(Online business marketing) Online Trade Show Marketing

(Online business marketing) Online Trade Show Marketing - Using the Company Website

August 2nd, 2008 admin Posted in marketing |

By Ben Needles

Online trade show marketing offers exhibitors the possibility to draw targeted consumers to their trade show booth. Company websites attract interested customers. With online trade show marketing to those already interested customers, a company can economically gain targeted buyers. Successful online trade show marketing campaigns should include the following four elements so that website visitors are informed about upcoming trade shows and provided with incentives for attending.

Include a List of Upcoming Trade Shows

List the trade shows that you plan to attend on your website. This is an easy part of online trade show marketing. By providing your customers with the details of trade shows in advance, they have the time to plan and get ready to attend your event.

If you plan to attend numerous trade shows, provide a dedicated webpage for your online trade show marketing. If you only plan to attend one or two shows per year, it is best to include the information on your home page or on a temporary page as part of your online trade show marketing.

Upon visiting your website, customers should easily find all of the details about the event, the location, times, directions, and even an outline of the products being promoted and special contests or prize giveaways. Online trade show marketing is an inexpensive way to gain targeted customers to your trade show booth.

Provide Good Directions

The venues for trade shows are usually huge and can even contain other trade shows running at the same time. Make sure you provide clear, detailed directions as part of your online trade show marketing. Do not only include directions to the venue, provide a map straight to your booth, as trade shows often contain hundreds of different booths. Taking the time to provide directions ensures your customers will easily find you.

Meticulous directions are an extremely valuable part of online trade show marketing. Providing great directions will also guarantee your customers will actually attend your trade show and make the extra effort to visit your booth if you make everything easy to locate.

Scheduling Appointments and Free Tickets

A primary goal of online trade show marketing is making the show a must attend for your clients. You can achieve this by making your customers feel the show is worth the time they will spend there. Consider including a website form that permits customers to make appointments with you at the trade show.

By scheduling appointments with your customers, you demonstrate how valuable they are by setting aside special time for them as opposed to making them wait in a line to speak with you. Another online trade show marketing strategy is offering free tickets to the trade show for your customers who wish to attend.

Consider Holding an Online Contest

An easy addition to your online trade show marketing efforts is to hold an online contest. For instance, consider offering a contest sign up form or ballot on your website and hold a drawing at specific times during the trade show. Your customers are guaranteed to come by your website to see if they won. Instead of online entries, consider a printable ballot or entry form that you customers turn in at your booth. Make sure your contest offers a great prize for winners.

The goal of online trade show marketing is not just to bring customers to your booth. The goal is to entice customers needing the product or service you offer. If you give your website visitors a specific incentive for going to your trade show while making it simple for them to find you, your business profits will grow.

About the Author (text)

Christine O\’Kelly is a writer for Jonathan Edelman, trade show marketing consultant, founder of Ideas 4 Now, a trade show marketing company (http://www.prizewheelsdirect.com/), consultant for industry niches (http://www.bank-promotional-marketing.com/) as well as founder of Trade-Show-Directory.com.

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3 Proven Headline Techniques to Boost Your Direct Selling Postcard Response Rates
By Ben Needles

Without a doubt, postcards are an effective tool for marketing your direct selling business. Whether you are recruiting, or retailing your products and services, postcards have the ability to attract the attention of your prospect more effectively than standard regular mail.

Not only does a postcard attract the attention of your prospect, but postcards are far less expensive both to print and mail than standard letters. In this article, you are going to learn three proven and simple headline techniques that will increase your response rates (of course you have to implement these techniques for it to work).

Let,s first look at the attention grabbing power of a postcard. The fact is, when you get your mail from the mailbox today, whats the first thing you will do? Before you even get back to the door of your house, you will sift through the mail and you WILL look at the postcards you received.

Why do people look at postcards first? Because postcards are easy to see. Postcards dont require your prospect to open an envelope, unfold a letter and read a long page of writing to decide if the message is interesting or relevant. Interestingly, the majority of people do the same thing with their mail. The postcard is powerfully effective in immediately getting your undivided attention, at least for several moments. Most of the time, thats more than standard direct mail letters get.

One secret I learned many years ago, that most people in the Direct Selling Industry seem to overlook, is the fact the postcards maximize the number of people that actually read your offer. Postcard prospecting is effective in cutting through all the marketing clutter of the mail a person receives. Plus, postcards will preserve your bottom line when compared to other marketing methods, making postcards a very economical method of marketing.

But getting a great return on investment is not magical and does not happen automatically. Whether you are using postcards for promoting your upcoming direct selling home party, or you are promoting a core product your company has, you will find you will need to implement a few techniques. You can boost your response rates by making sure you are implementing the following 3 proven headline techniques.

1. Your Headline Must Attract Curiosity Seeking Attention

A proven technique for boosting your postcard response rates is to attract the attention of your prospect, so they will want to read more. This is accomplished through both your graphic elements and your headline text.

These two key elements should not only attract your prospects attention, but must also create curiosity in the mind of your prospect so they will want to seek out more information about what you are offering. We are all naturally curious and curiosity causes us to want to read more.

If the graphic or headline grabs your attention, youll want to read everything it has to say, so flipping over the postcard to see whats on the other side is a very natural thing to do.

Remember, curiosity basically is that desire to want to learn or know more. So when you create your headline and graphics, make certain you pique the curiosity of your prospect. This can be accomplished by focusing empathetically on one core benefit of what you offer.

2. Your Message Needs to Create a Sense of Urgency

Another proven technique is to create a sense of urgency in your headline. Statistics prove that people are bombarded daily with 1000s of marketing messages each and every day. Your prospects, when going through their mail, often have a preoccupation of thought. For this reason, you must not only create the curiosity, but you NEED to create a sense of urgency that will stand out in your prospects mind and make them want to learn more right now.

This is accomplished through using simple but high-impact words within your headline text. Again, you are attempting to grab the attention of your prospect so they focus on your marketing piece right at that moment.

The key is to use no more than 6 or 7 high-impact words. Plus, you will need to use a short transitional phrase that causes the prospect to want to read more right at that very moment. Your attention grabbing headline should create curiosity to an urgency level that makes your prospect say, I have to read this NOW! - Causing the prospect to turn the postcard over to get the rest of your message.

3. Your Graphic Must Reinforce Your Headline Message

One mistake most marketers make is they misunderstand the fact their graphical image must reinforce the headline message they have on their postcard. So, they end up having a graphic image just to have a graphic image. Or, the graphic is sending a different message than intended.

A proven technique for boosting response rates is to use photographs instead of illustrated drawings. These photos need to connect with your target audiences mind and reinforce your headline message. The fact that statistics prove people trust pictures more than drawings, it is important to use photographs instead of illustrated drawings.

In addition, action pictures are very effective and can further enhance the effectiveness when the picture touches the emotional hot buttons of your prospect. This can be accomplished either through showing the pleasure or eliminating the pain. Make sure to focus on the benefits and not the features.

Here is a simple exercise that can help you further understand the power of the graphics and headlines in attracting the attention of the recipient. Over the next few weeks, when you go through your mail, save all the postcards. Then once you have 10-15 postcards, take some time to study them.

Pay attention to what attracts your attention. What grabbed your attention? What did not? Look at how the marketers use the postcard headline and graphics to their marketing advantage. Which postcards did you like? Write down your thoughts.

Then ask 2-3 friends or colleagues to review the same set of postcards and answer the same type of questions as you did. Have them share their thoughts with you. This exercise will help you better understand what other people see and how they respond. All of this information can be very useful to helping you to improve your own postcards.

TIP - For a extra bonus in the above exercise, be sure to toss in one of your companys postcards (or your own) into the mix for others to review.

Remember, postcards dont require your prospect to open an envelope, unfold a letter and read a long page of writing to decide if the message is interesting or relevant. Postcards are economical and effective for virtually any business, including direct selling, network marketing, and mlm. Apply the above headline techniques in developing your postcards for your marketing and you will experience improved response rates in your next mailing of those postcards.