Adventures into Trade Show Exhibiting

It’s been a busy year for my MSP- we’ve moved into new offices, taken on staff, achieved Microsoft Certified Partner Status and undertaken two successful PR runs, but all this growth has a down side – it means increased costs – and increased costs means that that as a business you need to find greater income to pay for those costs! This is where, I’m reliably informed, Sales and Marketing comes in.

Now, as a geek business owner I find Sales difficult, and as a geek with no creativity whatsoever, I find Marketing even harder still!

I’ve taken steps to address my lack of confidence in the Sales area with ongoing training, but in all the years I’ve been running my business, Marketing is something I’ve always shied away from. Techy Geeks like me aren’t good at promoting themselves you see! But needs must, and so after giving myself the proverbial kick up the bum, we as a company determined our goals for increased business in the next few months and then worked backwards to put together a Marketing plan which involved a spruced up web-site, e-mail and Direct Marketing, increased business networking, new Marketing collateral, actively seeking business referrals and eeek… being an exhibitor at Trade Shows!

The Trade Show

That new marketing plan is literally only weeks old, and many of the goals (for instance, go and laugh at our web-site – it’s still pretty shabby and very outdated) are still some way from being completed, but at fairly short notice we were offered an opportunity to exhibit at the “Winning Business” exhibition at Drayton Manor this past Wednesday gone, and so we took that opportunity, prepared or not!

On the plus-side, we shared a stall with one of our Telecomms Partners, Blue Sky Connections, who we’ve done a good chunk of business with this year as one of many new Strategic Alliances we’ve formed with like-minded companies. Now never one to pass up the opportunity to learn from others – Geoff Seymour, one of the owners of Blue Sky, is a seasoned Trade Show exhibitor and so I had the benefit of being able to follow his lead.

On the down-side, we realised our stand needed to look smart and be covered with promotional material. Ahh yes, promotional material… You see, we don’t have any promotional material… whatsoever… at all… it’s always been on the “to do” list, but never happened because, well… pick your reason…

Concerns

Visions of being plonked in front of an empty stand on the day plagued my nightmares, and so I picked up the ‘phone and called someone who I knew knows a lot more about Marketing than I ever would, Simon Washbrook of Alkaline Solutions, and cried down the ‘phone that we needed his urgent help!

With just days to go before the exhibit, Simon helped us brand each of the services we offered, find a consistent brand identity and then put together some collateral that really looked the part. Designs were rushed off to the printers and with a day to go before the exhibition, we had everything covered. Phew. Thank-you Simon!

The Day Itself

On the day of the show itself, we had to arrive early as things “officially” kicked off at 0800.

We put our new roll-up banner in place, arranged the new marketing collateral neatly, put retro sweets into bowls to tempt sweet-toothed visitors across, and then breathed a sigh of relief and headed off for our complimentary breakfast.

Breakfast. You must start the day with a good breakfast! That is unless you’re at the Winning Business show – where all the other exhibitors had eaten everything on offer before we had a chance to eat. Grrr…

The Stall

Back to the stall and visitors now started to trickle in. I’d asked advice from a couple of clients and friends who were experienced Trade Show exhibitors and the general consensus was that visitors at such shows have given you permission to talk to them by their attendance, so make sure to get out there and talk to as many people as possible!

Now, I’m no experienced business networker, but at the networking events I have attended I’ve noticed many business owners trying to sell to me their service right there and then. Personally I wouldn’t buy any business service from somebody I’ve literally just met, and my hunch is most other people wouldn’t either, so my goal at such business networking events is to chat to people, learn more about them and visa versa, and if we get on – stay in touch and see if a relationship develops that may lead to business.

I took this same attitude of “not selling” to meeting visitors at this trade show, and so my day consisted of not hovering by our stall, but instead getting myself into the aisle where visitors were walking by, chatting to people about how they’d found the event, what they were looking to get out of the day, discussing familiar business challenges and then, when they requested it, exchanging business cards.

Meeting other Stall Holders

Following Geoff’s lead, I also took the opportunity to go and visit many of other stall holders – including fellow IT providers – introduce myself and generally have a chat. There were at least three or four fellow businesses we’ll be having a follow-up chat with about possible strategic alliances.

It was a long long day on our feet, and by 1500 I’d snuck out to the car park to get involved in my latest HTG11 Conference Call (a laptop in a car park, a 3G Modem and Skype to call Internationally really works!) and by 1600 most exhibitors were packing up. To be honest, the last part of the day did drag as there were definitely diminishing returns – most visitors had been and gone by 1300 and the afternoon saw much fewer people wander by.

End Results

The end result? Well the stand cost us £250 split two ways (so £125 each) and I think we had around 60 conversations with visitors and another dozen or so with fellow exhibitors, all of which we’ll be following up next week. I’m not sure whether this is good or bad, but having spoken to a few peers who have done similar events before I think it’s a decent day. I guess the proof will be how many of those 70+ conversations end up with us chatting some more, and then possibly doing business. We shall see!

Conclusion

It’s easy to beat yourself up about not having done any marketing for your company, especially if you’re a techy geek like myself and it doesn’t come naturally, and the knee-jerk reaction is to think you can do one marketing related activity such as a Trade Show or a Direct Mail campaign and think that “marketing” is now done – but the reality is that Marketing has to be an ongoing activity that is part of your every-day business life. We’ve just started out with our marketing and so have no evidence to support this, but our approach is to do a mixture of marketing related activities so we’re not reliant upon any one method for keeping our business pipeline full.