with the funding then running these extensive programs can be easier but if money is still tight then these leads need to be generated in a very cost-effective manner. Again, thankfully new tools and tactics make this possible today.

There are other differences for sure and other impacts to the marketing of a start-up or small business but having the perspective above will help the marketing person or owner fine tune the objectives of the marketing program and develop the appropriate plan for the resources allocated.

Are Tradeshows Worth It?

Last week, I attended an industry tradeshow as an exhibitor in a partner booth. It's been a while since I was at a tradeshow so this gave me a chance to take a step back and see what had changed in the last few years. Basically, I wanted to see if all the efforts and money put into tradeshows are worth it for a start-up.

As you may remember, tradeshows were all the rage a number of years ago and most companies, including many start-ups, felt they needed to exhibit at them if they were going to be considered a serious player in their particular market. This line of thinking never made a lot of sense to me, especially for a start-up, since the costs are high not to mention the fact a lot has changed in the last few years and there are many new ways to reach your audience.

To really decide if a tradeshow is worth it, you need to figure out what your objective is for attending that show and then measure it carefully. For example, are you looking to launch a new product and get some exposure, are you looking to generate some leads, are you looking to meet with some partners and establish a stronger relationship, are you looking to meet with some key editors or analysts and tell your story, and the list goes on.

I believe the majority of start-ups still do tradeshows to launch a new product and/or generate leads. My experience at this show was that I could wander the floor and not have my badge scanned even once. I don't even remember being approached by any booth staff. The booths that seemed to be busy usually had some show, such as a magician, or were giving away something free, in some cases beer and food which was a hit. While these booths had some good traffic, you have to wonder how many of these people were actually prospects for the company or people looking for free stuff.

This confirms, what I had already thought, in that the majority of companies may spend a lot of money on these shows but then they do not have a plan to reach the right prospect that will ultimately turn into a sales lead. In the end, they are going after a large number of leads regardless of quality but after the show do they capitalize on them? In these cases, the money and effort spent on tradeshows is definitely wasted.

To do a tradeshow in this fashion and make it worth the money invested, I strongly believe it needs to be part of an integrated program so that you are also hitting the prospects before and after the tradeshow using other media and tactics. You also need to clearly identify the top leads from that show and pass those immediately to sales so they can follow-up quickly while the others need to be nurtured until they are sales ready. In the end, I am left with further proof that tradeshows aren't worth it from a lead generation perspective as there are far cheaper and more effective ways to get better leads.

The one advantage that a tradeshow does hold is the ability to meet prospects, partners, or media and analysts face-to-face. This aspect of a tradeshow is extremely hard, if not impossible, to replicate with other marketing tactics and can go a long way in building your credibility with that audience. Building relationships that are started using other tactics can make a tradeshow worthwhile if you can find a way to do it cost-effectively, which as you know is extremely important for a start-up.

For example, setting up a number of meetings with prospects and showing them a demo at the tradeshow can be effective and cost less money than visiting them on a number of different trips. You can also capitalize on the fact that media and analysts attend these industry shows, willing to meet with companies, so you can have several meetings in just a couple of days compared to setting up media tours in several different cities. These are just a couple of ways to do tradeshows cost-effectively. The tradeshow will still cost a lot of money but you are comparing that to not having to make several trips which would also be expensive.

Maybe the best way to do a tradeshow cost-effectively is to try and leverage the presence of one of your partners, like I did at this one, and see if they have a partner pavillion or extra demo station in their booth. Many larger companies have this type of setup and if you can get in their booth, you not only save money (even if they charge you it will be less than having your own booth) but you also get to associate yourself with a trusted and more recognizable brand which is a key step in making your marketing more credible. This approach makes a lot of sense to me for a start-up.

As with other marketing strategies though, it's imporant to know your objective, set some goals and then measure the effectiveness of the tradeshow in reaching these goals. Only then can you decide if the tradeshow is worth it. I encourage others to share their thoughts on tradeshows and any tips to make an existing tradeshow program more effective.

Why Demand Generation?

While demand generation is not the marketing buzz word it was a couple of years ago, it still must be the cornerstone of your marketing efforts. But, it is also crucial to realize that demand generation has changed significantly with the advent of social media and the decline of some traditional marketing tactics, like tradeshows and direct marketing.

I use demand generation and lead generation interchangeably quite often but I want to highlight the point here that, whatever the term, this is about more than just generating as many leads as possible. Demand generation is about reaching the right prospects, at the right time, with the right message, to turn them into customers.

Demand generation involves creating awareness of your solution, qualifying the leads, sending the sales-ready leads to sales, nurturing the others by building relationships with them until they are ready to buy, while working with sales to move the qualified leads along the funnel until the deal is closed.

A successful demand generation program combines the appropriate marketing tactics (more on this in a subsequent post) with sales tools and online presences that result in increased revenue for your product of service. Demand generation must be measureable, continually optimized and entirely in sync with the sales objectives of your organization.

If this doesn't sound like the marketing you are familiar with then you need to get with the times. While the program and tactics may change, the need in every organization for demand generation never goes away. In good times and bad. As marketing tactics and technologies come and go. Demand generation needs to adapt but always remain focused on the prize of getting more sales for your product.

The Heart of Lead Generation

Without a doubt the sales funnel is at the heart of lead generation. The understanding of how you move leads through the funnel is crucial to any successful marketing campaign and more importantly to the company's ability to sell more products. But before we talk about that process, the first step is for sales and marketing to work together and define the sales funnel for their organizations.

In general, the stages of the sales funnel may include: prospects, leads, qualified leads, serious opportunities, trials or evals, call-to-close phase and closed deals. And while the concept is similar across most sales processes, it's imperative that each stage be clearly defined and agreed upon by all parties so that it can be consistently applied, analyzed and adjusted as appropriate. Above all else, agreement on the stage where marketing passes leads to sales and the definition of these qualified leads is imperative. I'll have more on that in a subsequent post.

Once the stages are defined, then it's important to understand the number of leads from all prospects (10-20%) and the ratio of qualified leads to closed deals (15:1-20:1) so that marketing can generate sufficient leads to meet the revenue requirements for the year. Of equal importance, you need to understand the time it takes to move from one stage to the next (1 to 2 months per stage depending on market maturity).

While everyone would love these ratios and timelines to be smaller and shorter for their industry, I've seen time and time again that these are quite consistent in technology companies and can be even longer when selling to certain verticals. This means it's pointless to use unrealistic ratios or timelines when planning but only adjust them when you have concrete metrics and evidence built by carefully tracking this information in addition to other ROI metrics.

Since I strongly believe the sales funnel is the heart of lead generation there will be several additional posts on this topic. For now, it's important to understand that the concepts mentioned here are more scientific than most traditional marketers would like to admit so you need to accept them and work for improvement rather than ignore the process.