Measurement Tip 23

How a Well Trained Exhibit Staff Delivers Positive Results and Measurable Outcomes

You have heard it repeated that your exhibit staff accounts for roughly 80% of your success as an exhibitor. But what are the actual accomplishments that result from a well trained staff? These outcomes provide not only a measurement set but also a serve as planning guide for your staff training. Well-conceived staff orientation and training lead directly to increased quality and effectiveness of the following goals:

1. High Value Contact Engagement

o   More engagements with the correct targeted participants

·       Applicable measures: percentage of engagements/visitors and total number of engagements

o   More agreement for follow-up activities

·       Applicable measures: number of leads, number of contacts added to marketing database, improvements in relationship maturity, etc.

o   More sales ready prospects delivered into the sales pipeline or funnel

·       Applicable measures: number of qualified leads (that are acceptable to sales), number of goal conversions, etc.

o   More meetings with better focus on business accomplishments

·       Applicable measures: number of meetings, number of meeting related follow-up commitments

o   Significant cost savings/expense avoidance

·       Applicable measures: total future travel and facilities cost avoidance through meetings

 

2. Marketing Communication

o   A well-trained exhibit staff provides a consistent “story,” told in its intended context

o   Messaging, branding and marketing themes are more clearly and consistently communicated

·       Applicable measures: changes or accomplishments in awareness, message or information recall, shifts in preferences such as brand and purchase intent related to measurement

 

3. Presentations, Demonstrations and Product Showcasing

Presentations and interactive demos are large expenses upfront, but significant effectiveness and cost savings may results. As you have probably already concluded, how well the staff learns to utilize these tools will determine the payback on the investment! Interactive demonstration and presentation technology present huge opportunities to improve results.

o   Increased number and effectiveness of demonstrations and presentations

·       Applicable measures: number of demos and presentations, the number of participants in same, participant ratings of presentations and demonstrations value, changes in awareness, recall, preferences and intent

o   Decrease in number and cost of future field sales calls

·       Applicable measures: Number of targeted visitors who receive a sales call equivalent, number of appointments or follow-up actions

o   Improvement in probability of sale for conditioned prospects

·       Applicable measures: ratings of “sales readiness”

4. Customer Relationship Management

o   Increased Customer Retention

·       Applicable measures: number of current customers seen at event, amount of current revenue addressable at event, documented “saves” as a result of event interaction

o   Cross-Sell and Up-sell Opportunities

·       Applicable measures: Number and type of up-sell, cross-sell transactions as a result of or at event

5. Additional Staff Related Accomplishments

Exhibit staff can be trained on other practices and procedures such as:

o   Protecting competitive intelligence

o   Gathering competitive intelligence

o   Other business improvement and recruitment interactions with valuable contacts such as suppliers, channels, press and others

These accomplishments and their measures represent just a few of the many ways you can substantiate the time and cost of training your staff to be effective at every event.

A common concern echoed among many exhibit managers is, “Our sales people are so experienced and expert they will not accept or participate in exhibit staff training.” In practice, well conceived training is most often praised by top level sales people and sales executives. They recognize that working from an exhibit is not the same as making a personal visit or even a phone call where participants and facts are known beforehand.

When asked to comment about pre-show staff training impact, a senior business development executive of a major international company recently responded, “{Staff} training added significant value to trade show participation and resulted in real opportunity identification and follow-up. The training and approaches for better use of the available displays result in even the most experienced business development professional learning something new about customer interaction and setting the stage for winning profitable new business.”

Use this guide not only to plan your staff training, but also to justify the expense in qualitative and quantitative terms. An effectively trained exhibit staff obtains results that you can prove and allows you, the event manager, to be seen as a manager of the company’s business!


 

If you need assistance with your event marketing measurement program, please call us at +1.770.391.0015 or email me at edjones@constellationcc.com

Ed Jones

President, Constellation Communication Corp.

 

Measurement Tip 22

Could Just Knowing Who Attends Your Event Be the Most Important Measure of Success?

I have attended too many events where the host could provide little, if any, detail about who participated. This is quite often the case with trade show exhibit marketing. So, why is this so important?  Attracting an adequate number of targeted participants is the single most important factor in success or failure of a marketing event (or most any event.).

Hosting participants who can directly benefit your company is a prerequisite to every other aspect of a marketing or customer event.  If the right people are not present, the remaining activity is almost meaningless. Therefore, performance measurements of your efficiency in targeting, invitation and attendance results are among the most important factors in reporting results and making improvements in future events.  

  

The importance of attracting an adequate number of targeted people stems from my research over several decades.  During that time I identified three factors, which determine the success of an event:

1) The ability to attract enough people who can personally deliver benefits to the host

2) Success in communicating with these participants in a persuasive manner

3) Success in obtaining the desired behavioral response from these participants (i.e. to take a step in the sales cycle or engage in another targeted business process)

What is clear is that without adequate attendance the subsequent steps have no effect.  Keeping a focus on identification, targeting and attracting the most valuable audience for every marketing event will do the most to increase your results and ROI.  This will also help you to develop more effective criteria for defining and obtaining qualified, sales ready leads.  A simple phrase that sums these ideas up is, “Those who attend must be those who can act in a way that benefits your company!”

To make a difference in an upcoming event requires that you begin your process a minimum of 6 months before the show date.  It also requires that you involve sales, marketing and product management, if possible, in the discussions of who is targeted at an event and how the target set matches up with priority products to be showcased at the event.

This approach can open new avenues for communication with a wider group of managers within your organization.  The new players need adequate time to understand the opportunity and to “buy in” to the plan and to make their contributions to the final result.

Step 1 - Define the target audiences you seek to reach using a descriptive hierarchy:

1. Industry or Market Segment (ex: Construction)
2. Company Type  (ex: Aggregate Paving, Demolition)
3. Company Size  (ex: 1 million and above in revenue)
4. Functional Responsibility (ex: Executive, Finance)
5. Title (ex: President, CFO, V.P.)
6. Name if practical (ex: Joe Tomlin)

Consider a show that will be attended by over 100k people (net).  You will likely target less than 20% of that number.  Limited show hours and other exhibitors competing for each visitor’s attention and time may prevent your from seeing even those you target.  If you do not target your desired audiences, you will be simply hoping that one qualified fish out of every five that swim by will jump into your boat.  This is not a good proposition!  Working with a finite number of targets reduces your overall work to a more manageable and successful approach.

Step 2 – Define the addressable audience

The chart above is from an actual report showing a pictorial analysis of the “target markets” available at the composite industry’s largest show.  Each sub-market is plotted according to the percentage of total individuals participating in the event.

We can see at a glance that Transportation is the most prevalent segment represented, followed by Marine, Custom Molding and Aerospace, etc.

Now, consider for a moment that the Electrical/ Electronic products division of an exhibiting company wants to bring their entire line to the show because they are sharing in the budget.  It is easy to conclude that doing so may not be a good use of space or expense.  This is great information for answering the perennial question, “What should we show in our exhibit?”

Step 3 – Attracting the targets 

Often the best sources to consult are the demographic profile of show attendees available from show management.  You should also use contact lists available from industry publications and your own marketing database.  Develop and run a query from your target criteria developed in Step 1 against these databases.

You may purchase mailing address lists that match your criteria for direct marketing.  (Phone numbers or email addresses may or may not be available.) 

If the show management will not rent you a list, they often will launch you campaign for you.  Review you exhibitor kit to arrange purchase of a list or distribution services.

Step 4 - And beyond

Once you have identified your targets, it is up to you to design and deliver pre-event marketing campaigns and coordinated personal invitation campaigns using your executives and sales team.  Remember, prospects are only one of many valuable audiences at an event.

Track who visits your exhibit or event by stopping people at random and documenting their demographic profile. Take demographics and simple attitude responses while people wait for a presentation.  Or, you can use a tool such as exit surveys.  You can also swipe badges for as many people as possible, using a simple "giveaway" that will not attract too many of the wrong people.  Next, run a measurement report of your attendance using the registration/ leads data from show management. 

Documenting as many visitors as possible is an excellent habit to develop.  Be sure people who respond to a pre-event marketing campaign or invitation are identified in the process.  Compare your results to your original targets.  A lead should usually be a person who fits one of the targeted profiles.

When you target and invite the right participants, event and exhibit staff will be much more effective in conveying the proper information and gaining commitments for follow-through.  The people they see will be interested in what they are saying and the information will be relevant to them.

I will write more on this in the future.  Meanwhile, be sure to call me if you want to discuss ideas.

Ed Jones

President, Constellation Communication Corporation

+1.770.391.0015

edjones@constellationcc.com