TSMI's Trade Show Marketing Report

Happy New Year

The past two weeks have been pretty brutal with the coffee store opening... but I've been following my feeds and the other news almost every day during this unplanned exile from TSMR. 

I just went through my feeds again, but there really was nothing very interesting to report from the last two weeks that isn't related to tsunamis.  Absolute bupkis.  So neither you nor I have missed much.

About the only thing worth mentioning was that Alan Meckler has officially anointed CES as the new Comdex.  But y'all knew that was coming.

We'll be getting back on track next week when we'll have more time to go out searching for news and conversation topics.  Meantime, have a happy and safe New Year celebration.

Dallas Using Novel Approach to Attract Visitors: Laser Tag

Next time you're in Dallas for a show, take a break at B.B. Owen Park in The Colony.  Dallas will be among first cities in the country to offer laser tag in a public park space.

There's nothing like fresh air, exercise and blasting away and your colleagues to get ready for another day on the show floor.

My Newsletter Excuse

We broke a promise.  No newsletter on Monday.  But I have a note from wife to explain it. 

Many of you know we (she) is opening a coffee store.  The health department inspector was going on vacation next week, so to get passed for 2004, yesterday was the last opportunity to pass inspection.  And we had to do it in order to depreciate all of that gleaming new equipment. 

I've been living over there with the contractors the past three days, including an all-nighter on Tuesday.  Which, if you haven't done one lately is not nearly as fun as it was back in college.  I think I need to burn the clothes I've been wearing since Monday.

Anyway, we passed.  We get final building inspection on Monday and we open on Wednesday.

Here are some photos of what it looked like last week.  I'll post some new ones closer to opening. 

So apologies for no newsletter and the dearth of posts this past week. 

And if today's your last day before the weekend, Merry Christmas!

Steve Miller Thinks TSEA Is Dying. Meantime TSEA Launches a New Conference.

In his latest newsletter, Steve Miller questions the rationale for TSEA selling their show and opines that the association may be on its last legs.

And just an hour before receiving Steve's newsletter, there was this announcement about a new TSEA seminar on strategic exhibiting.  (Full conference info is here).

If TSEA is indeed dying, nobody's told them yet.

Another Reason MacWorld Will Always Be Cool

The John Lennon Educational Bus will visit MacWorld next month in SF.

Doing things like this, Apple continues to prove daily why it is perhaps the most outstanding brand in our lifetime.  And why MacWorld will always be its capital.

AMA: A Lesson Learned On Communicating the Value of Attending

It's always a good thing to remember that your conferences are about providing value to attendees.  Attendees generally measure value in terms of dollars, time/efficiencies and credentials (CEUs, licensing requirements, etc.).

Because sometimes even the best of professional organizations forget about providing hard value when trying to cash in on a hot trend.

Case in point:  The American Marketing Association wanted to cash in on the blogging phenomenon (and understandably so, because blogs can provide significant marketing advantages).  But one blogger began taking the AMA to task for not providing hard value.  And then others began linking to it... and so on and so on and so on.

The blogger had an excellent point.  AMA was asking him to spend $695 on a seminar.  But they didn't tell HIM why it was worth $695 to HIM.

As it turns out, the AMA's "Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Web Site" seminar did OK, probably because a number of the speakers were "celebrities" in the blogosphere.  To AMA's credit, the conference chair replied to post and suggested AMA would rethink their value proposition.

I don't know this story qualifies for "Irony of the year", but you have to admit that blogs being used to attack (and defend) an event on blogging is somewhat amusing.

Markets are conversations.

You can't control the conversation.

But you can listen.  And participate.  And act.

There's an important lesson here.  One blogger can be the snowflake that can start an avalanche.  Granted, AMA is on the very forefront of the phenomenon.  And they're apparently smart enough to handle, deflect and embrace the skeptics. Listening and acting.

Right now blogs are something you probably don't have to worry about for your event (although you should check your event name at Technorati or Feedster just to see if anyone is saying anything about you).  But eventually blogs will find your event.  Might be next year or five years from now.  What will they say about you?  And how will you respond?

And don't forget the bulletin boards.  They're still around.  And sometimes people have interesting things to say about trade shows on them.

Speaker PR and Search Engines

Can't remind everyone often enough of how effective a little extra PR effort can be, especially for small and mid-size natonal or regional conferences and shows and those with tight marketing budgets.

I'm continue to be surprised when I receive items in my newsfeeds like this short blurb about a teacher speaking at a regional conference.

You might read and think, "So what."  It almost seems gratuitous.  But you'd be wrong.

I'm not surprised that I'm receiving links to minor stories about speakers and exhibitors.  I'm surprised I'm not receiving MORE of them.

If you look at this blurb, it's only three short paragraphs.  And it's published in the newspaper for Apple Valley, MN.  Ever hear of it?  Didn't think so.

For smaller organizers, success is in the details.  Even minor incremental increases in attendance can make a big difference.  Would another 10 or 15 full-paid conference attendees have made a difference to you last year?  For many smaller organizers, that's a resounding "YES". 

It probably took all of five minutes to put this teacher's blurb together.  If you have 50 speakers, that's 250 minutes.  A little more than half a work day.  But it's a half day well spent.

Here's what you'll likely get for your efforts:

- 50 or more newspapers carrying your blurb.  Major metropolitans may not carry your blurb, but smaller dailies will.  So will many regional business magazines.  Chamber of commerce newsletters.  Local chapters of associations.  Etc. etc.  Potentially millions of exposures of your show name, dates, venue.  With the impression that your show is worth mentioning in the newspaper, so it must be somewhat important.

- 50 or more mentions of your show name online.  Some with inbound links to your show.  Which translates to higher rankings on most search engines.

- For people that search specifically for your show name, they get a lot more hits when all these speaker blurbs show up. Which improves the perception that your event is important.

- More attendance.  For an event with 50 speakers maybe that's only 10 or 15 more people.  But what do you pay on average for an attendee?  Your half day of work is likely worth a minimum of $250 and perhaps as much as $2,000 or more in marketing dollars depending on the average cost of acquiring an attendee.

This will also go a long way with your speakers.  You'll get a reputation as a conference that really cares about speaker handling.

Not a bad way to spend half a day.

(Note: Above figures based on assumptions for a national expo and conference of 25,000-50,000 sf and 2,500-5,000 attendees.  Your mileage may vary.)

Newsletter Delayed

All day I kept thinking it was Wednesday.  Maybe it was just wishful thinking. 

Paying work got in the way, so no newsletter this week.  We'll do a special holiday edition over the weekend that will go out on Monday.

If you note the time of this post, you'll get an idea what my day has been like...

ExpressPlanner Redux

Maybe it's the Christmas spirit guiding me, but I'm going to do something I normally wouldn't:  take a comment from a recent post - and a promotional one at that - and turn it into a class project that we can all assist on.

I've heard from a few folks that I was a bit rough on ExpressPlanner when I posted about my experience with the product a couple of days ago.

Well, the ExpressPlanner folks were alerted to the post.  And they commented.  But it was such a nice, calm, sincere plea for assistance in helping them develop the product, I figured the least I could do would be to make sure more people saw their reply.  So here it is in case you missed it:

The beta release has not been worked on by our designers as of yet – so it’s look is rough. Design is our last goal as we finish bug fixes, etc.

We agree that it is hard to use right now – we are actually focusing on making it easier to use and expect to have a new beta release ready this coming week. (All the problems you mentioned in the review were fixed at the beginning of the week – and will be in this next release.)

ExpressPlanner will remain free – even after it’s production release. Support options are there for people who need help with their events – they are simply consulting support options which were part of our event consulting business we had before building expressplanner portal. Our overall goal is to make expressplanner so easy to use anyone can sign in – and manage their event without any problems. We will get it to that point – and your feedback speeds us along to that goal.

We have a surprise in store for event planners – ExpressPlanner portal was the last piece of a project we have been working on all year. As soon as it’s production quality – we will be releasing something I am sure every event planner will love. Upon it’s release – the website will be changed and you will see what we’ve been up to!

Please send us any feedback you have on the portal. We need people to sign up and play with it so we can make the portal easier for everyone to use. If you think something needs to be different or you run into bugs – send me an email so we can get them resolved.

Also - if you have feature ideas or comments - let us know - we are going to be looking to add as many useful features as possible after our production release!

Five years ago, I couldn't have imagined a response like this from an ASP.  Heck, b-there would've blamed my problems on Microsoft. 

You have to respect sincerity. 

I would like to see them succeed.  Wouldn't you?  It's a free registration service.  FREE.  It's not like they're thinking of charging for it once they get it to work.  F-R-E-E.  We should be jumping all over this thing to make sure it works so we can use it.

Here's what I'd like you to do.  Go sign up for ExpressPlanner.  Play with it for an hour or two instead of playing SlingshotSanta.  And let them know how to improve it.  Let's see if we can fix this thing.

Elance

I'm trying Elance for the first time.  I put out a bid for a Flash movie for one of the shows I'm marketing with the hope that it will have viral potential.  I don't know anyone I consider to be good at this sort of thing, and GreedyGirl recommended I take the project to Elance and see what happens.

People have told me in the past that I should be marketing myself over on Elance.  But now that I've been there, it scares the hell out of me.

In the graphics category there were something like 1200 companies who've done project work via Elance.  I didn't look at all 1200.  But on the first three pages - which apparently are the people making more money than the folks way down on page 50 - I noticed that very few of the top earners on Elance were from the States.  They were from India, Pakistan, Romania and the Ukraine. 

And they were doing work for peanuts, relatively.  It would be cheaper for me to hire some of these people to build my wife's coffee shop web site for me than it would be for me to do it myself.  Even if I used a wizard.  That's how cheap things are "over there".  And I suppose that's why everybody is outsourcing.

Since I just posted my first project, I can't yet say anything good or bad about my Elance experience.  But on first glance it seems to me to be an interesting option for most of you for web design and graphics, especially if you're on a tight budget (and who isn't). 

If you've used Elance, what were your thoughts?