TSMI's Trade Show Marketing Report

Bribes for Blog Posts? Interesting Offer, Poor Execution

Received an email late last night from IAEM.  They're offering a chance to win an iPod Nano.  But not for registering to attend the event.

Rather, the offer is for participating in IAEM's blog.  Here's the copy:

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Blogging for Expo! Expo! Register to participate in the Expo! Weblog by 15 October and you will be eligible to win an iPod nano! See today's post from IAEM's Chairman of the Board of Directors, Chris Brown. Here are a few points and tips for getting the most out of Expo! Weblog.

Expo! Weblog is updated daily (Monday - Friday), offering a different focus each day. On Monday, we highlight speakers from the event; Tuesday looks at specific sessions in more depth; Wednesday is the day to meet sponsors; Thursday is an "anything goes" day; and Friday is reserved for our SMART Series, which is designed to help you get the most out of attending, exhibiting or acting as a vendor. We would love to hear from you! If you would like to make a comment, just click on the comment link and post your remarks. You will be asked to briefly register, and then you will be able to submit your comment. It will usually appear in a day or so. If you would like to know when Expo! Weblog is updated without having to come to the site, you can subscribe to our RSS feed (see the orange XML tag in the right hand navigation bar). RSS is all the rage and it is really easy to use (in fact, it stands for "Really Simple Syndication!"). Or, if you would like to learn how this process works, check out this tutorial. What are you waiting for -- begin your Expo! Weblog experience today!

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Let's put aside for a moment the fact that it should be unnecessary to bribe your community to participate in your blog.  There's a bigger problem with this offer:  It's not clear what to do.

Given the position and context of the first sentence "See today's post from Chris Brown", I initially thought following the link would explain the offer further, and perhaps encourage blog participation.  No such luck.  In fact, Chris doesn't even mention the blog, so there's no relevance to the offer.

You won't find it in the first bullet, either, which talks about what the blog is at a level of detail that's unnecessary at this point.  They could have done this toward the bottom of the email, or even just put in a link.

You have read down to the second bullet to find out more.  And even then it's not really clear, since the iPod Nano isn't referenced:

If you would like to make a comment, just click on the comment link and post your remarks. You will be asked to briefly register, and then you will be able to submit your comment. It will usually appear in a day or so.

While I've never seen a "bribe for blog post" tactic used before, I would have guessed this would be how they would do the entries, by capturing the email address when you go to comment.  But I've been blogging for three years and that's intuitive to me.

However, I don't think this offer is intuitive to those unfamiliar with blogging. 

If I'm making this offer, here's what I'd say instead:

- win the Nano by offering feedback to blog posts
- here's how you can win it
- go comment right now, here's how
- here's why we believe your comment feedback is important
- here's a message from your chairman, Chris Brown on how IAEM will use your input
- go comment right now, here's how
- here's what you can do with your Nano
- hey, did you know we're doing a session on blogs so you can learn how to do this for your event?  (and I'd say that even if I weren't moderating that session)
- go comment right now, dammit!

Instead, we get this:

- you can win a Nano
- here's Chris Brown on the IAEM strategic plan
- here's what our blog is about
- here's how you make comments
- here's how you get RSS feeds

It's confusing, undirected, and ultimately, not effective.

Marketers know that if you're going to make an offer for a drawing like this one, your entire message should be about that drawing and getting people excited about winning whatever the prize is and doing whatever the desired action is you want them to take.  It's all about them, not you. 

Don't muddle it up your offer with stuff that's not relevant to the task at hand.  Stick to the excitement about winning, toss in a few benefits.  Skip the features and ego.  Your results will be much better.

That said, to date there have been no comments left on the IAEM blog.  (It's also nine weeks out from the event, so who's really thinking about it at this point?)  Therefore, ANY post you leave gives you pretty good odds on winning the portable media device. 

Hell, I wouldn't mind winning the thing myself.  I wonder if there's only one post, will that person win?

Alan Meckler Says Goodbye to Trade Shows

A mere eight years ago, TradeshowWeek labelled Mecklermedia's Internet World "the fastest growing trade show in the world".  A year later Alan Meckler sold the IW franchise, which had become 22 shows in 17 countries, to Penton for a couple hundred million and change.

Internet World died with the bubble three years later.  But for all intents and purposes it had already peaked before Alan sold it.  The other - more important - part of that deal, Internet.com, became a platform for Alan to launch a series of niche tech events, several of which were winners, but not all.

Now it seems Alan Meckler is history.  At least as far as trade shows go.  He says so himself.

Recently he had sold his successful Search Engine Strategies events to Incisive Media.  He's now giving the one remaining show he manages to Incisive as well, thereby exiting the show business.  He will be concentrating on his digital image businesses.

But he's not exiting the educational content business.  Only the physical trade show part of it.  There is a difference.

This is a bit of a shame.  Alan was one of the industry's great promoters and characters - the risk-taking of Branson, the no-nonsense approach of Trump, the straight talk of Perot all wrapped up in one.  If anyone could have launched the next great tech show, Alan would have been my pick.  That he's exiting indicates to me that there is no next great tech show possible - we're past that now. 

And that he's continuing to pursue educational content via the internet implies that he sees something most of the rest of us don't.  It's not just that the margins are better and the work isn't as taxing - that wouldn't be Alan.  It has to bigger than just the money.

(Disclaimer:  I did two tours with Alan - 95-96, and again in 97-98.  Other than the fact that he's a diehard Yankee fan, I'd follow the guy pretty much anywhere if he asked.)

First International Trade Show in "Free Iraq" Deemed a Success

Motorola seemed pleased to have been a Platinum sponsor at the recently concluded Kurdistan DBX Trade Show.

We hope that everyone involved got their money's worth from participating.  The organizers worked for two years to pull off this event. 

It's worth reading the backstory on DBX.  If you think your event has problems, heh.  This event has had four separate venues contracted during its planning cycle: Baghdad and Sulaimaniyah in Iraq, Diyarbakir in Turkey and finally, Erbil in Kurdistan.

We trust that the event's tagline isn't to be taken literally - "The Ultimate Rebuilding Iraq Trade Show and Conference in Iraq."  Because if it really were the last one, that wouldn't bode well on the state of things over there.

This event is not to be confused with the Rebuilding Iraq Exhibition, which is held annually (for now) in Amman, Jordan, and attracts more than 1,000 exhibitors.

CSI Boston: What Killed MacWorld?

At the end of last week word got out that IDG is cancelling MacWorld Boston.

Ted Doyle opined that this was an inevitability caused primarily by former IDG World Expo chief Charlie Greco's ego. 

There is probably some truth to that.  Charlie was sort of a Jason Chudnofsky "Mini-Me", right down to the cufflinks and starched-and-pressed casual Friday wardrobe.  Had MacWorld stayed in NYC after 2003 none of this might have happened. 

The business reasons for the Boston move were questionable from the start.  Perhaps Charlie wanted to be a hero in his hometown, especially with the new convention center opening.  More likely, IDG just got a better deal from Boston for their bottom line.

MacWorld magazine offers a quote from IDG's "spokesperson" Mike Sponseller:

“The marketplace and our own research have made it clear that the industry prefers one main industry event.  Based on the industry’s input, we will be refocusing all of our resources to produce Macworld in San Francisco.”

There's plenty of evidence to suggest that quote is pure PR backpedalling.  It's far more likely that the cancellation of MacWorld Boston leaves the door open for some enterprising organizer to put a show back in New York City with or without Steve Jobs' cooperation.  Why?  Because it would work, despite IDG's assertions to the contrary.  It might not be the profit generator that an IDG would need to justify holding it, but someone with lower overhead and an understanding of Apple's core markets could succeed.

Early comments to TUAW's (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) post on the cancellation had various takes, most of which noted that the move to Boston was a mistake and that attendee support for a NYC show is strong:

- MacWorld NYC was great for artists and musicians.  Boston isn't the "Hub" for those.
- MacWorld NYC should have played up the non-profit sectors, with lots of .edu and .gov attendees
- LinuxWorld in NYC was a better show than MacWorld Boston because of "free stuff" (ed note: there's always one of those in the crowd)

Other commenters noted that the show couldn't work without "the big fella":
- Apple's booth presence was the reason many went. 
- Rumors of "big announcements" on-site were a draw, if not Steve Jobs himself

It's also worth taking a look back at some other comments from the last NYC MacWorld show, here and here.

Here at TSMR, we published a couple of articles over the past three years on Macworld that showed both a positive of the Boston event and a negative of the NYC show. 

From 2004:  Parliant's Kevin Ford, a MacWorld exhibitor, thought that Apple's non-presence was a positive for small companies looking to reach Apple's audience.

From 2003:  MacWorld gets thumbs-downs from SOHO workers because of its age policy. 

As a poster on TUAW noted, Apple's stock is doing well.  Both of the company's key strengths - music and its continuing hold on graphics designers - make NYC a logical place for a significant event.  From an attendee standpoint, San Francisco is a difficult trip, an no less inexpensive than NYC.

We don't believe this saga is over.  If not the MacWorld brand, then something else featuring Apple will be back in NYC soon.  The reasons are too compelling for Apple to not have a presence in a market with a huge "fan" base.

(note: "cancelled" image at top courtesy of TUAW)

Blogging Enterprise Conference - Something Different

Wanted to get a word in for Steve Farrer's The Blogging Enterprise Conference, in Austin first week of November.

Steve did me a huge favor at last year's IAEM Annual by joining my panel (and being extremely entertaining in doing so).  Quid pro quo, I'll be moderating a session titled, "Top Blogs Dissected: What Separates the Winners from Losers" in Austin.

This is a different conference from most of the others we've seen on blogging in NY and the Bay Area.  First, it's inexpensive (only $170 - and that includes a copy of the Shel Israel/Robert Scoble book "Naked Conversations").  Second, it's only one day. And third, other than Steve Rubel and Shel Israel, most of the speakers are blogging success stories from media and technology companies in the Texas ("third coast") area who haven't been heard from at the NY/SF events.

Not the same old same old. 

If you're in the Austin area (or even if you're not), this conference will be an excellent opportunity to spend one day immersed in blogging and RSS.  You'll know for sure if blogging is applicable for your company by the end of the day.  And if it is, you'll know what to do to make your blog effective.

I've never been to Austin and am looking forward to it.

CRM: Is the Problem the Technology or the Culture?

I've been reading the B2B Lead Generation blog recently.  It's quite good and I highly recommend it for sales staffs.

If everyone read this blog religiously, perhaps more companies would learn to maximize their existing CRM/SFA systems and not succumb to the urge to invest tens of thousands in a new one expecting it to solve all of their problems.

One of the best posts I've seen regarding technology vs. culture was captured on Brian's blog.  While Brian makes some excellent points in the vein that if you keep up with the data input today you increase productivity tomorrow, the comments are all over the place, typical of every excuse one hears about why SFA isn't being optimally employed:

- data input is marketing's responsibility
- data input is for minimum wage clericals
- I don't have time for this, I should be selling
- the technology doesn't fit with our sales process
- whoever designed this wasn't a sales person
- etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum

Are these points valid?  Of course they are.

At about the same time Brian posted this, I was hired to do some work with an organizer to help them process and reach potential exhibitor leads faster.  They had almost 10,000 contacts in their exhibitor database, about half of which had addresses, about a third of which had been called during the previous show cycle.

How Does Cost of a Show Lead Compare to a Search Engine Lead?

Way back in 2001, Dealer Marketing Magazine published an article that included a study showing that it cost $450 to sell an average car through traditional media but only $200 to sell one through internet media (specifically lead providers, like vehix.com and edmunds.com).

A widely distributed (and oft-commented-upon) report from Piper Jaffray showed that the cost to acquire a customer was about $8.50 for search engines, $20 for Yellow Pages, $50 for online display ads, and $70 for direct mail.  Trade shows and events weren't measured.  Granted, these studies covered both B2C and B2B marketing efforts, more likely than not heavily tilted to the former.

I mention these studies because I haven't personally seen a CEIR report that compares the cost of acquiring and closing leads from trade shows vs. other media in quite some time.   (Image on left from B2B Lead Generation blog).

While I haven't seen one lately, I do recall is that since 1994, the gap between costs of acquiring and closing trade show leads vs. those from other media was closing.  In 1994 the difference was greater than 150%.  More recently that gap was closer to the 60% range.

It's time for another study.  And personally I'd like to see internet lead generation costs separate from print so we can better compare traditional media vs. shows and internet media vs. shows (maybe even isolate search engines to boot). 

I still continue to see organizers citing the last CEIR study ($705 to close a show lead vs. $1140 for a non-show lead) which I believe is now four years old.  And I think those numbers must be wildly inaccurate and overstated.

It doesn't take a genius to understand that business' emphasis on search engine marketing is taking money away from print and other media.  Spending on search engine marketing has risen from less than half a billion to more than $7.5 billion in just five years. 

All these cheap search engine leads must mean that overall lead acquisition costs are down.  Which would also mean the closing costs are also coming down, all else being equal.

Heck, if trade shows suffer in comparison, don't make the results public.  But we should know what we're up against.  Yes, I fully understand that we'd really be looking at integrated campaigns and that you can't truly separate one medium from other - they all work hand in hand.  Supposedly.

Humor me.  I'd like to see the report.

I'll let you know why I'm asking later.

Talk About Your Niche Events - The Oil Sands Conference

With the US looking (hopefully) to Alberta's oil sands fields for future energy - and US companies looking to supply the equipment for drilling and transporting - things are looking up for dmg's Oil Sands Trade Show which kicks off on Wednesday.

The show will have about 400 exhibitors and 3,000 attendees.  Most all attendees are from Alberta.

It's rare that you find a trade show that really can't be held anywhere other than where it is in Fort McMurray (where today's high was 46 degrees - and there's a event golf tournament scheduled for tomorrow).  It must be held there because half the people who would benefit from attending are near Fort McMurray working in the oil sands - a single well-defined region of Alberta. 

dmg must be happy with their fortune - there's a lot of interest on what's going on in Alberta right now. 

Have to wonder about that event tagline though - "Because technology changes everything."  Technology isn't changing the fact that you need to pack a thick sweater if you're attending this end of summer event.

Marketing Optimization for Blogs 101

Received a great article in my inbox yesterday from Rok Hrastnik of MarketingStudies.net and the RSSDiary.  The article is titled "Marketing Optimization for Blogs 101".

Rok correctly points out that if you're considering a blog for your event, you will need to promote it regularly.  At this point in time you shouldn't expect your blog to stand on its own without additional marketing support, including email newsletters.  Rok's article shows how to construct email campaigns that highlight your blog's best posts in order to get your prospects more familiar with your blog and interacting with it on a more regular basis.

We experience this ourselves.  Our traffic peaks immediately after we send out our TSMR newsletter.  The newsletter usually accounts for another couple hundred hits per day for a week or so to the posts we link.  It's a way to remind our readers, "Hey, don't forget about this resource over here!"  We have a few hundred newsletter subscribers vs. a few dozen RSS subscribers, so doing the newsletter is, in our opinion, necessary to ensure that our posts reach our subscribers, who may be too busy otherwise to check in every day or week (and who for whatever reason just don't want to deal with RSS).

Rok's article provides many great tips from someone who's heavily invested in the future of RSS, but who recognizes that not everyone else is at this time.  Go read it!

There Was an EMS Expo in NOLA the Day Before Katrina

In an odd coincidence, EMS Expo was being held at the Morial Convention Center during the three days immediately preceding Katrina.  It was being held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the National Association of EMTs.

In a story posted yesterday on Firehouse.com titled "Escape and Evacuation from New Orleans: EMS Expo", Dave Long tells of EMS Expo attendees being told by NAEMT officials to begin evacuating New Orleans on Saturday morning, August 27.  Dave then talks about the challenges of trying to leave.

I have to admit, my first reaction upon seeing the story was, "They left when they could've helped out?"  Given Katrina's aftermath, it's easy to suggest in hindsight that attendees with EMS training were through some Divine intervention exactly where they were supposed to be pre-storm. 

But saying that is also being naive, if not stupid, especially when said from a safe and dry perch here in Pittsburgh.

EMS Expo attendees are no different than you or me.  They had jobs and families to return to.  Their responsibility is to save lives in their communities, not in NOLA.  There is no reason to think that any greater percentage of EMS Expo attendees should've stuck around to help out than attendees of any other event being held in NO at that time.   

But let's say a request had been made by NAEMT for attendees to remain in the city and help out.  Had many attendees remained, where would they have stayed?  How would they have integrated with local first responders?  Having them there may well have been just one more unwelcome thing for overburdened local officials to deal with.

On the other hand, you have to think that a few attendees did stay around to volunteer regardless.  Here's a story of one group of EMS Expo attendees who did stay and formed their own team at the NO Hilton.

And you also have to wonder whether NO officials had any idea that that many trained EMTs were in town and that equipment and resources from exhibitors that may have been very useful in dealing with Katrina's aftermath were right under officials noses at the Convention Center, which only two days later became ground zero for misery. 

Seems there's a bigger story here.  Hopefully someone will go and get it.

Btw, Firehouse.com has an increasing large number of articles covering Katrina from a first-responder angle that really makes you think twice about how all of this was handled.  Fascinating stuff.