MARKETING
rade show exhibits are all about customers. But some exhibitors don’t have a clue what their customers want. For example, at a recent technology show, a billion-dollar company devoted 80 percent of its large island exhibit to branding, with large graphics and corporate video footage, and only reserved a small area for product demos. Its customers crammed into the demo area, and left the branding area vacant. Halfway through the show, the company responded by moving some of its demos into the open area. This scenario is both true and all too common. Trade show marketing is about offering the products, the experts, the information, and the hands-on interaction customers want to experience. Successful exhibitors aim to be customer centered, and as a result — customer preferred. To avoid the empty-booth syndrome and crank up the effectiveness of your own program, find out what your customers want — and deliver it. EXHIBITOR talked with four exhibit managers that have done just that. Their case studies offer several ways to gather customer knowledge and use that knowledge to create effective, customer-centered programs.
1. Phone Interviews Ramtech Building Systems Inc., had a history of anemic exhibit traffic. The design-build construction company, whose markets include educational facilities, hoped to lure 400 school administrators (15 percent of the total show attendance) to its booth at the 2003 Texas Association of School Administrators show (TASA) in Austin, TX. 400 visitors may not sound like a lot, but Ramtech had only scored 100 visitors the previous year. “We tried everything from drawings for baseball tickets and Home Depot gift cards to freebies like pens, notepads, and squeezy stuff,” says Steve Sickman, Ramtech’s marketing director. To reach 400 attendees, Sickman needed an exhibit theme and promotion that directly targeted school administrators’ needs and concerns — which meant he also needed a crash course in School Administrators 101. Sickman enlisted the help of his creative agency, Blanchard Schaefer Advertising and Public Relations of Arlington, TX, which phoned school administrators and principals across Texas and asked them what they wanted — and didn’t want — to see in the booth. Blanchard Schaefer used two rounds of telephone surveys — one to query 75 school administrators and a second to question 100 school employees, such as principals, counselors, and teachers. “We asked everyone four or five questions in a casual conversational tone, so it didn’t sound like a commercial survey,” says Blanchard Schaefer account manager Lynaia Lutes. During the first round, Blanchard Schaefer asked administrators about their purpose for attending the exhibit hall, what they wanted to accomplish, and what kinds of giveaways and prizes they would be interested in. With the second round of school employees, they asked what kind of supplies and equipment their schools needed. Blanchard Schaefer soon discovered why the squeezy stuff wasn’t working. The surveys revealed that personal giveaways — such as the $1,000 American Express gift card Ramtech had tried before — didn’t motivate the administrators, who were concerned that parents and community members would frown on any kind of trade show “freebie” for the administration. Rather, administrators wanted something to help their schools. Using this customer insight, Ramtech built a philanthropic marketing strategy based on a student-design competition, which helped schools and children rather than personally rewarding administrators. Prior to the show, Ramtech supplied Legos to fourth and fifth grade students from nine elementary schools near Austin and asked them to design their dream school buildings — projects they hoped school administrators would build for them. Ramtech then featured the projects in the booth, and attendees voted on them to determine the winning school, which received $1,000 for supplies and equipment. Ramtech used pre-show direct mail and e-mail as well as booth graphics to explain the competition to attendees. The student-centered competition plucked the heartstrings of administrators and met Ramtech’s target of 400 booth visitors, which was four times the previous best.
2. Audience-Response System Customer research doesn’t always need to happen before the show. Hughes Network Systems Inc. (HNS) hired Kimberly Kee, president of Kee Consulting, a trade show and event consulting firm in Castle Rock, CO, to manage its booth at the 2003 International Foodservice Technology Exposition. During the show, Kee paired an audience-response system with a live-theater presentation to gather information about customer expectations and then immediately deliver those expectations in the presentation. As attendees entered the booth’s presentation area, staffers scanned their badges, assigned them a number, and gave them a response keypad with a corresponding number. During the presentation, attendees used their keypads to answer multiple-choice questions. The presentation’s opening module offered an overview of HNS and asked the audience to answer questions about their companies’ size, challenges, purchasing authority, and primary product interest. Attendees’ keypad answers allowed HNS to gauge the collective thoughts of the audience. For example, HNS learned that of the product information offered at the show, the audience was most interested in its ePayment Solutions or Multimedia Services.  HNS then tailored presentation content on the fly. At the start of the presentation, attendees used their keypads to indicate which two of the possible four application modules were most interesting to them. Each presentation was then altered to address the two application modules selected by each theater audience, making each presentation unique and relevant to its particular audience. Each attendee’s answers were also transmitted in real time to the reception desk, where staffers reviewed the information and identified hot prospects. After each presentation, staffers targeted all the hot leads — and none of the cold ones. Attendees received the information they requested, and HNS gained valuable information about attendees’ needs, buying power, and current business challenges. Plus, at the 2003 show, HNS increased its qualified leads to 139, up from 30 the previous year.
3. In-Booth Survey To help redesign its booth, Dolby Laboratories Inc., a San Francisco manufacturer of audio-coding and signal-processing systems, surveyed more than 250 attendees at the 2000 National Association of Broadcasters show. Going into the show, Dolby’s booth was outdated, and it planned to purchase a new booth prior to next year’s show. Dolby’s trade show manager, Erin Dare, CTSM, saw this as the perfect opportunity to build a booth containing exactly what customers wanted. On the second day of the show, Dolby handed each of its booth visitors a 5-by-7-inch card containing five questions about Dolby’s current booth and what attendees wanted to see in its next reincarnation. Attendees that completed the survey received a Dolby-emblazoned canvas bag. Dolby asked attendees the following multiple-choice questions: 1. What does your company do? 2. Is this your first time visiting Dolby at an NAB show? 3. What was the most interesting area in the booth? (Attendees rated seven options on a scale of one to five, with one being dull and five being very interesting.) 4. What else would you like to see in the booth? (Attendees chose from seven options.) 5. How would you rank the Dolby booth compared to other booths that you’ve visited at NAB? (A one-to-five rating scale was provided, with one being “Could’ve skipped” and five being “Well worth the visit.”) Dolby collected 273 surveys during four hours. After the show, the information gathered helped Dolby redesign its booth with elements the audience requested: more open and accessible demonstration areas with more visible graphics; better equipment delineation; a clear view of the equipment’s back panels; use of larger video displays; a larger, more focused, main presentation area; and a more inviting information counter. While Dolby didn’t measure lead counts between 1995 and 2000, Dare estimates it averaged 800 leads per show with the old booth during those years. With its new, customer-focused booth at the 2001 show, Dolby raked in 2,600 leads.
4. In-house Research Eight years ago, Bob Milam was the trade show manager for Viewpoint Digital Inc. of Orem, UT, a company that made 3-D digital sculptures for computer animation. During a seminar at EXHIBITOR SHOW 1997, Milam learned how exhibitors could use attendees’ identifying behaviors — their body language — to determine when they were nearing a sale. Returning to his office, Milam and his sales manager tried to apply this newfound knowledge to an upcoming show filled with gamers, the Computer Game Developers Conference in San Jose, CA. After years of interaction with Viewpoint Digital’s customers, the sales manager knew that the one thing customers loved most (and guarded most closely) was showing other people their sketches of computer-game characters. For these gamers, flipping open their sketchpads was like showing people their dreams. Based on that knowledge, Milam realized that if Viewpoint could just get customers to show off their sketches in the booth and allow Viewpoint to show them how it could turn those dreams into reality with a 3-D digital model, it would almost surely make a sale. Milam designed Viewpoint’s 10-by-20-foot booth to encourage people to stop and pull out their sketches. The exhibit’s back wall included a display case filled with clay models from which the company had created digital 3-D models for previous customers. Large graphics on the back wall read, “Show us your ideas, and we’ll make them come to life.” A series of empty bistro tables assembled along the front of the booth gave attendees a place to put down their stuff and dig out their sketches. Thirty minutes into the show, a gamer came up and whipped out his sketches. One product demo and 20 minutes later, Viewpoint scored a $60,000 contract. Viewpoint went on to sign seven similar contracts by the close of the show. Total cost for the booth that scored an estimated $480,000 return: $15,000. Total value of understanding your customers: priceless.
Linda Armstrong senior writer