Virtual Masterclass: Tradeshow Marketing
A 101-level video podcast on why you should pay attention to tradeshow marketing, when it makes sense, when it doesn't, how to run an effective tradeshow exhibition, and the best insider tips for maximizing ROI.
I was recently invited to be a guest on Krishaan Khubchand's Tradeshow Pioneers Podcast series to talk about trade show exhibiting, event management, and how to determine when participation is right (and not right) for your business. Here is part 1 of our insightful and thoroughly enjoyable conversation.
Transcript
Krishaan Khubchand: Hello and thank you for joining me on the Trade Show Pioneers podcast. I'm Krish, your host for this episode and the founder of Trade Show Edge, a media publication and content studio dedicated to going behind the scenes on the trade show sector and helping unlock insights and best practices so trade show exhibitors can get better results at the trade shows they attend.
Our guest today is Lisa Masiello, an award-winning marketing strategist, CEO of TECHmarc, a B2B marketing agency, and the author of two phenomenal books on trade show exhibiting, The first one being Trade Show 411: An Essential Guide to Exhibiting Like a Pro, and the second one being The Insider’s Guide to Trade Show and Event Management. Both phenomenal books, and I will say Lisa, it's great to have you here.
I think perhaps the best place to start would be with your back story. You spent over three decades on B2B marketing, a sector that has evolved immensely in the last 30 years. Could you walk us through your career journey and highlight some of the lessons you've learned during different eras, alongside perhaps some reflections on some of the major changes in the industry over the years?
Lisa M. Masiello: Well, thank you so much, Krish, for inviting me. I'm so happy to be here today.
Yes, as you said, I've spent 30 years in the tech industry running corporate marketing departments and trade shows were a huge part of marketing initiatives for the companies that I worked for. I worked for very large tech companies and some very small startups. And you know, trade shows were a great way to integrate all of our marketing activities into one program. One very effective program.
And so, during that time, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Loved the tech industry. It's very much of a roller coaster. You don't know from one year to the next if it's going to be a very high high or a low low. The technology industry is constantly changing and you have to like that change or you won't survive, because it's very volatile.
I decided in 2014 to leave the corporate position that I had. I wanted to start my own business. I had, as I said, been in tech marketing for 30 years. So I understood the industry. I understood the key players and what it took to be a successful marketer in that industry and wanted to help other businesses do the same thing. So, I started my own company, marketing consulting company, TECHmarc Labs. And that was very interesting because, you know, having been in the industry for so long, I thought I had all the answers.
And the first day I started my business, I realized I didn't have all the answers and I really needed the help of other people to show me the way. And I think that was the biggest lesson of my career.
You know, earlier in my career I was very driven, very self-driven. And I learned what I needed to know, and I helped companies be very successful. But when I started my own business, I realized how much I didn't know and how much help I needed from others. And so, I sort of swallowed my pride and said, I need help. I don't have all the answers. Can you show me the way?
And other business owners were so helpful and so free in sharing the information that they had and the advice that they had. And that's really what I'm doing now with my books, with speaking at different events, with different women's programs that I'm part of. It's my opportunity. Because so many people gave to me, it's now my opportunity to give to other people who are not as far along on this journey, this career development journey or this entrepreneurial journey. So, I feel with all of the support that I got over the years, this is my time to give back to other people.
Krishaan Khubchand: Lovely. I appreciate that note on the importance of humility in entrepreneurship, because you're consistently seeking to learn. I think if I look at my friends who started companies who I admire the most, it's the ones who are able to be most candid about, you know, here's where I am right now. And I'm just trying to figure this very specific thing out.
And they'll kind of tap into their network, figure out how to do it, and then you just see how much of a difference that makes on a month-over-month basis versus someone else who may, for example, bury themselves in kind of a corner and say I'm going to try and do this myself. As opposed to kind of tapping into the collective mind and luckily there’s graceful people like yourself who share.
Lisa M. Masiello: Because I think as an entrepreneur, we feel that well, jeez, if I admit that I don't know the answer or I don't know the next direction to take, I'm almost admitting that I'm a failure…because I don't have the answer. But you're absolutely not and you will not believe the amount of people out there who will be willing to help you if you just say I need help.
Krishaan Khubchand: Totally, totally. I mean, actually, yeah, I'm going to try a new thing here for the podcast, for any listeners who are listening, I suggest as a tiny piece of homework or an exercise inspired by what Lisa said here…think about this question. How can you be more candid about one specific problem you have where you go to someone you say this is a problem I'm having, what would you do in this situation? And just let go and see what kind of answers you get. I'm sure you'll be surprised by the level of insight, etcetera, but I appreciate you sharing that, Lisa.
Lisa M. Masiello: Thank you. And I think that's the key. Let go.
Krishaan Khubchand: Let go.
Not to kind of go in too much of a tangent here…One of my favorite kind of lines is, you know, “plant the seeds and don't worry too much about reaping the rewards.” In many respects, this will kind of sort itself out. I think that's a good one there. But anyway, I'm getting kind of philosophical here.
Before actually diving a bit more into the trade show, I'm curious, if you would kind of point, let’s say, to three big things that have changed when it comes to B2B marketing in the last two decades. What are those kind of big changes and kind of paradigm shifts that you've kind of noticed? That you think people benefit from knowing about such they know where the industry was, say, 20 years ago and how has it evolved?
Lisa M. Masiello: Right, right.
Well, technology and the ability to understand our customers. And the ability to really determine what your return on investment is. So often, back 20-30 years ago, we didn't have the technology to be able to say, “Was a specific marketing campaign or a specific marketing activity successful?”
We went to the salespeople and said, “OK, I gave you 25 leads for you to follow up on. What happened to those leads? How many of those people became customers and those sorts of things.”
I always say that we marketers back then, we could sort of hide behind the fact that the technology wasn't available to us, and we said that the campaign or the program was successful. But maybe if we had the real numbers it might have or might not have been as successful as we were saying it was.
But the technology is there today. We can't hide behind that anymore. And so, you need to put the technology in place to be able to determine where your money is most successfully being spent and also about knowing your customers. If you don't know who your customer is, what their needs are, what their challenges are, you're not going to be successful because you have to speak to them and their needs. So, I would say, the biggest benefit and the biggest change is the use of technology.
Krishaan Khubchand: Fantastic. Well, I look forward to later on perhaps tapping into questions of how technology can be used for any part of the kind of life cycle regarding trade shows. I think a good segue here to kind of start on the trade show question is perhaps to start the story. What was the first trade show that you attended or what is the most memorable one you attended such that people kind of understand, you know, the genuine impact of trade shows, or perhaps I'm kind of, you know, mixing questions here. If you want to share a bit about your kind of philosophy of trade shows, maybe that's a good place to start. And then kind of go for the story.
Lisa M. Masiello: Well, so in terms of the philosophy of trade shows, so many people see a trade show as maybe those two or three days when the event is actually taking place. And that's completely wrong. A trade show begins many months before you actually show up at the expo hall, and it continues for many weeks after the show is over. And you really have to have that mindset because a trade show is about integrating so many different aspects of marketing, you may be doing direct mail, different advertising campaigns, promoting your participation on social media, you may be speaking at the event. Of course you want to generate more leads, but maybe you are launching a new product at the show, or your goal is to build relationships with different industry leaders.
After the show is over, you want to follow up on those leads. I've seen so many people, so many salespeople put those leads in the bottom of their bag on the way home, and that's where they stay. They never follow up on those prospects, so they don't turn into customers.
So that's my philosophy that you have to understand. It's much, much more than those two or three days when the show is actually taking place.
In terms of my first show. It was a comedy of errors. I have to admit that. I had probably been in the industry about five or six years. At the time, I had never exhibited at a trade show before. It was my second tech company that I worked for. You know, I'm based in the United States outside of Boston. I think if the show had been in the United States, yes, it would have still been a challenge for me, but it would have been a little less of a challenge. My first show was actually based in Paris.
So not only did I have to manage all of the marketing around the show and had to build the booth, but I had to ship everything to Paris and install the booth and you know, work in a country where I knew the language very little. And so, like I said, it was a comedy of errors.
We designed and built the booth in the United States. I purchased carpet, which is something I should not have done, and had the carpet shipped with the booth structure. My manager said, “Well, Lisa, we've spent so much money on the booth and the marketing efforts and all of those things, we need to cut costs, so we're going to assemble the booth ourselves when we get to Paris.” Well, what he really meant was, “Lisa, you are going to assemble booth when we get to Paris.”
So, we get to the show. It’s installation day. We’re in the expo hall. I always say that a trade show is like a theatrical production. When you're there building your booth there are forklifts and drivers bringing the crates to the booth space. There are boxes and trash and ladders and people with hammers and all sorts of things. And you never think that it's going to turn into this beautiful event. But when the show opens, the carpet is down, and the glass is polished, and everything is beautiful.
Well, we get to the expo hall and we're putting up the booth. Normally, when you exhibit, you have the floor plan and you see exactly where your booth is located. The floor plan will also include any pillars or columns that are holding up the ceiling of the expo hall. You'll see how close they are to your booth and those sorts of things.
Well, the floor plan that we received originally was a little bit different from what we discovered. Because when we got there, the pillar that was supposed to be next to our booth was now almost 2 feet into our booth. And the problem was that I had cut the carpet ahead of time. So, the carpet was precut to go around the edge of the booth. Well now the column is in the booth. So, I have to cut more carpet. Plus, I have a hole over here where the carpet had already been cut.
And we had a banner. We had a two-tiered booth where the banner was supposed to hang nicely, draped gracefully as if it was a sail. Well, now that the booth structure had to be moved and repositioned, this nice, draped sail had to hang at a very sharp angle, and I didn't know what it was going to do. We got it up there. We rented some plants, large plants for the hole where the carpet was supposed to be, but now wasn't. And like I said, it was a comedy of errors. But when the hall opened on opening day and people came into our booth, no one saw it. Everyone thought the plants looked very nice. The booth was beautiful. And it worked out. But I was the most anxious, nervous person you've ever seen. That was my first experience with the trade show booth.
Krishaan Khubchand: And since then, you've loved it. Ever since, it seems.
Lisa M. Masiello: Yeah.
Krishaan Khubchand: I'm curious. You know, it seems like this is an example like Murphy's law, right? What can go wrong will go wrong. And in the preparation of something with so many variables, so many things are exogenous and external, it's easy to kind of feel like it's kind of chaotic.
I’m curious, you know, perhaps drawing upon the book, what are some of the tips in terms of kind of mindset and expectations or kind of just prep in general? Let's say, exhibitors could kind of keep in mind when they are trying to deal with what could end up being kind of chaotic environment and trying to make the most out of it nonetheless as perhaps things may go wrong.
Lisa M. Masiello: Whether this is your first trade show or your 51st trade show, you have to prepare for everything because something will go wrong. I never expected that our booth was going to be shifted and I was going to have a round column 2 feet into my booth. What happens if, you know, half of your booth doesn't show up? What do you do?
What happens if…so, for example, a lot of exhibitors like to bring food and drinks into their booth to give away. Well, if you don't know that you are going to be penalized by bringing food and drink into your booth if you haven't received approval from the concession at the expo hall, then all of that food and drink could be taken away from you.
So, you have to understand all of these details and the only way, especially for inexperienced exhibitors, the only way for you to learn that is to read your exhibitor manual from cover to cover. It is your Bible.
And it tells you everything you need to know. It tells you when and where and how to order your electricity and your carpet cleaning. If you're going to have your carpet cleaned. Furniture that you might want to rent. Plants that you want to rent.
If you are bringing in anything that could be flammable. Expos that have vehicles or motorcycles or boats in the expo hall, there are special things that you need to know about that. So, the exhibitor manual is your Bible. And read it from cover to cover. It has such important information.
Krishaan Khubchand: Are there any specific areas within the exhibitor Bible that you think tend to yield extra insights or kind of like patterns to look out for a trade show exhibitor?
Lisa M. Masiello: Two things. So, the first thing is, if you are able to put all of your materials, your booth, your promotional products, your product literature, all of those things…if you are able to get those to the show ahead of time, your best bet is to deliver them to the pre-show warehouse or the advanced warehouse. That's where all of the exhibitors will ship their materials and have them stored in preparation for the show decorator to then move all of the materials to the convention center or the expo hall.
You can save a lot of money if you are coordinated enough to get all of your materials to the advanced warehouse. If you don't have enough time and you have to ship everything to the expo hall, then you're going to pay a lot more money then if you were able to send it to the advanced warehouse.
The other very very important item is that all of the items that you may want to rent, like I said, electricity, Internet for your booth, any additional furniture, any plants, if you want to hire the team that will install your booth and dismantle your booth, those sorts of things, they have fixed rates.
But they have an advanced rate or a pre-show rate. So, if you, let's say for example, if you want to purchase your Internet and your electricity, and you get the form out of your exhibitor services manual, if you submit the form, usually about a month and a half before the show, you can save, twenty, twenty-five, thirty percent on some of these services. If you order them after the deadline and the deadline might be two to three weeks before the show starts, if you order them after the deadline or you wait and you order them at the show during installation, the price is going to be much, much higher. So, watch all of the dates, the deadlines in that exhibitor services manual. It will save you so much money.
Krishaan Khubchand: Fantastic. So before actually continuing on the tip side, I jumped the gun at the beginning. I wanted to get a bit of a basics kind of 101 on trade shows themselves. And I asked about the story. I got so excited about the story.
If it's OK, just zoom out a bit and start with why, So, for example, a marketer is looking at the strategies that are kind of available to them. They may consider, for example, just so many areas in digital marketing, right? We tend to forget the importance and value of trade shows.
And I'm wondering when you're kind of thinking about where it fits in the marketing mix and why trade shows are important, what is your kind of, what is your answer to that?
Lisa M. Masiello: Well, trade shows are wonderful because you can incorporate so many different marketing activities and marketing initiatives into one program.
And because you have so many people in one location at one time, and they're all either within a specific industry or they're interested in a specific subject. Whatever the case may be, you have a captive audience there. So many people, especially in the business-to-business community, you know, salespeople make calls every day to businesses trying to talk with someone or generate a lead and they get blown off. People don't answer their telephone anymore and respond to emails. So, they're blown off. And if you have an opportunity, you know, you may be going to a small show. There may be only 1000 attendees, but you may be at a really big show and there could be 20,000 attendees. If you're objective, and that's the first thing you have to look at, what are your business goals and objectives? All of your marketing activities, no matter what you're doing, all of your marketing activities should be focused on your business goals and objectives and the trade show is the same way.
So, if your business goal is to generate additional leads, trade show is a perfect opportunity because you have a captive audience of people there that are coming by your booth. If your objective is, if you're new to the industry and your objective is to meet people at the large, well-known businesses within that industry, perfect opportunity because those people will be there. They may have booths themselves or they may be speaking at the event, and you can meet them. They can't blow you off on the telephone. You're right there in front of them. So there are so many opportunities that a trade show brings an exhibitor.
Krishaan Khubchand: And what are the particular types of firms that you think should pay more attention to trade shows?
Lisa M. Masiello: It really runs the gamut from small businesses to the biggest businesses and it runs the gamut across industries. Trade shows are very popular within the B2B industry, as I said, because so many people can blow them off and this way they have a captive audience. You know, it really depends on your business. Let's say, for example, you're in the food and beverage industry and you sell, you know you have a food product or a drink product and it's something that you need people to sample, a trade show would be perfect for you.
If you have a product that has a long sales cycle and it's really not something that your salespeople can be successful at if they're just making telephone calls, or they're trying to go and meet the client. If you have a product or service where you really have to develop a personal relationship with somebody or it’s a trust issue where the customer has to feel comfortable with the business. You know they're not going to buy something off the Internet. Then that would be a perfect example of a trade show, a good trade show opportunity, those sorts of things.
Krishaan Khubchand: Fantastic. And from an organizer's perspective, what do you think the inputs are for them to know when they're running a good event or not, and how do you think an organizer, someone who is actually building these trade shows, how can they better serve exhibitors and participants?
Lisa M. Masiello: They need to know the challenges and the needs of their exhibitors. The worst shows that I have been to are not the shows where, you know, we had a poor booth, or our booth messaging wasn't right, or those sorts of things. The worst shows were the ones where we didn't see the right attendee.
So, if you are going to start a trade show and run a trade show and hope that it's going to be successful over the years, you need to talk to your exhibitors. Survey them. What do they need from you as the show organizer? What do they expect from the show? What does their target customer look like? Those sorts of things. Because I could look at a trade show and say, alright, this looks interesting. This really falls within our parameters of the type of show that we would go to.
I believe that our ROI would be good for this show, but when I get there, it was just not the right type of attendee coming through our booth. We didn't generate a lot of leads and it wasn't the right show in the end. And so I'm not going to exhibit it again next year.
And the only the only way that the show organizer knows to bring in the right attendee for me is if they talk to me about what I need and who my customer is and those sorts of things.
Krishaan Khubchand: What about the flip side in this case? So let's say we're thinking about the exhibitor or the participants, what's the manner in which they can go about selecting the right portfolio of trade shows to attend in a given year such that they can achieve their goals? How can they do better diligence and research on that front and improve their decision making?
Lisa M. Masiello: So, it goes back to what your goals are and who you are and what you do as a business.
I always say, you know, even small companies want to exhibit at the biggest trade shows, and I say, “But think about it.” So, let's say you sell a product that is very geographically focused.
So, I'm based in the New England area in the United States and maybe there is a company that has a, maybe they sell note cards that have New England images on the note cards. And you know, there are pictures of Boston and Fall scenes, you know, leaves falling and from the trees and things like that. Things that are very specific to this region.
Well, I don't necessarily want to go to California to a trade show, even though it might be the largest stationary trade show in the country, if my goal is to generate leads and people who want to purchase my note cards.
It may be best to go to a more regional trade show in this area for attendees who are interested in note cards and products that promote this region.
Now, if my goal was different, as I said, your goal may not be to generate leads. Your goal may be to meet influential or important people in the industry. Then I may rethink my trade show participation because, yes, the larger show is going to have more of the influencers and the key people in the industry. So, in that case I may want to attend. I may not want to exhibit and try and get on the radar of those people and those businesses. So again, it really comes down to what my goal is as an exhibitor and what is my budget?
Do I have the budget to fly my booth staff halfway across the country and build a booth or rent a booth. Or could I do it a little bit closer to home?
If this show is new to me and people are saying, oh, this is a great show, you have to exhibit, you have to exhibit, well, I might consider, as I said, attending first. Just to see who the exhibitors are, what the educational sessions are, and the presentations. Do I get a good vibe from the show? And if I do, then maybe I'll exhibit next year.
So, it's all based on your goals, your budget, who the attendees are, all of those sorts of things you have to take into consideration.
Krishaan Khubchand: Very interesting. I'm wondering what does the internal process tend to look like? I'm sure it varies across companies, but for thinking about trade shows in terms of like, so you described it to a certain degree what best practices could look like. I'm wondering at the moment, what have you seen tends to be the case and what is the difference between what could be and what is? Does that make sense?
Lisa M. Masiello: So often it's…”We're going to be launching a product in two months and we need to get out there and tell people about this product.”
Krishaan Khubchand: Simple.
Lisa M. Masiello: And I see that all the time. So then, the person who's in charge of the marketing department, they just sort of sit there and shake their head and say this is not the right way to do it, but OK, if that's what you want, that's what we'll do. And you know, they scramble to put a booth together, and they scramble to get their staff together and their marketing activities, and then because they have so little time, often they don't do the pre-show marketing that they should be doing. And then maybe the salespeople might send out an e-mail to their prospects currently in their database saying we're going to be attending this show. If you're going to go, stop by the booth. But that's in the best-case scenario.
It's usually, in the worst-case scenario, it's usually last minute. Somebody in management says I found out about this show. I think we need to be there. Or we're going to be launching a new product in two months. We need to go to the show.
Krishaan Khubchand: Would you recommend in that case…So for example, one of the interesting things you said was this idea of scoping out a trade show before you decide to exhibit, and that's essentially you're playing a long game there in so far as what's our broader portfolio of trade shows, how do we ensure we have the right type of knowledge gathering surrounding the trade shows, so we know that one, we're making right investments, so then two, we can optimize accordingly in terms of getting the most out of it. I'm thinking to myself, are there companies that tend to have one person who is head of kind of, you know, trade show selection or is it more kind of ad hoc and dispersed typically, and what do you recommend of those two?
Lisa M. Masiello: Usually, it's a consensus. Certainly, the marketing manager or the director of marketing, the CMO will have trade shows on their marketing plan for the next year.
But then they will sit down with the rest of the management team, certainly with the VP of Sales to say, OK, what is our product line or our product development going to look like over the next year?
What are the business goals for the company? Is it business as usual and we're just going to plod along or are we looking to really have a presence in the industry? Are we looking to make any acquisitions over the next year? Are we looking to be acquired, you know, that's something as well. Not all companies are looking to generate leads at the trade show.
So, usually it will be a consensus, I would say, but a lot of times there is push from others, from the VP of Sales who says we need to generate more leads. We need to go to this trade show. And then depending on the marketing person, whether they're a little bit more junior person or they're a CMO, they may feel like they can push back and say, let's take a step back. Let's think about this. Why are we going to the show? Where is this show taking place? Who are the attendees? How many attendees are going to be there? What other exhibitors are going to be there and those sorts of things and let's rationally talk about why we would go to this show. If you're a little bit more junior marketing person and your VP of sales comes to you and says we need to go to this show, you say, OK, we need to go to this show, and you start working. So, it varies on the level of pushback the marketing person can do within the organization.
In part 2 of this trade show marketing virtual masterclass, I discuss six tactical tips to get the most our of your pre-show, onsite, and post-show planning; insights into human interactions beyond the booth; management of the orchestra that is vendor choreography; and giving back by sharing insider expertise.
Other related posts
