EMT #15 with Jim Cermak - Trade Show Wins: What Exhibitors Need to Know

In this episode, we dive deep into how to maximize trade show results with Jim Cermak, founder of Trade Show University. 

With over 30 years of experience in the trade show industry, Jim shares his insights on everything from goal-setting to booth strategy, helping exhibitors boost their ROI and avoid common pitfalls.

🔹 The Importance of Goal Setting

Jim emphasizes that setting specific, measurable goals is essential for success. Vague goals like “get as many leads as possible” won’t cut it. It’s crucial to define clear targets for each trade show—whether it’s the number of qualified leads, meetings, or competitor research. Jim even developed a specialized course to help exhibitors with goal-setting.

🔹 Understanding Your Audience

Jim underscores the importance of knowing your audience—what are their pain points, needs, and hot buttons? Tailoring your message to meet the needs of the people you're engaging with is vital for making meaningful connections and ultimately driving results.

🔹 Training Your Staff

Every team member should have a clear role at the event. It’s important to delegate tasks so that everyone is contributing to the show’s success, from gathering competitive intelligence to engaging attendees and even helping with follow-ups post-show.

🔹 Marketing to Drive Traffic

Before, during, and after the event, effective marketing is crucial to drive people to your booth. Social media, email lists, and show-specific marketing resources should be utilized to create buzz and increase foot traffic. Don't just rely on the event’s marketing materials.

🔹 Follow-Up Strategy

Jim advises creating a follow-up plan ahead of time. Automate as much as possible but personalize outreach based on the quality of interactions. Timely follow-ups can make the difference between securing a lead and losing out to a competitor.

🔹 Continuous Improvement

Jim encourages exhibitors to continually assess and improve their trade show strategy after each event. Whether it’s modifying booth setup or revising engagement strategies, making adjustments can help improve performance at future events.

• "If you don't set goals for your trade shows, you'll never know if you were truly successful."
• "Set specific, measurable goals that can be tracked and met. It's not just about leads; it's about gathering valuable insights."
• "Every person on your team should know their role and be trained to represent your brand and engage with your audience."
• "You don’t know what you don’t know—reach out to a coach or consultant to make sure you’re covering all your bases."

Jim Cermak’s insights offer practical strategies to help exhibitors and event marketers not only survive but thrive at trade shows. 

From setting clear goals and understanding your audience to training your team and creating a robust follow-up strategy, Jim’s roadmap to trade show success will ensure you're maximizing your event investment and making a real impact.

👉🏼 Join us for more insightful discussions like this by tuning into 'Event Marketer's Toolbox,' where industry leaders share the tools, tactics, and trends driving success in the event world.

This Show is sponsored by Blue Hive

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Chapters

• 1:34 Introduction: Meet Jim Cermak – Founder of Trade Show University and industry veteran
• 5:05 The Power of Goal Setting: Why every exhibitor needs to set clear goals
• 8:05 Understanding Your Audience: How to tailor your message to meet your audience’s needs
• 13:25 Training Your Team for Success: Delegating roles and ensuring everyone knows their part
• 18:40 Marketing to Drive Traffic: How to ensure people visit your boot
• 22:10 Follow-Up Strategy: The importance of follow-ups and how to do it effectively
• 27:50 Continuous Improvement: How to learn from each trade show and refine your strategy
• 29:10 Conclusion: Final Takeaways and Three Key Tips from Jim Cermak

Transcript

Chris: [00:00:00] Hey everybody, how you doing? I'm Chris Dunn. I'm with BlueHive Exhibits and you are watching the Event Marketers Toolbox. So, hey, we're here, we're building a community of event professionals, trade show professionals, and we're basically bringing Beck's practices and ideas and all sorts of, uh, case studies and so forth to the table.

Chris: Really to be the tide that raises all ships. So, welcome aboard. Uh, I'm gonna kick it over to my co-host Dana Esposito, also from BlueHive. 

Dana: Hi everybody. I'm Dana Esposito. I've been in the trade show industry over 30 years, both as an exhibit designer, a leader of creative teams, and also, um, helping with corporate strategy and also client advocate.

Dana: Um, we're sitting here today picking Jim Cmax brain, um, to kind of help educate all of us on how to do everything we do even better. So, Jim, who are you and what do you do? 

Jim: Thanks Dana and Chris. Uh, Jim Cermak. I am the founder of Trade Show [00:01:00] University, which we have been podcasting for about five and a half years, offering tips and strategies for exhibitors to really up their game.

Jim: I've been in the business for about 30 years doing trade shows for on the exhibitor side and. Learning and seeing what to do, what not to do, and then now taking all those years of experience and helping companies, uh, kind of leapfrog, uh, their timelines so that they're, instead of them learning trial by fire and, and, uh, uh, uh, trial and error.

Jim: They can learn from my experience and helping them, working with them one-on-one. Also working with associations, organizations to do training for, for their exhibitors as well. So it's, it's just been a fun journey. Thanks for, thanks for having me on today. 

Chris: Fantastic. Well, Jim, you, you are actually all three of us about about 30 years in the industry.

Chris: So collectively, we're bringing nearly a century of, uh, brain power and trade show knowhow to the table [00:02:00] here. Um, love it. This is gonna be gonna be a great conversation. Really looking forward to it. Thanks for joining us here. Um, before we jump into this conversation, I just want to real quick highlight, uh, we're being basically sponsored by two companies today.

Chris: So, uh, BlueHive Exhibits. Dana and I work for this organization. We are a 20-year-old, uh, creative group. We're based out of, uh, out of the Boston area, and we also have a location on the West Coast. So. BlueHive is a, is a full service custom exhibit house. We handle everything from really kind of that front end ideating around creating designs and, and, uh, and, and marketing plans, uh, that drive what the booth looks like.

Chris: Uh, we build, we store, we manage, we do all of that stuff so that you don't have to, we become an extension of that marketing team, which is really helpful these days when a lot of folks are seeing their, their headcount dwindle and their marketing team, you know, kind of. Be the brunt of some head, some, uh, [00:03:00] headcount cuts.

Chris: Um, in addition to BlueHive, we're also sponsored by, uh, fist bump. Fist bump is, uh, the organ, the group, the creative agency that's actually sponsoring or that's doing this, uh, podcast right now. And what they, what they do for us is they help uplevel our LinkedIn game. And especially by, uh, being, um, the, the production company and the really the brains and the know-how and the heavy lifters behind the podcast.

Chris: So not only did they help us put the, uh, the agenda together and bring in the guests and, and do all the things that make us look wonderful here on the screen, but they also help us produce all the content that comes from that really. Um. Helping, you know, leaders at C level and so forth, uh, folks in an organization, um, kind of add to the, uh, the creative and the informative content that they're able to put out on social media, blog posts, website, SEO, all that stuff, right?

Chris: So Fist Bump does a great job with helping us, [00:04:00] um, truth be told, tried to get it off the ground without their help, and it was a fail. So I'm happy to say they're here and, uh, and, and we're, we're. We're doing great. So, uh, just get that out of the, out of the way and now we can kind of jump into the meat of our conversation.

Dana: All right. So Jim, we did a lot of stocking of you as we do a lot of our guests. So we did a little bit of homework and specifically things that, um, we felt like trade show and event marketers could really benefit from. So first we wanna start to talk a little bit about the power of goal setting and, um, why showing up without a goal is one of the most common and costly mistakes that trade shown event marketers can, could make.

Jim: Yeah. Yeah. This is something that I see all the time. I'm a big goal person, so I, I would, I, when I go into meetings, I wanna find out what's our goal for even being here today. But especially for, uh, for a lot of exhibitors, what I see that they, they fail to set goals. They, or they'll come up with a vague goals that sound good.

Jim: Hey, we wanna get as [00:05:00] many leads as possible. That's our goal. It's like, well. Is that three, is that as many as possible or is it 300 or, you know, so unless you know that, unless you actually set the goal and strategically set the goal, you'll never know. You'll never know if that show was a true success for you.

Jim: In fact, uh, I have, I'm such a passionate about this. I have developed an entire course on goal setting for trade shows that's very, very specific. Uh, and it's a five video course, and it, it, it's, uh, getting ready to launch. Uh. Uh, very, very soon. Uh, but I'm, I'm excited about this 'cause I see so many companies just leave tons of money on the table, uh, because of this.

Jim: Because they have not set goals. And I'm not saying, when I say set goals, I'm not saying set one goal. I'm not saying, okay, we're gonna come back with, with 30 qualified leads. Great goal. Maybe, you know, if that's, if that's what you determine, that is your your goal, that that's gonna make the show a success.

Jim: That's great. But how [00:06:00] much more can you be doing? How many more goals can you be setting? How many of your customers did you have meetings with? I. How many, how many of your competitors did you go around and, and gather competitive intelligence from at the show? Because they were also exhibiting there, you know, there's so many areas that you can set goals for and I think so many companies just, they, they bypass all that and they don't set good goals and they don't even have the right metrics.

Jim: So, uh, and they might think of leads. And they say, we just wanna get as many leads as possible, or we wanna get 300 leads. And they put out a fishbowl and they, they gather business cards because they give away some high ticket item like an iPad or something like that, which is great. And then you get a, you get a, this big fishbowl filled with business cards.

Jim: But how many of those are truly qualified leads? How many of those are in your industry or in your target audience or in your sites that you wanna get those, those types of people into your funnel? Um. Or not. Mm-hmm. And so there's [00:07:00] very, but to have the goal, you also have to have the strategy behind it to make sure that, uh, everybody is in concert with making sure that you, you actually hit the goal that you set.

Dana: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Quality, quantity over quality. Quality. Absolutely. I'm dyslexic. Quality over way. It's very hard to be a creative. Yeah. But a lot of us are dyslexic. 

Jim: Yeah. Uh, ex. Absolutely. And, but you know what the, uh, there's also something to be set about quantity. So maybe one of your goals is we wanna build up our email list.

Jim: Mm-hmm. And so maybe that is part of it. And so you want quantity, you know, I don't care. Or brand awareness. Exactly, exactly. So I don't care if you are the, the decision maker at the company. Yes, I wanna talk to the decision maker, but I also wanna know, are you a user of our product? Then I want you on my email list because I want to be able to tell you about the new features and I wanna tell you about new things that are coming out and I want to get your feedback and all that stuff.

Jim: So [00:08:00] you can have, again, multiple goals, uh, depending on what you're trying to accomplish there at the show. So, you know. Uh, some, most, most of the time, yeah, your main goal should be quality over quantity, but there may be a quantity goal too that's also, uh, built in. 

Dana: I like what you said though, also about, um, you know, thinking about your competitors are also there and what are they doing?

Dana: Mm-hmm. What are they saying? Because it's kind of like, um, like I was always taught when you, when there's a meeting or you're doing a presentation, think about sort of the hidden audience in the room. Like you, you're thinking, you're thinking so hard about who you're trying to talk to, that you're forgetting that there are other people in the room.

Dana: That you're not considering, that you're talking to. Right. Um, and that reminds me of when you're at a show like that and there's so many of your competitors are there, what, what that means. Like there's, there's almost like recon, right? You can, you can see what's going on, um, see who they're talking to.

Dana: And I don't mean any of that in a shady way. It's really just like what is, you're taking the temperature of the industry and, and seeing what people are [00:09:00] interested in and it's just another form of, of education. Um, so it's really, it's. It's more face to face time and it's, it's more another great way to interact and see what's going on out there.

Dana: What's important to your customers? 

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. You know, one thing I want to add, if I could jump in and add is yeah, we had the benefit of having just done one of our, one of our trade shows recently. So, um, you know, when we, when we look at our customer list and so forth and, and we're supporting 400 plus shows a year for our customers, but we also do a couple of shows.

Chris: So it gives us an opportunity to put, you know, our customer's shoes on, as it were. Right? We stand in their, in their shoes and understand where their pain points are. Um, but what I wanted to to add is, as I'm thinking about, we were at Exhibitor Live a couple weeks ago in San Antonio, um, and yes, we did a lot of pre-planning.

Chris: We built a lot of goals and some of the things you guys are talking about as the exhibit manager. Or the person who's kind of charged with running the whole thing. Like, don't forget to delegate [00:10:00] to your team to do all of that stuff. Right. So we had, I think, five or six people who were in San Antonio in order to support the booth and have the meetings and whatnot.

Chris: But you know, at some point it's like, listen, we need four people in the booth right now. Two people. Go walk the floor, meet the, meet the vendors, you know, do that recon on the, uh, on the, on the competitors, see what they're talking about so that everybody's really kind of participating in this kind of information gathering process.

Chris: And we bring it back and we've got this. Large pool of data, we could start to sift through it and be like, well, what are these guys doing? What, you know, they're, they seem to be deviating and going in a slightly different direction with their message. Why is that? Right? So, um, don't forget to delegate, right?

Chris: We've got, again, I mentioned kind of coming into this, we're seeing this with our clients. Um, marketing teams exhibit, you know, management groups and so forth. Uh, they're not bursting at the seams with, with numbers, right? So don't forget that. Even though you might be one person, like you can kind of tap that team and, and help [00:11:00] achieve those goals by delegating, you know, throughout that, that group of folks.

Chris: Absolutely. It's great 

Jim: point. It's spectacular point actually. Uh, one, one thing I like to, I like to ask, especially, uh, when we have that, when I work with client and we have that first meeting where everybody who's gonna be there at the show, we all get together on a Zoom call or whatever, and we taught. I ask for each person, why are you going, why did they select you to go to this show?

Jim: Mm. And there's so many times they, they just don't know. They can't verbalize well, because I'm, I'm in sales. Okay, so what is your goal? Why are you going there? So encourage, you know, like you said, Chris, delegate, but I would be very, even more intentional and give people very specific things. Your goal at this show is we want you, you're gonna be our main engager because you're an extrovert and you love [00:12:00] talking to people and you're not the detailed person, but, but you're a great person to get people in and start, ask, asking questions.

Jim: Then if they have real detailed questions, we'll have Bob the end. Engineer, we're gonna send him over to Bob and he's gonna be in the back of the booth, uh, answering these questions and giving demos and things like that. But make sure each person has a role at the booth. And then also okay, when the, when the show is slow and there's always times when the show is slow and, uh, maybe, maybe you've got a, a booth that's near the back of the show and you know, if it's one of these massive shows that you're not gonna see people probably for 30 minutes.

Jim: Because they're, it's gonna take a while for them to trickle to the back of the show. No one's running to the back of the show. They're, they're stopping and they're, they're, they're engaging. So it's, it might be a little while, so don't have all five people that are gonna be working your booth, standing around for 30 minutes doing nothing, looking at each other.

Jim: Looking at their phones? No. Give them things to do. Have a couple people in your booth and the other three people, okay, [00:13:00] you're, uh, Bob, you are going to a, b, c company and you're gonna try to make a connection there because we need a new vendor for, uh, for our accounting software. And that's, that's what their, their booth does.

Jim: And, and, and. Dave, you are going over here, and Beth, you are going over here and you're gonna, you're gonna take pictures of our, our competitors' booth. And so make sure that each person has goals and they have things that they're gonna be doing, and they know this ahead of time. It's not, it's so, it's not like you're, you're looking around, everyone's standing around.

Jim: You don't have to now go, okay, um, hey, why don't you have, has anyone gone to our competitors yet? You don't have to do that. Uh, do that ahead of time. Have everybody have that in, in, in their mind as to what they're gonna be doing while they're at the show. 

Chris: Yeah. It's part part of that pre-show planning, right?

Chris: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It's getting 

Dana: the most out of that show, and, and the more that people are exposed to, the more they grow as a professional. There's so much people can learn when they're in a. A large environment like that with, um, the rest of their team, their potential clients [00:14:00] and their competitors.

Jim: Yeah, and as you'd said, Dana, this all starts if you have goals. If you don't have a goal that says, uh, we know 'cause we scoured the, uh, the exhibit floor plan, we know that these five competitors of ours are gonna be at the show. If you don't know that, then you don't know that you can do significant competitive analysis.

Jim: At the show while you're there and come back with all this data, you will have missed that opportunity. 'cause a lot of times companies go to these big shows, or even they're a small show and they're rolling out new products. They're rolling out new service, they're giving sneak peeks that you would never know.

Jim: It's not in their website, it's not in press releases. It's right there at the show. And if you don't get over there, you're gonna miss out. And all of a sudden you.

Jim: How did we not see that coming? Well, if you went over their booth during the show, very, very important, uh, to have those goals first, and then you can, you can develop your, uh, your game [00:15:00] plan for each of your people. I.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So that's, that's a tremendous answer to a, a seemingly simplistic question. We could probably go on for hours, just Absolutely. Just on that. Absolutely. You know, it's interesting in the, in the multiple, uh, episodes that we've done. Goals are always there. It's always underlined. Doesn't matter what we're talking about.

Chris: Um, but I wanted to kind of jump ahead because you've done some great work, obviously in this training field, right? You're, you're a person who really is passionate about helping uplevel, especially new people to the industry. So you've got this, uh, eight step roadmap to trade show success that you've created.

Chris: And although we can't camp on each one for a lengthy period of time, can you take us through kind of what that roadmap looks like? Um, and just kind of break it down, you know, somewhat simply so that we can at least kind of give you a little, a little precursor on, on what, uh, what you've put together.

Jim: Absolutely. I love this. This is, this is my [00:16:00] entire journey. My entire career has been boiled down and I'm like, what is every company? What should every company, I don't care if it's your first time and you've got a tabletop and you're going to a, a local craft fair at a, at a church here, all the way up to we've got this, you know, 50 by 50 exhibit and it's two stories and we've got 20 people that are gonna be working and we're investing a half million dollars in in that show.

Jim: I don't care where you are in the spectrum. Every company should go through these eight po, these eight steps. And the, the thing is that most companies will skip right over or gloss right over, uh, many of these steps. So the first step is research the show I. This, this takes into account that you've actually decided, made a good decision that to be at this show, that this is a good show for you.

Jim: It's gonna be a good investment. This is where you should be assuming that, and I've got a whole video about how do you pick the right show and how do you make sure that you, you pick the right show. Uh. But you wanna [00:17:00] research it. And so many companies, especially if they've done this show before, they, they've done it year after year after year.

Jim: They're in the industry. They're, they, they, they blow right past this. We've been there, we know, we know this show. We've been here so many times. But how, how many times do these shows constantly, they're adding new features, they're adding new sponsorships, they're adding new hours. There's a new section of the hall that's focused on environmentally friendly products there, or we have a showcase for this.

Jim: And if you don't research the show. You're gonna miss out. You're gonna miss out on opportunities. So that's number one is research the show. Step two is to set the metrics and goals. Okay, we've already already hit on the importance of this, but setting those metrics and goals, it's not just one goal, it's multiple goals and really doing due diligence around that.

Jim: The third step is focusing your messaging and your branding. And this goes back to the first step, which is researching the show. And part of researching the [00:18:00] show is understanding the audience that's gonna be at the show. Is it going to be decision makers? Is it going to be, I. Users of the product, where do people fall?

Jim: Who's coming to the show? Understand that and the industry and all that. And now how do I focus my messaging to retract that person, that audience? 'cause it might be different than other shows that you do during the year. So don't just be generic. Uh, and, and that's why working with a company like BlueHive is, is gonna be so important because they are going to say.

Jim: Or, okay, we're gonna help you to design a booth that where we could swap out graphics and we could swap out messaging because we know that you're taking this booth, you can't afford two huge displays, but you can afford one display, and then we can make modular panels and graphics. But that's a whole nother discussion that these folks here can help you out with.

Jim: But. It's honing in on that messaging, honing in on that branding and keeping it as simple and clear as possible. [00:19:00] Uh, and uh, we've all been to shows where we've seen people and you go past a booth and you go, I don't even know what you do. I. I, I've, I've looked quickly. I've glanced. I didn't read everything because it looks like a brochure on this one banner here.

Jim: I have no idea what that says. I'm not taking the time, but I have no idea what you do. In fact, there there was one, one show this, uh, this popped in my head just now. I was at a show and it was a very stark, uh, booth. Very, very, it just had their name and it had like some weird logo. And I was just like, I have no clue.

Jim: Not I, I'm not even gonna attempt to guess as to what they do. So I went up, went up to them and I said. I asked him, what do you, what do you do? And he told me, I can't even remember what it was. And he said, I said, well, why did you put that somewhere on here? What you do? Oh, we're trying to get people to be curious and come and ask us.

Jim: I said, how's that working for you? He was, I guess it's not too good. I, they were trying to be Apple, you [00:20:00] know, Apple's got this very clear image, you know, and, and I said, well, well, apple has spent billions of dollars and decades to build to come to where they are today. That's not you. So don't get too clever and don't get too stark and clean and, and don't.

Jim: Uh, don't be too curious. Yeah. You could add curiosity into your messaging and your branding and all that, but don't, don't overdo it in that. So focus your message and your brand. 

Chris: Yeah. Jim. And, and I know you're, you're on a roll here and I don't wanna, yeah. I don't wanna, you know, veer off the, off the road too far, but No, please, I'm with you on that.

Chris: It's like, it's, um, you know, hit people over the head with what it is that you do. Right. And, and what, why they should care because you've got, you got three to five seconds. You know? Mm-hmm. Somebody's passing by your, your 10 foot, 20 foot booth, whatever it is, bigger booth, maybe a little longer, but you have a very short period of time to to hook 'em.

Chris: And you were curious and went in and asked. Most people are just gonna walk by. Like, I don't, I don't know [00:21:00] what that is. It doesn't mean anything to me. I don't have the time to To go wonder. Right, right. So take people over the head with exactly what it is that you do and why they should care. 

Jim: Yeah. And the why they should care is really, really important.

Jim: Because you don't wanna blend in with all your competitors. You don't want them saying, okay, I've got these four choices and they're all equal. No. How are you better than your competitors? Make sure that stands out in some way. I mean, I go back, you know, Chris, you'll, you'll remember this, the old, uh, Avis Rental car, uh, commercials back in the day was, we try harder.

Jim: It's like, that's a great message because no one can refute that. I. No, you don't. We try hard, you know, no one's gonna say that we try harder. That's, that's a great customer service message. And, and we knew that they're a rental car company, so if I'm choosing, oh, they're, they may, maybe they're going to take a little more attention to me.

Jim: So what can you say to make yourself stand out? Maybe it's not something customer service. Maybe it's, uh, product [00:22:00] features. Maybe you're gonna save money over some, whatever it is. Make sure you're highlighting what makes you different and special and unique. Yeah, thanks Chris. That it's so, so, so important.

Jim: You don't wanna blend in, that's for sure. Uh, the step four. Step four is now we design the attendee journey. So when people come to your booth, and whether that is a 10 by 10 or it's a, you know, 50 by 50, uh, you either people are gonna do one of two things. Well, one of three things. They're gonna walk right past your booth, but if they come and stop at your booth, are they gonna just stop at your booth?

Jim: Or are you gonna take 'em on a journey? I guess you, uh, best way to think of this is if you're, if you're looking at your dream car, are you looking at it from the outside? Are you peeking through the window because the doors are locked? I. Or are you inviting people to sit in there and let's go on a test drive and let's, uh, let me show you why we're special and, and get an idea of what it's like to to, to be with us and design that [00:23:00] journey from the time you're engaging them to building some curiosity, but more importantly, let's.

Jim: Let's find out about a, about the attendee. The person that's standing right across from me get all that information out from them, and then we take them on the journey and we can craft our message to them based on what they just told us. Don't just spew something generic. That might not be what they want to hear.

Jim: They might want, you might have something very specific. That can, that can be, uh, right to their needs. So you wanna make sure we're talking to them very specifically. And then we want to, uh, figure out what is the final step? What is our goal? Did we, do we, did we qualify them? Is our goal to set an appointment, to schedule a demo, to write an order?

Jim: Maybe, maybe you're in an industry where you can write orders right there at the, on the show floor. What is our goal? Make sure you are leading people to that goal and then get 'em outta your booth because we want more people in our booth and longer someone stands in our booth. The, the, we are missing [00:24:00] opportunities for other people that are walking past.

Jim: So, uh, so it's designing that attendee journey and be very, very intentional. Which leads to our next step, number five, and that is training our staff for success. And so now that we have our goals, we've got our attendee journey, we've set the metrics, we've set the branding. We need to train every person that's gonna be working in our booth on all of those things.

Jim: Everyone should be crystal clear on the engagement questions. What are we telling people to bring them into the booth? How are we presenting our company? What are we saying? What are our most common questions that we get? And everyone's got a standard answer that we're not to be robots, but so that we are saying consistently, no matter who they go up to in the booth, they're getting a consistent message about our brand and what we do and our products and things like that.

Jim: And make sure everyone understands what is this journey we're taking people on and what are our goals and maybe me, what is my specific. Goal, and we talked about this a little bit earlier, what is my specific goals? What are my things that when I leave the [00:25:00] show. Was that a good investment for my company, for me to be there?

Jim: Did I hit my goals and am I proud of the, the work that I did? Or was I just thinking about, oh, we're in Vegas. I can't wait to go. We got tickets for that Cirque de sole show later on, and, and we're going to dinner at this great steakhouse. And am I thinking about that or am I thinking more about. How am I, how am I presenting and am I helping my company reach the goals, uh, that we're doing here for here at the show?

Jim: So train your staff for success. 

Chris: I think you're, you're speaking Dana's love language on that. So as, as a designer who's also our EVP of strategy, you know, that's where I. You know, her brain lives. And, uh, having just done exhibitor live, we had a, we had a 10 by 30 space and we had a literal journey that started on the left and it moved through the booth and it was nice, uh, all of these different engagements and everything that, that Dana and her creative team kind of ideated and came up with.

Chris: So, um, but we actually had, and, and one of the things that we try to do is we try to. [00:26:00] Also talk about the alignment of sales and marketing and the effort and how we need to kind of get those, you know, everybody on the same page actually just talked about it last week with, uh, with Ed Marsh. Um, but, uh, but Dana did a great job.

Chris: She brought in some of the rest of her creative team into the sales meeting and I. Pictures of the booth, here's, you know, the, the, the renderings and so forth. Here's what's happening, right? To kind of walk us through to understand what that, that customer journey was gonna be, the talking points at each one of those locations, there was a cool interactive process where the company, where the, where the customer, um, would, you know, select, uh, a really interesting kind of feather.

Chris: The idea was like a feather in your cap. It was, it was a great theme and great idea that was executed really well. So, um, at the end of the day, they had to put some information into, um, into the portal in order to be registered to, to win something. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, and she and, and her team did a fantastic job of guiding the salespeople who were gonna be the primary workers in the space, um, you know, through [00:27:00] that journey so that we all.

Chris: Knew what we were talking about. Right. And we weren't just showing up there, like you said, you know, kind of being like, what, what are we doing here again? Oh yeah, we're trying to sell exhibits. Right. So there you boil down to the pre-work and the, and the goals ahead of time. 

Jim, Chris and Dana: That's 

Jim: it. That's it. I love that.

Jim: Thank you for bringing that because that is, that gives people, now hopefully they're starting to, uh, get the wheel spinning as to how can they do that for their company. Again, you don't need a 10 by 30, maybe you have a 10 by 10, but maybe even have a bigger space. You have a bigger space. It could even be more challenging.

Jim: Because, and it, and it might not be a journey that people go through where they're going from one step to another physically, where they're going from one side of the booth to another. But maybe it's just you're taking them on a journey where you, you're talking about them. Maybe you're pointing to things on a, some sort of a roadmap or, or, uh, things in your display.

Jim: It's so just important to, uh, to make sure you have that orchestrated ahead of time. Yeah. That pre-planning is, is, is everything. Good job, Dana. Way to [00:28:00] go. 

Dana: Thanks. Well, I did what you said. I took the audience into consideration. They were there to learn. That's what that particular show, exhibit live. It's awesome.

Dana: It's one of my favorite shows and they're there all about educating trade show and event managers. So that was what they, you know. Put a feather in your hat, right? Learn some more knowledge. What are you already strong at? So even when it came to the different types of engagement, there was digital engagement, there was curiosity evoking, um, there was hands-on engagement, you know, like you said, different senses.

Dana: But yes, part of that was entering so you could win a, a thing that, that made sense with our theme, but. When they were doing that, they were also being able to download a bunch of tips and cheat sheets that we had created specifically for a trade show and event managers, because they were there to learn.

Dana: So we were basically saying, you know, we are here to support you as part of your team. So whether you work with us or not, we'd love to work with you, but even, even if we don't, we still wanna help you get what you want out of this show. So here is some more knowledge. 

Jim: Yeah, I knew, I knew, I knew it was in the right place because that's my, that [00:29:00] is, that's the way It's your jam.

Jim: That I totally your jam. That's the way I approach people. It's like, you know, people have said to me before, Jim, you give away a lot of content. And it's like, yeah. And people, especially those that have never done this before, they're gonna go. This is a lot of work. Maybe I need some help. So, well, like we said earlier, 

Dana: everyone knows something.

Dana: Everyone's good at something. Yeah. Every single person. Absolutely. And everyone should teach whatever that thing is. Right. Love it. Be open and teach the thing that you know, 'cause we'll all be dead someday and it's no not gonna help anyone that we take it with us. Right. 

Jim: That's for sure. That's for sure.

Jim: Alright, so let me move on past step five, which just train your staff for success to step six, and that is market to drive traffic. Uh, letting people know that you're gonna be at the show obviously is a, is a great thing to do. Using, using whatever you've got available to you, uh, social media and your email list and all that.

Jim: But going beyond that, because you, you're, uh, most of the people on your show list are on your, uh. In your social [00:30:00] feed, most of the people in your email list, your, your company's email list, your personal email list, most likely not all those people are gonna be at the show. And so you're not hitting your, your true audience.

Jim: So find out what does the show have available for you for marketing. To people that are actually going to be coming to the show, the people that are registered for the show, to the other exhibitors, how could you take advantage of whatever marketing that they have available and then make sure you are doing everything you can to drive traffic to your booth.

Jim: Don't just say, I'm gonna be here. Don't just say that because everybody else at the show is gonna be there, but why should they stop to your booth? Why should they specifically seek you out? Whether that's some sort of promotion, you're running, you're doing a demo, you're run, you're. Launching a new product, new service.

Jim: You've got a special, something going on in your booth, you're giving a little mini seminar, whatever it is, give them a reason why they need to stop your booth. So, but, uh, marketing is a, a super [00:31:00] important thing that you've gotta do ahead of time, and that takes all, all that takes. Extra planning as to how are we gonna do this?

Jim: And then during the show, how are we going to continue to market to get people, you know, can we do a, so at that point now you're, you're relying on social, uh, and doing some, maybe some geotargeting and things like that to get people who are maybe at the show already into your booth. So, uh, very, very strategic, but you gotta think of this ahead of time and you gotta have your messaging planned out and, and all of that so that you are driving and not just, not just marketing that I we're gonna be there, but market to, so.

Jim: To truly drive traffic to your booth. So that's number six. Uh, number seven, create that follow-up strategy and, uh, and automate as much as possible, but make sure you have that, that follow-up strategy fully designed and ready to go before the show. Do not wait until you come back from the show. Because if, say the show is multiple days, you're, you've been outta the office 3, 4, 5 days, [00:32:00] maybe an entire week by the time you get back, chaos happens because you've got all those emails and you may have had all the best intentions that at the end of each night, I'm gonna respond to all my emails, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna stay caught up.

Jim: And then there's dinners and there's all these other things that, that, uh, that happen. And. Then you, you come back to an avalanche of stuff and life happens, and maybe there's stuff in your personal life that is going on and all of a sudden the the follow ups don't happen. And, oh, shoot, I was gonna send an email.

Jim: I was gonna reach out, I was gonna do this. And, and that just doesn't happen. It gets kicked down the road. And then by the time you, uh, you may have had a. Fantastic conversation with someone and you wait too long and you reach them and they went with one of your competitors who is also at the show. So you don't wanna miss that out.

Jim: So follow up, uh, have that strategy in place and automate it as much as possible. So you could just dump those, those emails into, uh, into your. Your drip [00:33:00] campaigns and auto, automatically things are going out. Customize it as much as you can. So if you, whether someone just stopped by the booth, you scan their badge versus someone you had a great conversation with, make sure they're not just get both getting a generic message of thanks for stopping by our booth, but give a little love to those people that actually you had great conversations with.

Jim: But that's, again, this is all something that needs to be designed and thought through and, uh, put in place before the show because. Okay. Life happens and work happens while you're there at the show. And then that leads to the last step, step number eight, and that is executing your best show ever. If your people are trained well, uh, make sure whoever is in charge of your staff.

Jim: If that's you, then make sure, uh, you're meeting everyone's there at the booth 15 minutes before, at least before everything starts, you have that pre-show meeting. Okay? Here's what we're doing today. Everyone locked and loaded. Make sure that you have. Everyone in place and that everyone's is doing well.

Jim: And then just execute [00:34:00] and make sure you're keeping an eye on things. And does your booth look as good halfway through that first day as it did when you opened the show? It should. It should. And so maybe there's somebody in charge of just going around and make sure that, oh, someone left a water bottle over here on the counter.

Jim: Let's get rid of that. Someone, uh, you know, the, the stack of pens that looked all nice and neat. Uh, at the start of the day is all over the place. And, uh, so you have that so you're constantly looking and being aware of that. Uh, and then at the end of it, celebrate, celebrate with your team. Um, or if it's a multi-day show, also do a deep dive, uh, at the end of each day.

Jim: Uh, it's super important to learn. What did we learn today? What could we change that is changeable for tomorrow? Uh, don't just go through and, uh, this isn't work and we're gonna change it next year. No, if you could change something. Shoot. No one is looking at this, uh, this dis this piece of our display.

Jim: Maybe we should move that. I. Okay, move it. If you can move it, uh, if you, if the engagement question that [00:35:00] you're using is falling flat, change your engagement question. You know, whatever it is, make those changes on the fly. And then definitely at the very end, uh, do a deep dive, uh, with everybody. Um, I.

Jim: Whether that's immediately after the show immediately is the best because information kind of disappears as as time passes on. So, uh, make sure you're doing that deep five, dive with your team and celebrate with them whether the show was, was great or was, was not. You put in a lot of work, go out to a nice dinner or something like that, celebrate with them in some way and just, uh, and, and then learn.

Jim: Uh, for, for the next time. Take all those lessons and make sure you implement those for future shows. So that's the eight steps. And then, uh, there's that, uh, I have a little arrow that goes from eight to one on my, on my roadmap, and that is the continuous improvement arrow. So that is, if you just did this and then didn't learn from it and just repeated it again, you're, you're.

Jim: Uh, [00:36:00] that's not a recipe for success. You want to make sure you're learning and getting better, improving every single time, and you'll see your results improve. It's just, uh, it's that, that's, it's that simple. It's that simple. 

Chris: Jim, that's, I I I love, I love that list, what you've walked us through, and it's really cool in that like, whether, like you said, whether we're, we're designing a, a 10 by 10 or a, you know, 60 by 80, right?

Chris: The, the, the, the, the foundational concepts are the same for, for either, right? And, and we know from working with our clients. You know, uh, a well-rounded trade show program includes all of those sizes of shows. There might be the, you know, a couple of really large custom shows per year that, that, that get extra effort.

Chris: And those are the ones, honestly, that you're more likely to, to, to put the time and effort into. But don't forget about the bulk of the rest of the, of the shows. Um, you know, when we look at a, at a program, we, we try to identify like, what's the workhorse? Size of your exhibit program. Um, and [00:37:00] oftentimes again, right, it's, uh, it's, we've got the 40 by 40 that we do twice a year, and then we do 30 by, you know, 20 by 30.

Chris: But the bulk, the workhorse is a 10 by 20 or the workhorse is a 20 by 20. We're gonna roll out 10 of those. Mm-hmm. And those are easy to kind of whistle past the graveyard. If you do, it's just kind of like rinse and repeat, but it's right. Like, listen, regardless of the size of your. The budget has never really been under more of a microscope than it is right now.

Chris: So it's super important that whatever ROI, we need to extract from all our event program, we're doing the best we can do at every single event in order to yield the best you know that we can get. Right? So when you, when you shortcut and when you don't put the time and effort into, regardless of the size exhibit, regardless of the scope, right, when you don't put in the time and effort to do it right.

Chris: That's when you're not gonna get the, the, the ROI that you need. Right? And, and listen, [00:38:00] you know, if you're, if you're watching this show, you're inve involved in the event industry in some way, you're probably responsible for, you know, for that, uh, you know, for that team or for the, the dollars or for the ROI, right?

Chris: So we all, we gotta look out for, for, you know, what we're in charge of and what we're responsible for, and make sure we're, we're helping them have the best possible outcome 

Jim: that we can. Yeah, those three magic letters, R-O-I-R-O-I. So that's what it's all about. And, and these shows are expensive and they take a lot of resources, time, money, energy.

Jim: Um, there's so much, there's so much. And we need to be aware of everything that goes into, what does it mean just to break even? Do we understand that? Because right, every time we bring someone in, off, off the, uh. Out, out of the, uh, field or out of their day job, there's also a lost opportunity cost. They're not doing their day job.

Jim: So if they're a sales rep, they're not selling. I mean, obviously we're there [00:39:00] for, to fill the pipeline and future sales and all that. Um, it's, there's just so much that, uh, we need to be aware of. 

Chris: Yeah, exactly. So, hey, listen, um, at the exhibitor marketers toolbox, which we're, we're in right now, we're sharpening the saws and, and the, and the axes and the hatchets and all, uh, in that toolbox, we aim to try to come in somewhere in the 35 to 40 minute range, just so this doesn't turn into a, a really long, uh, obtrusive.

Chris: Uh, situation. Right. Um, although we had some more questions designed, I mean, you hit on some amazing stuff and there's obviously the opportunity to do a whole, uh, much deeper dive with, with, uh, with Jim and, and the trade show, um, university. So, um, we always like to. To just kind of close with asking, you know, a a, a question.

Chris: A question as it were. So, Jim, you've hit on a whole bunch of things. Um, you got, you know, 30 something years worth of stuff [00:40:00] in your brain. You started as a kid in a candy store, ATTO, and, uh, and here you are sharing all of these wonderful things. Could you boil it down to maybe three things for whether you were a new exhibit manager or new to exhibiting or, or.

Chris: Or a seasoned professional. Are there three things that kind of really stick out for you, that you wanna maybe able to leave our audience with by, by chance? 

Jim: Wow. Yeah. Okay. Try to bear, boil it down to three. I guess the first would, and Dana, you, you, uh, you mentioned this also, and that is understanding your audience.

Jim: If you are just going in there and you don't know your audience, you're just going to be. Uh, it's gonna be a message that's lost on everybody and it could be a huge waste of time and money. So understand everything you can about your audience, especially where, what are their needs? What are their pain points?

Jim: What are their, their hot buttons, they and ifpe? And if you can meet those. That is going to be so, so key. Uh, the second thing [00:41:00] is the goals. Setting the goals and the metrics. Doing it right, taking the time to invest in setting the right goals, uh, is so, so, so important. Um, I guess the third thing, and I really didn't touch on this, but it is what we all do, uh, and, and that is understanding.

Jim: One is that you don't know what you don't know. Especially if you're new to the industry that you're going into, maybe, maybe with a company that's, that's done trade shows for years. Uh, you spend a lot on trade shows, but now you're expanding into a new vertical market or you're, you're going to a new show you've never been to before.

Jim: Reach out and get a coach. Get someone who can coach you along this. Mm-hmm. To make sure you haven't missed anything. That's why I love working with companies because I, I, you think about every single professional athlete, you know, from, from Michael Jordan to uh, tiger Woods, they all have personal coaches.

Jim: You know, they don't seem like they would need the ones that need it, but [00:42:00] they all do, and the top CEOs all have, have. Personal coaches and trainers and boards that guide them, don't just go in and, and say, oh, we know how to do a trade show. We've been there before and we don't. No. Get somebody who can help guide you along the way.

Jim: People like, uh, like Chris and Dana, who, who work with companies every day could help those help you craft your message, your display. And that's what I love to do as well. Just make sure that they haven't missed anything. 'cause you don't know what you don't know. So those would be my top three. 

Dana: Those are awesome points.

Dana: Jim, if people wanted to get, um, more information on the eight point roadmap or literally have that, um, how would they get access to that type of information from you? 

Jim: Yeah, I would say if you want to reach out to me directly, uh, Jim at Trade show you dot B is my email address. That's Jim at trade show.

Jim: The letter u.bz or yeah, connect with me on LinkedIn is a great way. I'm very active on LinkedIn, so make sure you, you connect with me there. Be happy to talk with. You one-on-one. I, I set up 15 minute [00:43:00] discovery calls that are absolutely no charge. Uh, so if you wanna do that, and my, my, uh, website trade show you.biz trade show, the later u do bz, uh, is where, uh, we're just reinventing ourselves right now, uh, at trade show University.

Jim: So excited for people to see that as well. 

Chris: That's awesome. Thanks so much for being a resource, uh, for our community here. I mean, what we're, what we're trying to do with event marketers Toolbox is very much in alignment with what you're already and have been doing at, uh, at Trade Show University. Love it.

Chris: Really. Right. Uh. I love, I love the idea and the, the, the famous statement made, made, uh, popular by JFK of, uh, a rising tide raises all ships, right? So despite the fact that we work in an industry where there's several competitors and so forth, I, I am coming outta CDI really kind of leaned into the idea that like, we just need to kind of wrap our arms around this community as a whole, regardless of the laundry color that you're wearing.

Chris: And we help everybody get [00:44:00] better. Uh, it's gonna make trade shows more productive. It's gonna make companies more profitable, and the, those shows will continue to grow, right? So if we all kind of lean in and try to do this together, we're all gonna be the, the benefactors of, uh, of an upleveled, uh, you know, field 

Jim: Absolutely.

Jim: Get better and help others get better. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, keep reaching out. It's a great industry. There's enough business for everybody. There really is. Yeah. 

Chris: Awesome. All right, well let's, uh, go ahead and wrap this up. This has been a fantastic, uh, a fa fantastic episode. Jim, thanks so much for joining us.

Chris: Thanks. Thank you. We really appreciate it. Thanks everybody for tuning into the, to, uh, I was gonna say tuning into Treasury University, into the event market. 

Jim, Chris and Dana: Careful, I'll take over your other podcast. He's so shy.

Chris: Alright, have a great day everybody. Appreciate everyone. Thanks.