The good news is that we do not have to be afraid. Trade shows, while still certainly struggling under current economic conditions, appear not to have lost their basic value as a cost efficient, significant business opportunity. In fact, according to a 2010 CEIR Survey, 76% of attendees rate face-to-face interaction with potential vendors and suppliers very or extremely important in performing their job.

Also, according to BtoBonline, 94% say it is important or very important to be able to view online content after the event has occurred.

What does this mean from a marketing perspective? It means that the recent push for online/virtual events, as well as full-scale transitions from integrated marketing (including traditional tactics) to 100% digital marketing plans are not the end-all be-all of the modern trade show marketing campaign. However, virtual events are beginning to prove their worth as a driver for the live event.

So, how do we utilize a virtual event to drive attendance to the show? The first thing to understand is that the virtual event cannot (for now) exist as a stand-alone event. It MUST come as an extension of the live event. While IAEE research shows that 40% of virtual events aim to be self-sustaining, we also know that live content is the most popular content of virtual events. So, for now at least, it is up to show producers to capture enough engaging content to make people want to attend the virtual, and eventually the real event. Show floor interviews, product demos, and education sessions all make the list of engaging (and more importantly, desired) content.

The second important factor is the overall purpose of the virtual event. Some show producers make the mistake of promoting the technologically progressive nature of the event, as opposed to its actual value to the attendee. The event should be focused on what it can do for the participant, NOT about what it is doing for the trade association.

Ultimately, the physical, face-to-face interaction achieved at trade shows remains as one of the leading drivers of attendance. The virtual event, by nature, will never achieve the tactile stimulation of a live trade show. People experience trade shows with their five senses. They are able to see, touch, and experience what they are after, allowing them to make more educated business decisions.

Eliminating a physical event and converting to a virtual one at this point seems to be, frankly, a bad idea. Converting your marketing campaign to 100% digital is not be the best plan either. And please don’t ever think email is free.

Is the trade show industry progressing? Certainly. But it can’t escape essential business interaction – face to face, solidified with a handshake and a smile.

As you may know Facebook is the world’s largest social network. Over 500 million users have joined and somehow they have all agreed to share information such as location, age, interest, and much more, without serious privacy concerns. Otherwise, they would have cancelled their accounts, right?

Facebook is taking advantage of all this data to make Facebook Ads a very powerful platform that allows for highly targeted advertising.

Facebook is often referred to as a personal network, a place where you communicate with friends and family. Many have questioned its business efficacy. However, more and more companies have joined Facebook and added Facebook Pages, Groups and Events. One can find all kinds of associations, organizations and groups. And many now are taking advantage of Facebook Ads.

The platform is very flexible, with the potential of being very powerful, and you can set your ads in a few minutes. A few things to keep in mind:

1. Creating an engaging ad is not that difficult. All you need is a graphic, title, body copy and URL
   
   
2. Choose your audience by targeting users based on their location, demographics, interest and other options. This is probably the most powerful part of Facebook Ads. You will be amazed at all the options you have to target a group of people that have joined Facebook pages and groups of competitors, media and associations that cater to your audience.
   
   
3. Create a schedule and budget for your campaign. You will be able to choose the time you want to run your ads and set a daily budget. You can also choose to pay per click (CPP) or pay per mille of views (CPM)
   
   
4. Facebook gives you access to analytics, make sure you analyze them and keep improving your ads to make them more effective

Give it a try by going to facebook.com/ads/create. Let us know if you need any help with the strategy, design or interactive efforts to add this to your marketing mix.

Fixation proudly continues with our sponsorship of Sam Lippman's Large Show Roundtable (LSR). The latest event was held in St. Louis and included cocktails with the Budweiser Clydesdales. As promised, we're sharing the second installment of our 10 for '10 marketing tips (distributed as a handout to the St. Louis LSR participants).

We've offered some sound advice and tactics in response to the anxiety-producing trend of prospective attendees waiting to register until only a few weeks out from the event. Fear not! End-of-campaign strategies can boost both exhibit and attendance numbers in the final weeks before your show.

Say your show is eight weeks out and the attendees who have the right job titles and work for the right companies are committed. In other words, the buyers you would expect to see at your show plan on being at your show. Now is not the time to simply splash around in the shallow end. You’ve got eight weeks! Why not dive into the deep end of the prospect pool and really drive up your registration numbers! It’s a worthwhile exercise—not just for the sake of spreadsheets and statistics, but for the relevancy and longevity of your event.

One of our clients, the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association (HPBA), has been working on building their new prospect base for a few years now in an effort to attract fresh faces and evolve their annual HPBExpo as the leading indoor-outdoor living showcase. HPBExpo 2010 in Orlando took place last month and, for the third consecutive year, new prospect numbers increased. In addition to retailers and sales reps, HPBExpo is a draw for more and more home builders, remodelers and designers; propane retailers and other service providers; landscape architects and outdoor room specialists; and anyone who stands to benefit from having product knowledge of the very latest hearth appliances, grills, outdoor room features…you get the idea. While these new attendees may not all be direct buyers, they certainly have direct influence on consumers and end users—the very homeowners who will be purchasing their way to an indoor-outdoor lifestyle.

How did HPBExpo do it? Through direct and targeted marketing efforts, special promotions, advertisements in trade publications and regional outreach, they were able to find and attract new attendees. A good place to start is with the “drive in” audience—those who live/work within a 300 to 350 mile driving range of the event's location. The cost to this group would be minimal, especially if you offer them goodies like free exhibit passes, special webinars, education sessions focused on their business, etc. The possibilities are endless—you just have to jump in and start swimming. And don't be afraid to go after individuals. In today's world of social media and customizable marketing it's more about having a conversation with your audience, speaking to them directly instead of as part of a segment. It’s easy to do and the tools to do it are readily available.

Here's something to keep in mind: new attendees attract new exhibitors and new exhibitors keep your attendees coming back year after year. That's a tradeshow tidalwave you want to be caught in!

From time to time, business owners are asked to throw their proverbial hat into the ring for various graphic design awards, Best Places to Work lists, Smart CEO honors and the like. So, it was no big deal when earlier this year we received a Top Agency nomination from BtoB, the magazine for marketing strategists, and were asked to complete a survey. All in a day’s work; answer their questions and move on.

Imagine our surprise a few weeks ago when we learned that Fixation had been named to BtoB’s (www.btobonline.com) 150 Leading Agencies list in their March 2010 issue. This particular honor stands out because a) it’s a national recognition that finds us listed among some of the nation’s biggest and best “name brand” agencies; and b) the questions took into consideration not just our personality or number of employees, but some deeper questions about year-over-year growth and how we were helping our clients deal with a fragile economy.

Look, we know this business is not all about awards. But as a small agency, we rarely get consideration in the rarefied company of the “big boys” like BBDO and Ogilvy & Mather North America. Let’s hear it for the little guy! And let me take this opportunity to first thank a great small-and-smart staff here at Fixation who work hard and produce terrific stuff that is sometimes unheralded. Second, let me honor our clients—many of them long-standing—who hire us to provide creative strategy, design and interactive marketing solutions that help keep them successful and help keep us on top of our game.

Congratulations to all. I’m so proud of this company.

Fixation Marketing was a sponsor of Sam Lippman's Large Show Roundtable (LSR) in Anaheim, California on January 22, 2010. Not content just slapping our name on this industry-leading executive forum and sitting on the sidelines, we produced an informative value-added leave behind for all LSR participants called 10 for '10-10 marketing tips to enhance their 2010 events. Now, we'd like to share it with you! This first installment focuses on fresh ideas to attract returning and new attendees and exhibitors, from direct mail database management to utilizing Smartphones effectively.

Stay tuned for the next 10 for '10, which will offer tips on how to boost registration numbers eight weeks out from the big event!

Read a Guest Blog from PMMI's Christine Maple. Christine is the Marketing Manager for Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute (PMMI), which produces PACK EXPO International, PACK EXPO Las Vegas and EXPO PACK Mexico. PMMI is one of Fixation’s clients.

Are you familiar with Large Show Roundtables (LSR), hosted by tradeshow veteran Sam Lippman? I wasn’t until Fixation Marketing—one of the event’s sponsors—invited me to participate earlier this year. I’m really glad they did. LSR in Anaheim, California on January 22, 2010, was a great learning experience.

The one-day roundtables are kept small and private to facilitate frank discussion and real problem-solving among those of us who manage large trade events. I was one of only 16 executives in attendance. I was also the newest and the youngest by far. But, my peers didn’t make me feel that way at all. Instead, they looked to me, in particular, as the freshest perspective in the room, turning to me when issues of social media and emerging technologies came up. I quickly realized they were looking for reassurance and I was able to give them some.

I’ll tell you what I shared with the group:

• Face-to-face interaction still matters—And it will never go out of style. Even young people today realize that showing up makes a bolder statement than calling, emailing, video-chatting, tweeting and texting. But as show managers, we do have to work hard to produce events that speak to every generation and that move and shake with the times.
  
  
• Social media is a given, not an option—The answer is “Yes!” Yes, you should set up a LinkedIn Group; yes, a Facebook page is necessary; and yes, Twitter is something you should actually do, not just complain about. These social media channels open up the lines of communication with the very people you want to attend or exhibit at your show. Open discussion, instantaneous information exchange and viral community-building leads to a sense of ownership, which in turns leads to more investment of time and resources on the part of the “community.” You want your show to grow into a “large” one, right?
  
  
• Don’t just listen to your audience, let them know you heard them—At the Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute (PMMI), we did and it’s paying off. With an industry-wide shift toward total systems solutions, PACK EXPO International is evolving in step with the marketplace and expanding its focus to showcase processing and packaging solutions under one roof. Exhibitors and attendees asked for one powerful show; and we are delivering this fall.

The next Large Show Roundtable will take place in St. Louis, Missouri on April 15. I encourage you to apply right away. Don’t miss the opportunity to find out what you’re doing right when it comes to your trade shows and events, and what you could be doing better. I promise you’ll go home with plenty of new ideas, proven strategies and the support of your peers.

Christine Maple
Marketing Manager
Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute (PMMI), producer of PACK EXPO International, PACK EXPO Las Vegas, and EXPO PACK Mexico

PMMI is a trade association with more than 500 member companies that manufacture packaging and packaging-related converting machinery, commercially-available packaging machinery components, containers and materials in the United States and Canada. PMMI’s vision is to be the leading global resource for packaging, and its mission is to improve and promote members’ abilities to succeed in a global marketplace.

Maddie Grant is the chief social media strategist and co-founder of SocialFish, a consultancy firm that teaches association professionals how to effectively use social media. Maddie and her SocialFish business partner, Lindy Dreyer provide social media strategy, marketing and training to clients like ASAE and the Center and the National Association for the Self-Employed. Maddie and Lindy provided valuable social media training to our team at Fixation last year, for which we remain incredibly grateful.

I often get the question "what's the ROI for using social media?" How would you answer this question?
This is actually the "big question" that seems to be top of mind for everyone now that a lot of organizations have started using social media. In one sense, it's like saying, "what's the ROI of building relationships?" or "What's the ROI of email?"--because social media is a way of communicating and interacting with stakeholders. Having said that, there can be defined and measurable results--but those results need to be directly tied to business and strategic goals. There needs to be a starting benchmark and deliberate tracking--as well as factoring in of indirect costs (staff time, overhead and resources) in order to really measure ROI--which I would say many organizations don't do a great job of in general, not just for social media efforts.

I've heard several folks in the industry say that Twitter's relevance to business is dwindling. How would you respond?
We believe that the core purpose of social media (including, of course, Twitter) is to build relationships and we've seen that work very successfully. If business strategies involve an understanding of that core principle, then Twitter is a fantastic way to reach people in an organization's "ecosystem" and get to know them and what their needs are. If, on the other hand, Twitter is used merely to spam people with marketing messages without a care to fostering that community, then it's not going to work for that business for very long.

What are 5 initial steps that an association professional can take to begin using social media tools right now?
The first step is always to "listen" on the social web--which means start using Google Alerts to search for brand mentions, industry terms, key people, etc. -- to see what people are saying about you or your industry. You can do this, to some extent, without actually having social media profiles at all. Step two is to focus on the places where your people are, and start building a presence there. Step three is to begin building relationships by responding when appropriate to relevant questions, following discussions, answering feedback. Step four, start providing value by posting information people need. Step five, identify those champions (influencers in those spaces who care about what you care about) to help you grow your presence and community and take things to the next level.

Do you see practical applications for associations to use video and mobile applications? Do you agree that video and mobile will grow exponentially in the next year or so?
Ab-so-lutely!! Mobile is becoming huge across all industries--not just because of geolocation, which empowers local connections between people and businesses, but more fundamentally because devices like the iPhone are revolutionary in terms of changing how we want and expect to get what we need, in a very individualized way (e.g. each individual user downloads the apps that they want to use, so every individual phone is different. The Long Tail thrives on mobile!) And if we consider the Millennial generation (now entering the workforce in substantial numbers) and younger, these are people who do all of their communicating through mobile phones, which is changing the landscape of how we work (not tethered to a desktop, which means not tied to 9-5...) With regard to video, associations are definitely starting to see just how valuable it can be to add video to their arsenal of ways of communicating with members--it's easy and attractive, and it's humanizing, in terms of potentially giving some much needed personality to the "brand" they want to promote to their members.

Is there an association that in your opinion has done a really good job of using social media? If so, how and why?
Honestly we've seen many associations doing fabulous things. If I had to pick one, we often show the International Society for Technology in Education as a great example of an association conference home base site that aggregates lots of different social media activities--but really I think the beauty of social media is that much of it is all out in the open for everyone to find. I'd love your readers to check out the Association Social Media Wiki if they are looking for specific examples. I also had a really great series of interviews with association social media managers on the SocialFish blog, where people working for all types and sizes of organizations told us how they internally managed the social media management work.