Daily Marketing Tips

The Trade Show Pitch - An Environment For Dynamic Or Disastrous?

Telling your product’s story at the show can be extremely exciting and absolutely overwhelming at the same time. Pitching in any environment can be nerve racking, but the show is similar to public speaking.

Many otherwise confident people become nervous at the thought of public speaking. They will become pale, break out in a sweat, their hands will become clammy, their voice will quiver, their breathing will become shallow and some people even get physically ill. I have heard of people passing out before going on stage and this is all before they start speaking.

Some people will do almost anything to avoid having to speak in public. It is why you will see booth personnel eating or talking to a co-worker or wandering the show floor when they should be in their booth presenting.

There are hundreds of books and training programs on public speaking and people pay thousands of dollars to learn to do it effectively. However, many exhibitors will arrive at the show without preparing what they are going to say about their product. An exhibitor should have a canned presentation and responses to questions on their product that everyone in the booth has practiced.

You may be thinking that a canned presentation will seem too plastic or phony, but do you think the President goes anywhere without a prepared presentation as well as responses to questions about his presentation? A prepared presentation will help everyone feel more relaxed.

The future of this product is in your hands. Do you want your product to be presidential or putt-putt?

Combine the nervousness of giving a speech with the many distractions occurring on the trade show floor. You have thousands of people walking around, neighboring booths speaking simultaneously, announcements being made — the sheer noise volume is enough to make you not want to present. With Read the rest of this entry »

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Direct Mail - Why it is Still So Efficient

�Time Spent - I’m not talking about the amount of time you spent designing, implementing and sending your mail, I’m talking about the amount of time your reader spends looking at your marketing. If you think about it, when someone looks at an advert online, if they aren’t interested, they will simply click off. Whereas in Direct Mail, if they aren’t interested, chances are they will just put it down somewhere in their house; and then they look at it again later.

�Precision - Instead of a ‘hit and hope’ method, with Direct Mail, you can pinpoint the people who fit your psychographic, demographic, and geographic profile, meaning much more targeted eyes are reading; therefore, you will get a higher ROI (Return On Investment)

�Immediate Responses - Once you send out your direct mail, it doesn’t take long to get a response. Within one or two weeks you’ll receive around 80-90% of all those who are going to respond. If your campaign works, you’ll know about it quickly. If it doesn’t, you will know that quickly as well.

�Simple - It is so simple to create a direct mail campaign; all you need to do is design your leaflet/brochure/letter, and then print multiple copies. You can then send these out, and all you’ve had to do was spend maybe an hour designing it.

�Cost Efficiency - For the purpose of this point, let’s say that a single letter to a single house costs 50p. You sell your services at say �20 a pop. Therefore, you can send out 40 letters, and as long as you receive one response, you’ve lost no money! You need to work out how much it will cost each household, and how much one response will earn you, as a minimum. Once you know this, you will know how cost-effective Direct Mail can be for you!

So there you have it; just a few brief points as to why I think Direct Mail is still one of the most efficient ways of marke Read the rest of this entry »

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