Measurement Tip 18

What Does Success Look Like?

Characteristics of a Very Successful Trade Show Marketing Program

A client recently asked me to detail the characteristics of the company’s trade show program that set it apart from others in their industry.  I was happy to oblige, as this client’s trade show marketing program is exemplary by comparison to most programs in all industry segments.  Their differentiators are ones that most companies strive to achieve so I am sharing these as a checklist that you might use to evaluate your own progress and the sophistication of your program. 

My conclusions on what makes this program special and effective are based upon more than twenty-five years of trade show observation and analysis, including hundreds of shows and thousands of companies.  And, our expert knowledge of this client’s program comes from supporting their program strategy, measurement and reporting for the past five plus years.

 Successful Trade Show and Event Marketing Program Differentiators

This program demonstrates:

1.    An extremely well-balanced mix of business development and marketing communication goals and accomplishments

2.    A very high degree of executive visibility, participation and support

3.    Direct linkage to sales activity and accomplishment

a.    Geographically aligned with marketing and sales priorities

b.    Sales team documented impact on project proposal achievements and customer and partner relationship management

4.    Well integrated press, advertising, PR activities

a.    Superior results compared to competitors at virtually every show in terms of the amount of press generated, the priority focus and tonality of generated press results through trade show participation

5.    Maximum use of Brand Development and marketing communications opportunities in the exhibit, venues and show sites, as well as advertising and digital media expansion to the broader marketplace.

a.    Campaigns, properties, demonstrations and digital and social media are exemplary in their integration of branding and product and service promotion and marketing communications

6.    Confidence among virtually the entire team, including sales and executive participants who concluded the combination of messaging, branding and key contact engagement environments provided an effective marketing opportunity.  (Substantiated by Staff and Stakeholder survey results.)

7.    A financially justified measurement and reporting program that supports show and event results reporting, event selection and “right-sizing” of budgets and resources to each show opportunity.

These accomplishments do not magically happen as a program matures.  It requires considerable attention to improving and refining the approach over a number of years.  Executive perception of the value derived from this program progressed from negative to positive, as demonstrated by these results.

Use this list as a quide for assessing your own programs weaknesses and strengths, and for setting goals or improvement targets.  You do not have to have a large program to persue these goals. For example, even a small exhibitor can make news and generate press if you have something interesting to say.

Please contact me if you would like to discuss this or other aspects of your event marketing program.

 

Ed Jones

President

Constellation Communication Corporation

+1.770.391.005
edjones@constellationcc.com

Measurement Tip 17

Measure Your Event Marketing Program on Marketing Effectiveness, Not Sales 

A recent study of CEOs by The Fournaise Marketing Group revealed that a sizable majority of CEOs perceive that B2B Marketers have “started (wrongly) to focus on performance indicators that are actually not theirs, such as prospect conversions and revenue.”

This should be an important revelation to event marketers. Marketing must focus and grade itself on creating customer demand for the sales team to prove value, a point I have impressed upon students in my "How to Measure the Value of Tradeshows" classes.

The results of this study support a measurement philosophy that concentrates on marketing effectiveness. I have taken  excerpts from this article that I think are the most important points for trade show and event marketers.

“CEOs Want ROI Marketers 100% Focused on Generating, Tracking & Boosting Customer Demand for their Products/Services.”

The Fournaise Marketing Group 2012 Global Marketing Effectiveness Program conducted interviews with more than 1,200 large corporate and small and medium business CEOs and decision-makers in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Here are some of the findings I think may be important to event marketers from this study:

“Marketers have lost sight that these (prospect conversions and revenue) are primarily Sales Force-related performance indicators, and that they should focus instead on the customer demand-related indicators directly linked to their job and for which they have 100% control.”

The findings demonstrate that executive management believes “Marketers are too disconnected from the financial realities of companies.”

“78% of these CEOs think Marketers too often lose sight of what their real job is: to generate more customer demand for their products/services in a business-quantifiable and business-measurable way.”

And, here is the definitive answer for the one circumstance most of us fear to be true.

“Unfortunately, 69% of the B2C CEOs believe B2C Marketers now live too much in their creative and social media bubble and focus too much on parameters such as “likes”, “tweets”, “feeds” or “followers” – the very parameters they can’t really prove generate more (business-quantifiable) customer demand for their products/services, and the very parameters judged “interesting but not critical” by CEOs.”

CEOs in the B2B market define customer demand as generating and delivering more qualified, “sales-ready” prospects to the sales pipeline or sales cycle of the business. These qualified prospects should be able to be converted faster into actual revenue by the sales team.

“To earn the CEOs trust, Marketers will need to transform themselves into ROI Marketers,” said Fournaise Group.

“75% of CEOs think Marketers misunderstand (and misuse) the “real business” definition of the words “Results”, “ROI” and “Performance” and therefore do not adequately speak the language of their top management.” The preference is for marketers to deliver and report on “the level of customer demand they are asked to deliver, instead of drowning everybody with data and analyses that are too remote from the P&L.”

The report demonstrates that 85% of B2B and B2C CEOs would like prospect-driven ROI Marketers to focus on tracking, reporting and boosting Marketing Specific Key Performance Indicators: Prospect Volume, Prospect Quality, Marketing Effectiveness Rate (defined as the percentage of Marketing spending that directly generated prospects) and the business potential generated by Marketing. This last element is what I have been referring to as ”Sales Potential" delivered by the interactions at a marketing event (see Measurement Tip 10)

Jerome Fontaine, CEO & Chief Tracker of Fournaise said, “Marketers will have to understand that they need to start “cutting the rubbish” if they are to earn the trust of CEOs and if they want to have a bigger impact in the boardroom.” “They will have to transform themselves into true business-driven ROI Marketers or forever remain in what 65% of CEOs told us they call Marketing la-la land.”

We can heed these warnings by taking direct aim at delivering sales ready prospects into the sales cycle of our company though events. We must finally embrace the sales team as the customer of marketing. And we must ensure that a large part of our event expenditures are funding those activities that generate prospects. Perhaps this study answers the perennial question, “should we be tracking and reporting sales results?” The answer appears to be no.

You can access the entire study summary here:

http://tinyurl.com/fournaisestudy 


Ed

If you would like more information on how to get started on an event marketing measurement program, please call me at +1.770.391.0015 or email me edjones@constellationcc.com




*Source (Articles Referenced): “80% of CEOs Do Not Really Trust Marketers (Except If They Are “ROI Marketers”). The Fournaise Marketing Group. July, 2012.