Data is King
I recently received several direct mail pieces. It reminded me of how important it is to make sure your direct mail list is scrubbed and up to date. With so many resources today for updated contact information, it is a
lazy practice to simply buy new lists that are potentially outdated. It is also expensive. These folks sent three sets of the same mailing piece to my company. It was sent to the attention of an old employee (she left 3 years ago), and she was my admin assistant — I have no idea why she was on this list. The postage for each envelope was $1. The cost to print these brochures was probably about $1.25. So $6.75 was wasted on printing and postage alone!
One of the most important assets at any company is the inhouse contact list. If you’re like most companies, that data is spread out everywhere. Your financial system has contacts, but only the accounts payable clerks. Your help desk has contacts in their system, but only the end users, not the decision makers. Your marketing department has contacts, but half are from raw inquiries and tradeshow lists, none of which were ever qualified and are now all dated. Your contracts department has contacts, but that list is probably comprised of attorneys and contracting officers. The most important lists - the actual names of your prospects and clients (i.e., the BUYER), reside on the laptops of your salespeople. And these are the people who seldom backup their data and are more protective of those lists that a mother lion is about her cubs. Read more
Top Ten Tips For Having A Successful Trade Show
As the events manager for Zephyr Strategy, I get the opportunity to work with numerous clients on everything from webinars to trade shows. For one client alone, we support approximately 50 trade shows yearly. Over time, I’ve had a chance to learn from my mistakes as well as others. I have developed a list of tips for our clients and I’ve shared them below. One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give anyone considering a trade show is to have a complete plan, starting with considering the right shows for your industry and focusing more on driving attendance to your booth and following up on those great leads.
Here’s my list:
1. Choose the right shows.
This is the first major decision to be made. Your target audience must attend or you will not get the desired results. So do your research, and find out which shows your current clients attend (often your competitors’ websites will mention which shows they are participating in).
2. Set your trade show budget.
Trade shows can be very expensive, and there can be many hidden costs. Your company must decide how much money it is willing to spend. Prepare a budget, delegate the money appropriately, and keep a running record for review after the show closes.
A few cost saving tips:
• Never make a budget cut that an attendee will notice. Remember that image is everything! An out–of-date exhibit will give a poor impression to a potential new client.
• Be aware of Show Service discounts. Show services, such as electrical or water hook-ups, offer some large discounts (sometimes up to 50%) if you order early, usually more than 30 days before the actual show.
• Determine how much space you actually need. Did you rent a 30’x30’ booth, but with better space planning realize you could have used a 20’x20’? The savings here could be substantial!
• Look out for rush charges! These can be everywhere if you do not watch deadlines with printing, shipping, giveaways, and show services. Create a timeline that can quickly and clearly show your upcoming deadlines.
• Review your invoices after the show. There could be simple mistakes — such as a charge for a second wastebasket that you didn’t order — or costly ones, such as your booth neighbor’s large service order being mistakenly charged to your booth number instead of his! Read more
Perception Is Reality
On Friday I attended a conference, “The Future of Software“, sponsored by Potomac Techwire and the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority. The participants in the first panel discussion (focused more on the future of software) were entrepreneurs and tech-types embroiled (one way or another) in the software industry. The second set of panelists (focused on investing in software companies) were comprised of representatives from various venture capital funds around the area. One of the most entertaining speakers was Andre Boisvert, who clearly isn’t afraid to say out loud the things that everyone is thinking. Read more
Company Playbooks
How much money did you spend last year to make sure your sales and marketing teams could articulate the value proposition of your company? Now, how much did you spend making sure the rest of the company could do the same? If you’re like most organizations, with the exception of what might be in an employee manual or on a corporate brochure, the remaining employees, which quite often make up over 80% of the staff, have been ignored. And so what is the result?
If you go into most mid-sized businesses and ask anyone outside of marketing and sales what the company does, you will get a different response from each person. There is no cohesiveness or understanding across the organization. But these are the people who are interfacing with your current and future customers on a daily basis. Read more
Landscaping & Websites
Imagine building a home, meeting with the architect and having that first conversation about your dreams and goals for the house. Then the architect returns with some plans for you to review. You open the drawings and what he’s rendered is the complete landscaping design for your entire property.
“What about the house?” you ask. “What about the bedrooms, the kitchen, how the structure is built? What about how we’ll use the house, the materials and content we want inside the house? What about all that?”
The architect looks at you and waves his hand. “Oh, we’ll get to all that stuff later, but look at these great bushes I want to plant up your driveway. Are they cool or what!!??” At this point, you are probably going to bean the architect and go find someone else a little more qualified.
Every day I see this scenario played out with business websites. The first concern is always about the look of the site, the graphics, the pictures. All the landscaping. But what about your structure? Your information architecture? What thought have you given to how people will use the site, how you’ll track performance, and give the visitors to your site the experience and information they need to move forward in the buying cycle? Read more
