Lessons I learned from my first trade show

Does your market niche gather at a trade show?   

My niche market definitely did and going there was a great move for my business.  However, here are some critical lessons I learned from my first experience that will make yours go smoothly. 

Trade shows are a VERY effective way to reach connectors in certain markets.    Still, trade shows are exhausting ways to make money.

Here are 5 tips for making your money go the furthest so that investment  boosts your business up! 

1) You need a system to keep track of and follow-up with all the contacts that you'll get. 

 Believe me, even if you don't ask for them (and you should) you'll still get tons of cards.

You need a system, set up AND communicated to everyone working the booth beforehand to remember key points about each person so you can make the most of these contacts later.

• Was this person a potential distributor? 
• An end user who loved the product and gave you a testimonial? 

You need to keep these straight.

 2) There are peaks and valleys in foot traffic - treat the show as a marathon and NOT a sprint. 

The hours of these trade shows vary, but they are all exhausting.

Tip: Take plenty of water and quick snacks you can eat between potential contacts so you stay energized.

Whatever you do, wear very comfortable shoes that won't give you blisters on day one.  You don't want to be miserable for the remaining 2-4 days of the conference!

 3) Booth location matters... a lot. 

You may have paid full price for your booth, but if they put you in a corner out of the main walkway, you will NOT sell as much or meet as many people.  Usually a map is provided so ask who is close by your desired spot before you sign on the dotted line.

We were back-to-back with a speaker company once.  We had to yell over their music all weekend.  I will not be in that position again if I can help it, so I always check who our neighbors will be and ask to be moved if there is someone objectionable.

Tip: Pick a booth location that people can see when they enter the room.  Ideally, your booth will be in the direction people will be walking when they enter the room.

Make sure you are marketing ideally for the space you have. If you need banner stands so they can SEE your fabulous banners and signs from where they're coming from, buy them and make sure you have ones that turn/raise up if your customers won't be looking at your booth straight on. 

4) If you are selling items at your booth, us a tablet and/or smart phone and data plan to make transactions cheaper and easier. 

I have found that using an application like SquareUp, Intuit's Go Payment, or Paypal's PayUp where you can scan customer's credit cards and send automatic emailed receipts to be so much less expensive than traditional methods of taking cards. (Believe me, people don't usually want to pay cash, so be ready)

** Caution: most of these applications will not give you access to these customer's email addresses in the future.  If you intend to build your email list, you will have to add another process, like a email sign up form on the table** 

Save $: Using an IPad's data plan is often much cheaper than paying for a dedicated power and phone line to be put in your booth.

Make sure to have a couple of these devices in your booth so multiple transactions can be processed at once.  You want a small line, but not a HUGE line of people just waiting to use their cards.

5)  Small crowds draw more people because of the element of social proof.  

Use small crowds to your advantage!  If you can work an area into your booth that will cause people to crowd/hang around just a few moments instead of staying on the other side of the table and walking on past, other attendees will notice and will come by just to see what everyone else is looking at.

The result is that getting the first person into your empty booth is the hardest so try not to let your booth seem empty.

Trade shows are an essential part of launching a successful business in many industries.   For my first business, Slip-On Dancers^TM, it was a proving ground that launched  into licensing deals, distributorships, and testimonials let alone giving me the cash to really get the business rolling. 

Goodness knows these aren't all the tips you need to guarantee success at your first trade show, but hopefully these will help you avoid the major pitfalls that I found myself in when I started.

Comments? Questions?  Talk to me.

Which niche should you focus on first? Part 3 of 3

Who is your ideal target niche? Part 3 of 3

Finally, let's put everything we've figured out about our market together and identify the most promising niches for you to approach first. 

In Part 1 & Part 2 of this series, we looked at who your ideal customer is and who your competition is. 

You should have answers to questions like:  

• How many customers are in each of your potential target niches?
• How much will it cost you to market to that niche?
• How many sales will you likely make?
• What is your profit for that niche?
• How much does it cost for you to sell one product versus selling the product in bulk?  
• The costs to manufacture/produce the product won't be very different if you are selling subscriptions to an online training course, but could mean a huge difference in fulfillment if you have a physical product that has to be manufactured and shipped.
• If you have a physical product, can you reasonably pass on the extra costs of shipping single orders to the consumer?  

Here's the formula to determine which niche you should probably approach first*

         (# potential sales x profits from each sale) - marketing costs 

Which niche looks the best from this profit perspective?

* Caveat:  There is some level of marketing investment here that you must be OK with in order for this niche to be a good fit for you.    Essentially, you need to make sure you can cover the cost of marketing to this ideal niche.

• Is the marketing cost over a long time? 1 year, 2 years, 6 months?  
• Is the value of the marketing a cost you can cover at this point in your business?  
• Can you defer those costs until the sales start coming in? 

If your most profitable niche is not a niche you can appropriately market to YET due to costs, go to the next profitable niche and see if you can make that successful. 

OR, if you really think the first niche is the best one for you, start thinking of ways to lower the marketing costs.  For example, instead of buying TV ads, having a center booth at a trade show and having full page magazine ads, maybe you could post on influential blogs and get online reviews.  Consider getting a partial-page magazine ad and sharing a booth with another (non-competing) vendor.

If your marketing plan is "get on QVC," the odds are against your success, but there are likely lots of other creative (cheaper) ways to reach your target market.  You probably know where members of that niche get together and look for information, especially if you are part of that niche.

Pick your niche market.  Make sure it's a niche that will LOVE your product and that you can reach with your starter marketing budget. 

Niche marketing is like climbing stairs.  Focus on ONE niche and do it the BEST you can.  Get that one segment of the market 'under your belt' then move on to the next market.  

Action steps:

1) Write the answers to the above questions down outlining why this niche is right for you right now (this is the first part of your company manual and marketing plan!). 

2) Figure out if you can afford the initial marketing efforts in addition to the manufacturing costs. 

3) List your niches in order... 1st choice... 2nd choice...3rd choice...

Questions? Comments? Have I forgotten something?  Stories about how you first chose your first niche for your product or service?  Talk to me. 

Which niche should you go after first? Part 2 of 3

Don't go launch your product to the "market," launch it to the perfect "niche"  

After the post on identifying your perfect customer, I am hoping you actually physically made a list of the various subgroups of people that might be interested in your product.  When I'm doing this exercise, I devote a page in a notebook to each one. 

Marketing budgets are limited, so you can't go after them all at once.  Which one should you go after first? 

In the last post, we focused a lot on the small things that separate the market into certain groups.  We talked about the people and their pain points.  Now let's see how crowded each niche market is.

Focus on one niche market and identify the competition situation in each. 

Identify the competition situation within each of these niches:

1) What options for solving their problem do the members of this niche have currently?  

*Keep in mind these options are your competition ONLY if members of the niche actually see the competing product.  If there is a solution to one of their pain points out there, but it's not being pushed on them, don't count it.

Is there anything else in this niche market that solves the problem you're trying to solve? 

Are you the only company with this solution in this niche market?  

If you're a member of the niche market, this will probably be easy.   If you aren't a member of this niche market, you might need to do some research.  Ask friends and colleagues who might be part of that other niche about this.  Don't just rely on blogs and intuition for this one.  Do your research.  

2) How much do members of this niche currently pay for competing products or services?

How much would they pay to be rid of that pain point?  Notice I'm not saying how much would they pay for your solution.  Remember that the consumer really only wants the solution you present, not the product or service itself. 

Again, being part of the niche will make answering this question a lot easier.  Use your network to find the answer if you're not part of this particular niche market. 

3) How do those competing products or services market to this niche?

Are they at trade shows?

Do they rely on word of mouth?

Do they use Facebook or trade publications?

Do they market directly to the consumer? 

4) How much would it cost to just get in touch with the connectors in this market?

Marketing to connectors is usually a great way to make your money go further, if you can get a hold of them easily.
Do the connectors all read the same magazine?  How much would it cost to get an ad in there?

How else are those connectors connected?

Marketing isn't free and the price can vary widely depending on the type of marketing you're considering. Give it hard look and get some ballpark figures before making your decision. 

Go ahead.  Write it down.  This is not the kind of exercise you can do in your head

Once it's written down, you can refer to it going forward. 

Next time, we'll put this information together with the niche info and bundle it into an equation of sorts that takes into account the amount of customers each niche has and the cost of marketing to each niche.

Questions? Comments? Feedback?  Did I miss something? Does this ring true for you?  Let me know!

Did you miss Part 1?

Go to the last part of this series with Part 3