Trade Show Exhibition Tips

Trade Show Exhibition Tips

So we are entering trade show season again and this year there seem to be more than ever to choose from. Exhibitions and trade shows can be a great way to generate leads but can also be a very costly mistake. Personally I have experienced both! I have exhibited and generated more leads than we could fulfil whilst I have also exhibited at trade shows which resemble a wild west ghost town (At one, I am sure I even saw a tumbleweed blow down one of the aisles!).

So we thought we would provide a few exhibition tips direct from our experience here at Igneous Marketing:

Pick the Right Show: So tip one is ensuring you pick the right show to exhibit at. This is not as easy as it once was because of the vast influx of new trade shows. It is therefore very important to ensure you do your research. When talking to the organisers make sure you ask about past exhibitions. Try to get figures around visitors and more importantly who has signed up to attend this year. Are these attendees your type of customer? Are they decision makers?

Another great tip is to try and speak to past exhibitors for a truly unbiased view of the show. You can even ask the organiser how many people rebooked for stands. This is a great barometer of how the exhibitors felt about the previous show.

Location: You location in the hall is key as you must make sure you get the footfall to make the show a success. In our experience the best locations are near the entrance (but this is expensive) or near the restaurant/refreshments. The best place normally is the lecture theatre (if they have one) as often people queue outside and this is a captive audience for you.

Take enough People: It is always better to have more people on your stand than not enough, to capture every potential customer. In lean times these people can canvass the hall and distribute flyers, attempting to drive people to the stand. It is also vital to ensure your staff are easily recognisable as a member of your team. This could simply involve wherein distinctive company colours.

Don’t Cut Costs: If you commit to an exhibition the cost does not end with simply hiring the space. You must make your plot stand out. It needs to be vibrant and buzzing – nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd. Try to engage all of the senses especially visually and aurally. Buy graphics, pop ups and try to use plasma screens to catch the eye of passersby. There is nothing worse than a plain white stand with a few pop up banners. Remember this small stand is your shop front, your business encompassed in a 3 x 2 area. Make it memorable. I have seen some awesome examples from replicas of Bars to a complete recreation of a pirate ship!

We hope this gives you a few ideas. If you leave with one piece of advice it would be not to cut corners and stand out.

5 Crucial Pay per Click Skills

5 Crucial Pay per Click Tips

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is a good supplement to natural search engine optimization, IF you keep a few tactics straight. This topic has received a vast array of articles and blogs in recent times but I thought it would be useful to get to the core issues.

1. Choose the right search terms. If you go after the broad phrases and terms, you'll pay top dollar. Strive for more descriptive and specific search terms that reflect your products or services.

2. Map out a strategy. Don't go after every possible keyword or phrase. Target your online ads around business priorities--such as seasonal purchases, your most profitable products and services, etc.

3. Use bid management software. Software can regulate your bids and turn off keywords. You might be interested in clicks during business hours; you might not want to pay for those clicks at 1 a.m. (There's less of a chance that it's a business prospect at that time of night).

4. Write effective ads. Google, Yahoo! Searching Marketing and other services have limits on characters per line. With Google, it's tough not to push the limits because space is so narrow. With Yahoo! Searching Marketing, focus on getting your message across without consuming every character. Long ads may discourage people from reading them.

5. Test. Test. Test. Try different keywords, ad copy, landing pages and calls to action. Put your budget - whatever size it is - to the best use after effective evaluation. The Search Engine Marketing Industry is estimated to reach £25 billion by 2012. The vast majority of SEM investment in the coming years will involve pay-per-click.

We applaud the SEM vendors and companies who can prepare a coherent plan that produces outstanding conversions. But for all the clicks and conversions via pay-per-click, many SEM players will miss the lead generation that natural SEO offers through greater Internet acceptance and traffic.

The fact is, people are far more likely to click on a natural listing. Studies show that about 60%-70% of the links people click on are organic, not the PPC variety. Again, be careful how you spend your online advertising dollars. Make them work for you!

A New Marketing Tool for Small Businesses

Today I wanted to highlight a product which seems to have caught the imagination of a number of our Small Business Customers. The Digital Brochure!

This nifty little marketing tool allows viewers to browse a full brochure, catalogue or even newsletter online and even comes with the awesome "page turn" technology which makes the experience really interactive. So why are small businesses throwing out their printed literature and turning to a digital variation? Well there are a number of reasons:

1) Cost
The word on every small business owners lips at the moment. When you send a brochure or mailer via snail mail you do so at a significant cost. You will need to pay for design, printing, stamps and other bits and pieces to reach your target.
The Digital brochure is low cost and is available online all of the time. It is a one off cost that can offer a return months down the line

2) Flexibility
The problem with printed materials is you are usually left with a stack and cannot send them as they have become our of date. Prices change, products are discontinued and new services emerge. In the printing world this means more cost and a fresh batch must be created, printed and posted.
This is not the case with a digital brochure as changes and alterations can be executed in a split second to ensure your potential customer are always 100% up to date with your business, products and services.

3) 24/7 Business
When you send a brochure or mailer via the post you have 1 shot. It is true that most will be put in the bin after opening and along with them your money! If you mailer arrives on a heavy post day it is even less likely to be viewed.
The beauty of the Digital Brochure is that it is available 24/7. So when the prospective customer want to view it and not when you force it upon them!

4) Novelty Factor
Have a look at our latest digital brochure for Portsmouth Football Club's TV station. It is fun and very different - they have had some awesome feedback on this too. The page turn technology is smart and glossy plus the ability to zoom in allows everyone access to it.

Igneous Marketing specialise in providing Digital Brochures for small businesses and they start at just £35! That's a one off price too! They are even FREE in our unique Marketing Bundle offering! Talk to us today and get your very own digital brochure! Click Here

What can small businesses learn from Supermarkets

What can small businesses learn from Supermarkets


Supermarkets spend millions on intelligent intuitive marketing and psychological persuasion to entice us to buy more. The layout, the lighting, the smells – nothing is left to chance and every little detail is tweaked for maximum effect..

How did the supermarkets get to this point? One word; DATA. Many ideas about shopping habits have been generated over the years but the theories that are in use now are the ones that were tested, analysed, refined, tested again and then implemented. 

So what can digital marketers learn from this?

Take control of who owns the conversion process

It is still a very grey issue as to who owns the look, feel and layout of the site, with IT departments still in control of the majority. 

However, would the Supermarkets have uncovered the optimum aisle placements, pricing strategy based on location and product grouping techniques if the construction team that built the store were making the decisions?


Unearth how visitors use your site

There is a wealth of tools and tactics that can be used in ecommerce to deliver the sort of key insight that drove the decision making when planning the layout of a supermarket.
Heat maps, customer surveys and usability audits are vital in telling us how people are using and navigating around our sites, in the same way it has been identified how supermarket shoppers navigate the aisles. "Understanding the customers’ shopping behaviours is critical and should form the basis of all ecommerce strategies" John Brodie says.


Identify and remove customer journey roadblocks

Reviewing user feedback and analysing site data can help uncover where the conversion barriers sit on a website and what is preventing visitors turning into customers.

We need to identify and remove these roadblocks in the customer journey whilst displaying key messaging and pushing core, high margin product lines in the same way that supermarkets do not block shoppers’ way, but do push the products that they want to sell.


Position products to maximise sales

Whilst it needs to be easier for users to find what they want online than in a supermarket (it’s a lot easier to abandon an online store than a physical supermarket when you already have a half full trolley), ecommerce sites can take a lot from the meticulously planned positioning of stock on supermarket shelves and the method of giving prominence to the most commercial products that have the highest profit margin can be easily employed.


"Also, the concept of positioning complimentary items next to each other can work incredibly well for ecommerce sites.  In the same way a supermarket shopper buying flour to bake a cake needs eggs and sugar, an online customer buying a dress can also be cross sold the shoes and accessories they need to make a complete outfit" Fiona Low says. 


Test, refine, then test again

Whilst there is a multitude of best practise layout and merchandising rules that should be followed online, it is vital we test and subsequently optimise the key customer journey points throughout ecommerce sites, just as the supermarkets tested their in store concepts.

Even testing small elements of web pages, such as colours of messaging and positioning of calls to action, can have a huge impact on user behaviour. Research shows that simple things such as improving your web page loading times will all have an impact on your overall conversion rate.

And with tools such as Google Website Optimiser that are completely free to use, the testing process can be carried out with minimal costs, hence delivery massive returns on investment.

There are also, however, offline principles that simply do not work when used online, and in a purely practical sense we obviously can’t use the supermarkets famous smell aids (although I am sure someone out there is working on a scratch and sniff usb).

But on balance and despite these differences there is a lot that ecommerce can take from a supermarket’s persuasive manner of making shoppers not only buy, but buy more than they intended to.

With the average retail conversion rate around 3%, 97% of visitors never buy anything. How would a supermarket or any bricks and mortar retail store survive on that return on footfall? E-commerce still has a lot of work to do to.

Small Business and Yellow Pages

The annual Yellow Page ad represents the largest promotional expense for many enterprises. Yet, Yellow Page directory use is declining, while expanding segments of the public don’t rely on them at all. Yellow Page advertising costs keep going up, and the complicated pricing structure is difficult to figure out. Worse yet, having a Yellow Page ad doesn’t deliver like it used to.


People can find most of the information they want without ever opening a directory. Your business needs its Yellow Page strategy to be in tune with the times and your market. Like most business owners, you must squeeze maximum value from every promotional pound spent.


That requires you to move beyond treating a Yellow Page ad like it’s a separate, stand-alone way to promote your business. It is not. Your Yellow Page advertising needs to work in tandem with all the rest of the efforts you pursue.


The Internet expands your arena every business needs to put itself in front of the people looking for what it does - and that’s not just through the Yellow Pages any longer.


An increasing percentage of customers, who spend their money close to home, are Internet savvy. There’s a major overlap between Yellow Page directory users and Internet users. That fact supports integrating your local and Internet promotional methods so they attract more new customers. Yellow Page users are likely to be Internet users as well.


And a business that ignores online activities entirely may have a tough time getting access to or credibility with those customers. It is possible to make online and traditional (offline) methods to attract customers work in tandem - improving the effectiveness of each alone.


So its no longer an either-or, all-or-none choice whether to promote the business online or off. People who subscribe to online services consult the Yellow Pages 23% more often than non-subscribers.
Frequent Yellow Page Users are: - 18% more likely than average to be Internet subscribers - 32% more likely to be among the heaviest Internet users - 18% more likely to make purchases on the Internet - 27% more likely to spend more than £1,000 on Internet purchases Source: Simmons Customer Behavior is 
Changing More and more, people are going to the Internet to find, learn about, or select products and services. Even local ones.


That doesn’t mean that they will buy online, however. People still prefer to spend their money locally when they can. But, even the smallest business can do a better job of being found by those who prefer to use both the Internet and the Yellow Page directory to make their buying decisions.


And, it can be done very inexpensively, too. Even a 100% local business can pull in more business by getting its low-tech and high-tech advertising to mesh.


What Else has Changed? - Buyers are less trusting and more willing to shop around - Customers have more options and ways to find what they want - Availability of Internet Yellow Pages - Aging population uses the Yellow Pages differently than young people - Development of unique niches and specialties - More choices for a "better deal."


Even without your own Web site, your small business can establish an online identity that helps buyers to find you. - Get listed in a variety of Internet Yellow Page (IYP) directories - Send emails to your "regulars" with special offers and useful information.


Position yourself for Local Search - a method whereby customers use search engines to locate local businesses by town, state, region, postcode, etc. Expand the exposure of your business beyond your Yellow Page ad through a Yellow Page strategy that reaches the whole globe.

Building a Database for your Small Business

Information is power in the 21^st century and it is a powerful tool for small businesses.

Now that the nature of marketing has shifted the power to buyers over sellers, new marketing strategies are required.

Something that hasn’t changed is that every business needs to make sales and needs people to sell to.

A key strategy that all small businesses must deploy is creating a database of customers and potential customers. This is not simply a list of emails and company names but a list of likes, preferences and other detailed info. It is also true that not all databases are the same and creating a useful database take time. This is not just the time to create the database but also the time to maintain it.

Which leads some to ask: “Why not just purchase a huge list of names and email addresses and start from there?”

Here are four reason explaining why that’s a risky move:

1.     The addresses on those lists get sold to all kinds of marketers. So they get all kinds of mail. So, they lodge all kinds of spam complaints. If ISPs like Gmail and Hotmail notice, they might put you on a blacklist, blocking your emails from all their users in the future.

2.     Because of the way these lists are compiled, many of the addresses you receive will be misspelled, abandoned or non-existent. When a big chunk of your emails goes to such addresses, ISPs, again, might notice. Again, they might block all future emails from you. List merchants know this. It’s such a sure thing, they even offer a refund of credit for those addresses up-front.

3.     And if you’re sending through an email service provider and you get blocked, other messages they send from the same IP address could also be blocked. So you’ll actually find that no reputable ESP will let you import a purchased list anyway.

4.     Unprepared recipients aren’t likely to think, “Oh gosh, I was just hoping for yet another offer from a company I don’t know! Let me click over to their site and buy something!”

So the answer is to compile your own database. This also allows you to create a “permission-based” database of customer information. This means the subscribers to your list want to be contacted and represent the first step in the customer cycle. It is based on trust and you must never abuse this list. There are multiple ways to obtain this information via your website or other marketing initiatives. We will leave that for another blog though. 

Small Business Twitter Tips

As it is bank holiday Monday, I thought I would offer a few, quick tips on Twitter - particularly for small businesses.

• obviously create an account and ensure your name is your real name or company name for when people are searching for you (rather than have your name as your twitter id)
• be personal to show your company and/ or website has real people behind it
• ie: don’t be all corporate because that’s not what it’s about
• follow others in your field to build up your followers list
• don’t just be all self promotional although it helps
• post interesting tweets probably 2-3 times per day
• ask questions on your account to get responses
• have a few people on your twitter account to cover sickness and holidays and if your main twitter person leaves the company you’ll still need to get access

After all the goal is to build up loyal followers so you and your business gets talked about more online. If you have interesting things to say, get people “talking” on your twitter feed and point out interesting facts not only in your space but in the world generally people will value your account and publicise it for you.


Of Course you can always take a massive short cut and use Igneous Marketing. In fact one of our unique monthly marketing bundles includes Social Media!