Communication @ Oak Leaf Church
It’s great to see one of our affiliates using the link, and also great that the content is so great! Just sharing a little love!
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Read MoreMany Hats
Things I’m In Charge Of Today
the Print Green initiative
Social Media Marketing
Mailing Services
Affiliate Program
Reseller Program (TBA)
E-Mail Marketing
Tracking IT fixes
Tracking website version changes
Tracking Opt-Outs for emails and snail mails
Answering Marketing Email
Things I Assist With
Advertising
Trade Shows
Donations
Partnerships
Does this seem like too much or just enough?
Read MoreHow NOT to behave at a trade show
Recently I attended the California Association of REALTORS® Expo in Anaheim, CA. This was my first time attending a true trade show for real estate professionals, but not my first trade show ever. And unbelievably, I saw a lot of tactics that worked to draw people into your booth and some tactics that were shockingly inappropriate.
It seems to be common sense that you’d want to put your best foot forward at any trade show you attend. Not only common sense, but it’s smart marketing. A company is spending anywhere between $5000 and $8000 to exhibit at a trade show, taking into consideration the basic booth set up, decor, marketing materials, travel expenses, trade show services, and man hours. So it seems like a no brainer that you’d want to not only put your best foot forward in terms of materials, giveaways, and booth furniture and displays, but also send the best employees you have as well.
At first I thought it was a pet peeve that the exhibitors in the booth besides ours were annoying me. But after talking to my fellow representatives of PsPrint working in the booth with me, I found it was not just my imagination running away from me. We had your basic 10×10 booth space, and so did the mortgage company that shall remain nameless next to us. We had three people conservatively staffing the booth… and even with three of us, a 6′ long table full of print samples on one corner, and a square podium with a monitor and laptop to show off our website on the other, it was a bit tight at times maneuvering around each other.
This company had no less than 10 people staffing
their booth. 10! And they were different people every day, so they were coming in fresh with nothing but possibly a coworker’s recap on the day beforehand, if that. They also, being a well known mortgage brand, had a big booth display set up, which took up room, and a TV running their commercials, a high table with freebies and marketing information, and two-three chairs in the booth. There was nil in the way of room for them to get around each other within the confines of their booth, so of course they spilled out into the aisles.
That was when I began to have a problem. Not only were they in the aisles like street team promoters, but a few took a shining to hanging out directly in front of our web display podium, at times even leaning on it while chatting up attendees passing through. Not only did this bug me a lot being that they were blocking a pretty integral part of our display set up, but it just irked me in terms of decorum as well. As a representative of my company, yes I’m trying to get passers-by interested enough to stop by my booth and take a look at what we have to offer and let me bend their ear a bit. Of course we’re all there for the bottom line – sales. But never would I go stand in front of someone else’s booth and try to recruit attendees to my cause. It smacks of shady business dealings and just lack of concern.
In doing a quick Google search to check to make sure I wasn’t overreacting in believing this to be rude behavior on the part of our neighboring booth staff, I found a blog post online titled Trade Show Etiquette written at Big-Images.com. Okay I admit, I’m guilty of sitting and, at this last show, eating. I’m a relative newbie in the trade show circuit, so I’m learning still and I can almost guarantee you that I won’t be doing either of those two behaviors again next month at NAR’s Expo.
At one point my coworker even shooed a rep away from in front of our podium because he needed to show a prospective client something and this other rep was chatting someone up while leaning shamelessly on a piece of OUR booth display. And he had the nerve to shoot back a dirty look. Why would anyone think that’s acceptable behavior? It’s loitering if it’s outside a shop, but okay if it’s outside another exhibitor’s booth? I don’t know about any of the attendees feelings getting grappled by these representatives of the mortgage company, but as a fellow exhibitor I’d be hard pressed to ever use this company when the time comes for me to finally buy a home, based solely on their reactions.
I wish I could say that said mortgage company was the worst example of trade show etiquette I saw there, but it wasn’t. There were a few sign companies selling message riders for the yard signs, and most were pretty calm. But upon walking around the show floor just to check it out, a coworker and I literally had a guy jump out in front of us holding a huge message rider sign like a barricade shouting something about low prices or something. At that rate I wasn’t paying attention to his product, his pitch, his company name, Nada. Just the fact that he literally blocked our path and we had to side step to get around him.
If the Sprint guy at the mall yells out to you check them out, but you have a Verizon phone and you’re happy with it, do you stop? You certainly don’t pull a U turn and listen to his entire pitch. It’s rude, no matter how you slice it. And incredibly poor marketing tactics of that particular representative of that company.
So if I could give you one tip for the future, pay attention to who you send to a trade show to represent your company. If you’re going to a trade show, make sure you know how to act. Think about the show from an attendee stand point if you get the urge to jump out at anyone like a beggar on the street asking for spare change. And stay in your own booth.
Read MoreeComXpo is NEXT WEEK!
PsPrint is a featured exhibitor at eComXpo, the virtual tradeshow for eCommerce marketers. We will be featuring in our booth our great products, amazing variety of services, and of course our affiliate program.
eComXpo will feature more than 100 exhibitors including Google, Double Click Performics, Digital River, Microsoft adCenter, LinkShare, ad:tech and more.
If you stop by on day 1 between 10am and 6pm PST you can even chat with ME! And come by for the freebies too… register to win a $200 Visa Gift Card just in time for the holidays!
When?
– October 9-11, 2007
Where?
– Online at www.ecomxpo.com from the comfort of your home or office PC
Why should you attend?
– Hear from top industry experts at keynote, feature and panel presentations followed by live Q&A on topics of interest to affiliate, search, and interactive marketing professionals.
-Network with thousands of your peers .
-See the latest offerings from hundreds of exhibitors on two show floors.
-Win great prizes such as iPods, flat-screen TVs, vacations, and more.
-Enjoy all the benefits of a top trade show for FREE, without leaving your home or office!
Click here to learn more or register.
Take a video tour online here.
Read MoreOne Fish, Two Fish…
Brickfish! This is a nifty little website that Anne stumbled upon. They describe it better than I can, so here’s their spiel:
- Create content for your favorite brands and bands.
- Win exciting rewards for reviewing, voting and sharing content across the web.
- Earn rewards like the chance to meet your favorite bands, clothes, scholarships and even cold, hard cash.
The best incentive to participate in viral marketing I’ve seen in some time. We’re kicking around a campaign to launch on Brickfish, and it might be ready as early as Monday! Stay tuned for more details next week!
In other news to wrap up the week, I’ve booked my flight to John Wayne Airport in Orange County for the California Associations of Realtor’s Expo next month. I’ll miss the first day of the show, but will be there staffing our booth October 10th and 11th. I figure while I’m down there I’ll see some friends in the area and enjoy a slight change of pace from Nor Cal life. The day before the show I’ll be staffing our online booth at eComXpo from the comforts of my office here in Oakland. So two shows in three days… that should be an interesting week to say the least!
Trade shows seem to be going well, customer acquisition is doing okay but could be better, and the affiliate program is pretty stagnant. We had a two and a half hour metrics meeting this morning, only half of which focused on the affiliate program, which I felt like a moron during. I guess I’ve been more focused on the quantity of affiliates than the quality, so that ends now.
We want to help our affiliates to be better affiliates. We’re also considering some BIG changes to the structure of payments, but I’m not at liberty to announce them yet. We’re going to start looking more at our affiliates individually and see what they’re doing and what is working. Hopefully this helps everyone. Me, because I won’t look like a goober when asked questions and I’ll have the answers, the affiliate, because they’ll be making money, and the other affiliates, because they can learn from the big money makers.
That makes sense, right?
Read MoreThe Body is Willing, But the Mind is Weak
No, I didn’t get the saying wrong. That’s how I feel today. I’ve got a ton of energy physically speaking… got a great night’s sleep last night. But after even a short week of overloading my brain with end of month reporting, more reporting, affiliate network shopping, and more late nights at the office, my brain has decided to stage a sit in.
Actually, before about 11:30am this morning the brain was active too. However after sitting in various conference calls from then until about 2:15pm, my brain revolted from overload. First we heard all about LinkShare and their merchant platform. Then all about Widemile’s optimization services. Then talked to a couple cats at Clickbooth since we haven’t ventured into CPA marketing here at PsPrint yet.
Is it a bad thing that during our conference call I surfed over to MarketingTerms.com and had to look up CPA? I was pretty embarrassed with Anne sitting behind me… although I guess she actually didn’t notice until I mentioned it after the meeting. Oh well.
The last week I’ve been making sure our mailing services don’t break, which is nice for a change. At the end of August the mailing went crazy… it seemed like while I was on vacation everyone and their mother decided to place a mailing order. Which is great… but left me a lot of work to catch up on. We’ve been really focused on the affiliate program and it’s future. Which is great too. We’re looking at new features, better affiliate acquisition, possibly a new network, new creative, new campaigns… heck new everything. It’s an exciting time for me, especially since Anne confirmed that we’ll be attending Affiliate Summit 2008 West in Las Vegas in February. That means between my personal vacation, the National Association of Realtors show in November, and AS West I’ll be heading to Sin City three times in 6 months. Not too shabby for this California girl.
I’m also semi-addicted to del.icio.us now. Last night I imported all my bookmarks from home into it so now I can access them anywhere… and that’s half the point, right? It’s really actually pretty interesting to see how many other people have some of my favorite places bookmarked. I’m also surprised in some cases how few people have some websites bookmarked. For example, the View Askew Productions Message Board has over 10,000 registered members. But only 2 other people on del.icio.us have it bookmarked…one of which I even recognize (and promptly added to my network).
Time for my Friday ritual of trying to see the wood grain of my desk. Wish me luck.
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