EMT #20 with Alison French - Don't Just Show Up: Turning Trade Shows into Revenue Engines

In this episode of Event Marketer’s Toolbox, hosts Chris Dunn and Brendon Hamlin sit down with Alison French, founder of JoinLTO.com, to unpack how event marketers can ditch reactive booth tactics and instead walk into trade shows with a plan that drives actual revenue.

Most brands show up hoping for the best. Alison shows up with a system—and helps her clients walk out with booked meetings and pipeline to prove it. From building pre-show prospect lists to post-show CRM automation, this conversation breaks down the real work behind successful in-person marketing.

🔗 Bonus: Learn how her tool, ShowScout, helps teams stay organized and accountable while working the floor.

🔹 Booth Traffic ≠ Pipeline

High traffic doesn’t always mean high value. Alison urges marketers to build pre-show outreach plans based on ICPs and decision-maker lists—whether or not those contacts plan to attend.

🔹 Sales & Marketing Must Align—Before the Show Starts

She details how successful teams meet weekly before events to assign key accounts, define CTAs, and align on messaging. “If sales and marketing aren’t speaking the same language pre-show, they definitely won’t post-show.”

🔹 Plan for the Follow-Up Before the Event Begins

Alison explains how post-show email flows and CRM automations should be built before hitting the show floor. No more “we’ll follow up later” disasters.

🔹Video Is Underused—But Critical

Whether it’s matched audience ads or on-site storytelling, video can significantly boost engagement and pre-show visibility. You don’t need a full production crew—just focus and intent.

🔹 Accountability Drives ROI
Have your team track who they meet, what conversations happened, and which outcomes were achieved. “If you sent 5 reps to meet 40 people each, and nobody followed up, what was the point?”

This episode is a masterclass in turning your trade show investment into tangible pipeline. 

Alison doesn’t just talk strategy—she offers a real blueprint. From campaign planning to team accountability and post-show execution, she reminds us that ROI isn’t just possible—it’s a choice.

Whether you’re a first-time field marketer or a seasoned CMO, this is one episode you’ll want to bookmark and share with your team.

👉🏼 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

• 0:00 Intro & welcome
• 1:49 Meet guest host Brendon Hamlin
• 2:39 Alison French’s journey through marketing, yachting, and SaaS
• 7:24 Why events became her go-to channel for pipeline
• 10:54 Building ICP-driven prospect lists before events
• 13:39 Why “walking the floor” is not a strategy
• 18:09 Leadership’s role in enabling smart event execution
• 21:39 Busy vs. Focused: Planning individual rep goals
• 27:09 Video storytelling before, during, and after shows
• 31:39 Real-world results: 500% increase in show ROI
• 37:09 Budget shifts vs. budget growth—what it really costs to do it right
• 40:09 Alison’s 3 closing takeaways

Transcript

Chris Dunn: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. I am Chris Dunn and we are on the Event Marketers Toolbox. Thank you so much for joining. We are building a community of event marketers here. And, uh, we welcome folks from every side of the aspect, whether you're corporate events, whether you're festivals, whether you are a practitioner or an executioner or, uh, somebody you know on the, uh, on the trade show side like myself.

Chris Dunn: So, um, every week at, uh, 12 noon Eastern, we roll out a wonderful conversation with people, uh, who were. Who are kind of in every, uh, every seat along the way in that, uh, event journey. Um, I actually have a new, uh, guest host that's joining me. You might recognize him. He was a guest about, uh, I don't know, a month and a half, two months ago.

Chris Dunn: We've become good friends and, uh, my friend, uh, Brenda Hamlin of Hamlin Creative is joining. He's sitting in the, uh, the guest host seat. So, Hey, Brendan, how you doing? 

Brendon Hamlin: Hey, I'm, I'm good Chris. Thanks a lot. I really, really appreciate the opportunity to, uh, to be here with you guys. [00:01:00] 

Chris Dunn: Yeah, 

Brendon Hamlin: absolutely. Tell 

Chris Dunn: us a little bit about your 

Brendon Hamlin: business.

Brendon Hamlin: Sure. So, uh, I run Hamlin Creative and we're a, we're a production company. We focus on, uh, live event marketing. So that would be trade shows, that's conferences, that's activations, you know, really the whole world of experiential where we create content in those sort of unique moments where, you know, a brand and a consumer come together.

Brendon Hamlin: So, uh, it's a, it's a special kind of production. Uh, but we love it and we love the, the energy and the opportunities that, that it, that it affords us. 

Chris Dunn: Hey, that's Fanta. Fantastic. So thanks for agreeing to sit in. You're gonna be a, a guest host for a few, a few episodes and maybe more. Who knows? Um, our actual guest here is Alison French and, uh, she's joining us from San Diego today.

Chris Dunn: Uh, so Alison and I recently connected. Actually, I think it's kind of a cool, I. Uh, social media type of connection story. Mm-hmm. Because she tuned in. She, uh, she was checking out, uh, the, the toolbox a number of weeks ago, um, was commenting. Um, I'll tell you a little bit about our [00:02:00] sponsor in a hot second.

Chris Dunn: But, um, she was interested not only in the content of what we were talking about, but also, uh, it parlayed into additional relationships. So, Allison, thank you so much for joining us. Why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are Yeah. And what you're doing these days. I'm 

Alison French: excited to be here. Um, yeah.

Alison French: So I would say my. Day job hat that I wear is fractional CMO for B2B startups. Really more focused kind of in the health tech space, but generally speaking a lot of SaaS as well. And I have spent my career in marketing. Um, I got into events, first job out of college marketing coordinator, wearing a lot of hats and suddenly discovered, oh wait, I can go be outside.

Alison French: I was in yachting, so our shows were outside on the water in beautiful places. It was. Little did my 21-year-old self know how lucky I was. Um, and I could do it all. So I could meet people and interact and chat, and I could set up these exhibits and displays and try to find a way to create pull through.

Alison French: And all these things that I had no idea were event marketing. [00:03:00] It was merely just, it filled my bucket. I loved it. And from that point on, events have just been part of what I do, and it's just been such an interesting journey. From there, I transitioned into e-commerce. Which is where I fell in love with revenue, because in marketing, normally you're kind of loosely tied to revenue, but not really in eCommerce, you're driving revenue for the company.

Alison French: There's just no way to avoid it. So early in my career, those like foundational moments in my career was very much focused on how do you make an impact in revenue? What marketing tactics are gonna drive revenue? And it just imprinted on me. Um, so when I made the shift to B2B and got into my own company, I'm serial startup, I can't help myself.

Alison French: Um, really started to find that over time. Events were always just this key component of what I would bring to brands. So Children's Nutrition Company, you know, we were walking events and we were exhibiting and doing everything from small conferences focused on, um, pediatric [00:04:00] nutritionists to big shows like Expo West.

Alison French: And so events have always just been a like kind of. Steady thread in everything I do and they've always been my happy place. And it wasn't until about two years ago, I would say that kind of post covid is obviously events were hard, um, in those areas, but post Covid trying to figure out how to generate leads for businesses and recognizing, I think my sweet spot is.

Alison French: Yes, I'm a marketer, like I'm a marketer at heart. I consider myself creative, but when you own your own business, you have to get involved in sales. And so it makes you see, see sales from a very different angle. And so I like to think this intersection of sales and marketing is my sweet spot. And so you're all constantly thinking, how can marketing drive revenue for my clients?

Alison French: And. Surprise, surprise. Campaigns tied to conferences and trade shows and everything we were doing would always go gangbuster. I'm talking C-suite of major hospital systems replying to a cold email. I. [00:05:00] Nope, sorry, I'm not gonna be at A-I-C-H-E this year, but I would love to connect and learn what you're doing and you're just like coming from a land of cold marketing previously, you're like, you just gotta see who's this person reply.

Alison French: Like how, and it just kept being this threat. I was, I've been following for the past couple years of how can you use events as kind of the. Pillar of your account based marketing strategy because 

Chris Dunn: yeah, 

Alison French: it's a one time you can connect in person, you can connect sales, you can connect marketing and create this cohesive campaign that drives revenue.

Alison French: 'cause back to my whole thing, I find revenue, a gamification, like driving revenue is just really fun and. It wasn't until I led my last startup that I realized MQL are a joke because you'll talk to a salesperson and they'll be like, yeah, marketing says I have all these leads, but it's not turning to revenue because these people don't wanna buy.

Alison French: And so it's just a really fun way, I think, to unite both sides of the revenue lens. And [00:06:00] you get them in person. You work on the demand generation, and ultimately you can really drive some pretty significant results. It's a blast. 

Chris Dunn: Awesome. Well, that, that's an excellent description because that's a lot, that's a nice little foreshadowing of exactly what we're gonna talk about today.

Chris Dunn: Yeah. Uh, before we jump into our official questions and really put Allison's feet to the fire and look for all these great answers, I'm gonna talk a little bit about, um, my company, blue Hive. We are a full service exhibit house. We're very creative. We're, uh, we're both East Coast and West Coast. We're kind of in that mid-size, uh, area, about a hundred plus people.

Chris Dunn: So we are not so big that you get lost with us, and we're not so small that we can't handle things. It's, uh, we, we like to think it's a really good size to handle, uh, almost every project that's out there. And in addition to BlueHive, we are also sponsored by a company called, uh, fist Bump. And Fist Bump, uh, coincidentally enough is the other company that I introduced Allison to.

Chris Dunn: Uh, this is an agency that not only. Initially was [00:07:00] helping kind of coach me on how to take my LinkedIn game to the next level. But, um, this was kind of throughout last year. Uh, they were really kind of dangling a carrot of like, Hey Chris, you know, starting a podcast would be a really great idea. And of course the initial, you know, gut reaction from anybody is, is like, this is too much time.

Chris Dunn: It's too, it's a heavy lift. I, I, I'm not gonna be able to do this on my own. And they swoop in. They do the heavy lift, they handle all the hard stuff. Um, and I just kinda show up and talk a lot. Um, but what it does is, is it, it builds reputation. It builds revenue through reputation because of the content that we're creating, these great conversations that we're having with professionals all over, you know, the, the spectrum of of events, um, becomes this amazing content and we use that for marketing.

Chris Dunn: So 

Alison French: fist bump, and I'll chime in. Fist bump is the real, yeah, the real deal. I have. In my fractional CMO hat, talked to a lot of companies about podcasts, tried to figure out how to make LinkedIn live work, and all these different components. And what [00:08:00] Brandon and his team is grading is unlike anything I've experienced before.

Alison French: And I've spent my entire career vetting agencies and people who say they do this, and it's really blown my mind what he's created. 

Chris Dunn: Awesome. So that's, that would be Brandon Lee. Not Brandon. Not Brandon. Yeah. 

Alison French: Different, right? 

Chris Dunn: I'm totally gonna mess that up today. But that is, that's really the, the best, uh, fist bump read that we could possibly do.

Chris Dunn: 'cause we literally have a, a, a live testimonial happening right in front of our eyes. So, pretty awesome stuff. Um, so again, thanks for joining us. That's who's our, who's sponsoring us. I'm gonna kick it back to, to Brendan and he's got a couple of questions we're gonna get started with for, uh, for Alison.

Brendon Hamlin: Yeah. Thanks. Well, um, I guess, you know, I love the perspective that you bring to, you know, how you look at, at events. Um, and, but I'd like to dig down a little bit deeper and, and talk about how you really build a strategy that is not just, you know, we're gonna make something look great and hope everybody comes to it.

Brendon Hamlin: [00:09:00] And it's not just a let's scan a bunch of badges. How do you create that, that, uh, co-creating strategy where, uh, where the marketing. Vision can come in, but the sales execution is also very apparent. And, and part of that strategy, how does, how do you work that together? Yeah. 

Alison French: I think this comes from my last startup was in account-based marketing space.

Alison French: We were trying to figure out how to productize account-based marketing for med device. And it got really good at finding prospect lists. Like little did you know, that would be something that would be a skillset. But what I came to realize is events is the same way. Yes. Events aren't necessarily releasing attendee lifts anymore, but you can always create one.

Alison French: You can do it yourself. Is it gonna be one-to-one? Perfect. No, but can you. Look at your ICP. Can you perhaps layer on a technology or a geographic region? I worked with a eyeglass company that was doing a show in Iowa, and so we did a geography poll for anyone that was an optician or [00:10:00] OPT neurologist. Like it allowed us to still create an audience list to go out to and say, Hey, are you attending this regional event?

Alison French: And it gave the sales team a focus and a starting point so they're not just. Investing in getting the show standing there hoping someone walks by, and then in fact, everyone we pulled for that list is in fact his target audience. So it was just like the. Pillar of his account-based marketing strategy was this event, and it created a really beautiful kind of cyclical experience in all of his outbound efforts to tie and try to drive connections at the event.

Alison French: And so I think when it, 

Chris Dunn: it's almost like re, regardless of whether they were attending that event, I've built a con, I've built a conversation or connection with this person who is my ICP anyways. 

Alison French: You got it. You just hit the nail on the head, Chris, like that is literally what I'm trying to convince everyone on is if you come into it thinking it has to be perfect, they have to be in the room, you're gonna miss it.

Alison French: But if you're gonna come out of it and say. I'm just gonna ask if they're attending and I'm just gonna try to [00:11:00] start a conversation and I'm not trying to sell, I'm not trying to pitch. That's really where the starting point comes from. And then it really just becomes the importance of documentation and making sure everybody's aligned so you get your list.

Alison French: Sales team knows who they're focused on, marketing knows who they're focused on, and then you keep layering your tactics to speak to that audience as the show goes on. You can do other things, but I think ultimately, knowing. Who your decision makers are that you're trying to drive to your booth. Because when I, about a year ago, really tried to figure out where was I going in this trade?

Alison French: So space, how could I better support my customers? And the recurring theme is not being able to talk to decision makers is the sales people's main pain point when they're leaving a show. I stood there, I didn't talk to any decision makers. Number two is the people who came by the booth weren't. Worth my time, like they just wanted swag.

Alison French: And so that was really where I sat down and tried to figure out how can we make this a better experience for people. 

Brendon Hamlin: [00:12:00] Do you find that some of those fundamental things that are parts part of a trade show need to be reevaluated? 

Alison French: No. I still, I actually am a big fan that everything people are doing at trade shows are already working.

Alison French: Like a great video engagement strategy is fabulous. You should absolutely have that, and you should be tying that into your matched audience ads. So the same prospect list should be getting those videos. Um, I think. Motivating with swag? Like what outcome are you trying to create from your prospects? Like do you want them to book a demo?

Alison French: Do you wanna just stop by and have a conversation? Like I think the toolkit people have is great. I just think if you're gonna show up with a toolkit and hope a decision maker walks by your booth, that is really expensive gamble, and you don't have to gamble like you can try and do some things that increase the likelihood of a positive outcome.

Brendon Hamlin: It's really about taking that, like building the conversation. Um, and, and the, the event is just the midpoint of that [00:13:00] conversation 

Alison French: completely. And then it's cool because if you go into it with a plan, here's the list, here's the people we're talking, I. Your follow-up. Sorry, I missed you. I didn't have time to connect.

Alison French: It's much more authentic. It's all anchored on something that's real. Your subject clients can be like, see you in San Diego. Like, it's just real and authentic and it just allows the whole organization to speak to people as humans and start. Relationships, but it only works if you know your ICP. If you're laser focused, if your team is willing to commit on both sides to, Hey, we're investing our dollars around this audience.

Alison French: But if everybody comes together with that focus, it makes a big impact. I. 

Chris Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. That's, that's good stuff. And that's a fantastic segue for, uh, for my question. So I'm gonna start with, and I stole this from Alison, I'm gonna give you credit, but execution is really freaking hard. 

Alison French: Yeah. 

Chris Dunn: Right?

Chris Dunn: So how do we help our people do this? How do we, how do we pull it all [00:14:00] together? Right. You, you just kind laid out a lot of great. You know, things from a playbook on, on, on the things that we need to do. But kind of let's take a little bit of a deeper dive. You know, you talked a little bit about the ICPs, but you know, aligning on outreach, the ads, the CTAs, and like 

Alison French: Yeah.

Chris Dunn: Kind of how do arms around this whole thing. Yeah. 

Alison French: Yeah. I think some of it starts with leadership and having a realistic expectation of what you can put on your people, because sometimes I'm finding. To do trade shows, right? Requires an entire different tech stack that you may or may not have access to, um, an entire different skillset that might not be part of your normal day job.

Alison French: And so I think it's important for leadership to equip their team with what they need to be successful or have realistic expectations of what they can accomplish with what you've given them. So I would say starting there is probably the first step in execution is realistic on what do we. Have to work with from a budget perspective, a team perspective, a tech stack perspective.

Alison French: And then I think the reason execution gets hard is everybody [00:15:00] has day jobs. I think in larger companies we're lucky to have an event marketer who can kind of take the lead and wrap their arms around the event. But in a lot of the startups I've worked at, I was VP of sales and marketing, but I'm also wearing like financial forecasting and supply chain hats.

Alison French: Because we were a lean team, like my ability to do a complete perfectly executed outbound campaign was minimal because I was spread so thin. But we knew we had to be at Expo West. It was what the brand needed to do, and so it was just this weird push-pull situation. So I think that's usually where execution falls short, is people are slammed in their day jobs.

Alison French: Trying to figure out when to squeeze it in. They can never quite pull it off. And so they just show up because they have those three or four days on their calendar. And then the same thing happens on the backside. They get home, they've got four days of work piled up, best intentions, and it just gets lost in the shuffle.

Alison French: And I think that's where that stat of like only 20% of leads are followed up on. And I believe it because I've seen it happen time and time [00:16:00] again with my clients. Or you know, the one obligatory, we send an email thanking them and then nothing else happens. Because some deal is, I think in sales you're chasing revenue.

Alison French: So it's like, what's the hottest deal? You go after that and everything else just kind of falls out. So I think that's where the other side of the plan is, is making sure there's an accountability lens on what are we doing before show what are we doing on the floor and what are we doing after the show.

Alison French: And being really realistic about what can we accomplish with the tools and the resources we have available. 

Chris Dunn: Yeah. You know, I, I just kind of wanna circle back and you kind of ended up with that, but one of the things you mentioned is from a leadership standpoint, it's like understand who we're sending, you know, to the show.

Chris Dunn: And it's not automatically just like, we're gonna send sales because we're looking to make sales. Right. You have to kind of look at the, at the entire team, examine their skill sets so they. Introverted, extroverted. Are they technical? Yeah. Do they have the gift of gab or whatever it is? Right. We, we've talked a lot on the show about making sure that people are, you know, investing in training for their booth staff.

Chris Dunn: Um, but in a [00:17:00] o over and above that, um, you know, there's also just understanding what the skill sets and strengths are of, of the team. So as somebody who. Planned shows and kind of went as a, as a revenue leader to those shows with certain expectations. Did you look at the, at the stable of people that you had available and, and handpick them?

Chris Dunn: Or like, what does that look like from, from your end as a, as a CMO, as an acting Yeah. Revenue chief. Absolutely. 

Alison French: I would say I've lived both sides of it, where lean team, we just have to show up with what we have. Mm-hmm. To picking the person that. Can show Well, and I don't know a more polite way to say that, but someone who is not gonna show up in.

Alison French: A hoodie sweatshirt looking sloppy. Like there's sometimes people are just a little bit more polished and they have that persona that represents the brand well. Um, it's really hard to do as companies are scaling, but the f you can't beat the founder. You cannot be a founder walking around talking. You can't that [00:18:00] energy, but sometimes it's hard.

Alison French: So then you have to look at who can best represent that company with that same kind of energy and pulse. Um. We actually set it up at one of my past organizations where we had one entire person that was, that's all they did. They focused on events and then they would bounce the leads to the rest of the team to take it because he really had that gift of showing up and showing, well, 

Chris Dunn: brand ambassador, right.

Chris Dunn: Kind of. Yeah. Completely. 

Alison French: The hat. 

Chris Dunn: Wear that hat co. Absolutely. Alright, Brendan, back to you to, uh, take us to the next in depth. 

Brendon Hamlin: Yeah, so I think there's the, there's the notion between, um. Somebody being busy and somebody being focused. And there are different strategies and different methods and ways that somebody can be more focused.

Brendon Hamlin: And maybe you can talk a little bit about how you go into a show, uh, focused so that you're coming out of it with, you know, with substantive results. 

Alison French: Yeah, absolutely. [00:19:00] So I really like to have kind of a. Twofold approach to this is one, each rep is assigned key accounts that they need to speak with. And so in some situations, because I'm in SaaS, a lot of times you are exhibiting and the.

Alison French: People in that exhibit hall are your prospective customers? So I'd say services, SaaS, like it's a beautiful situation. So yes, you could just stand at your booth and hope one of those brands come by. Or you could take a look at the exhibitor list ahead of time and get pretty strategic and say, here's who's calling on what.

Alison French: Booths. And even if it's just a conversation starter, if you can make that first touch as a human, you're gonna get better results long term. And so really ensuring that the sales team has a plan for that. So who are they targeting? How many accounts can they realistically call on in a day? I think that can be a little hard.

Alison French: I think sometimes people go to a show and they're walking a show is like, what do you call a tab? Yeah. Not looked upon friendly. But I think the reality is a lot [00:20:00] of sales teams are doing it. They're sending people to walk a show. They cannot cover 5,000 exhibits in two days. So who are you focused on?

Alison French: Whether you're exhibiting or you're walking a show and then holding them accountable, because that's where I think the real magic has come in for my clients is you went to talk to 40 people. How many of those 40 did you talk to? Well, tell me about it. Did you meet them? Did they not meet them? Did they pass you to somebody else?

Alison French: What's the opportunity potential based on that conversation? And then how many other people were you able to bump into? Because usually you can get the extra five or 10, but if you know that, hey, they went for 40, and guess what? They're too busy chatting at the bar. They didn't connect with any of them.

Alison French: Then at least from a sales leadership perspective, you have that accountability to say, okay, you are not going to any more shows. Like you're not meeting your books, 

Chris Dunn: taking away your travel card. 

Alison French: Yeah, exactly. 

Brendon Hamlin: That goes back to Chris deciding who's going. 

Alison French: Yeah, and it's just keeping people accountable. Yeah, and knowing what your actually outcome is, you're trying to work towards [00:21:00] it gets a lot easier.

Alison French: But if you're prepared and you go in with a plan, it's a heck a lot easier if you have the profile picture of the person you're trying to walk up to at a booth, it is it. I am marketer first sales by default, so I still get nervous, like I still get cringey at times walking up, but if I know who I'm looking for.

Alison French: It avoids that awkward, can I talk to the person in charge of purchasing? I can ask for 'em by name or if I recognize the face I can grab and be like, oh, hey, I sent you an email last week. I just wanted to come by and say hello in person. So that instant worry or like flush that people get about doing it is gone because you've done your research.

Alison French: Hmm. Your research could then go into, you know, that their CEO was speaking at an event. So you've mentioned like, Hey, I saw your CEO speak yesterday. And so if you've done your pre-show research and you don't just have your list of accounts, you actually have those connections. Are you connected to someone mutually on LinkedIn, like your friend used to work with them?

Alison French: And there's ways to triangulate this data now with ai, it's pretty easy. [00:22:00] I say it's easy. It's easy. Because we do, but like there's ways to pull this all together where all of a sudden you can make your reps so much more powerful when they're on the floor that they're not just walking up and saying, hi, do you do so and so?

Alison French: Who should I talk to? Which is what most people are doing, right? Yeah. So those are the other parts I think about going with the plan and being prepared. It's like, it's not just who do you wanna talk to? It's like, do you have that open earth that's gonna make a real conversation. So afterwards, when you follow up.

Alison French: You are not just Joe Blow, who just looked like a dumb ass, trying to have a conversation with someone that they never knew 

Brendon Hamlin: Well in, in our world, you know, and it, I think it translates over. It's, it's that storytelling component. Yeah. You know? So how many cold emails do you discard? You know, if you haven't done your homework or you don't know who you're.

Brendon Hamlin: Talking to, or, or, or how to get to them, then it's, you're a cold email walking up, you know? Exactly. And so, right. Being able to tell that story to at least know something about that person, uh, creates a completely [00:23:00] different experience and probably a much more productive one. 

Alison French: Couldn't agree more. 

Chris Dunn: I'm gonna get a, a business card.

Chris Dunn: Uh, Joe Blow, general dumbass. Yes,

Alison French: because I. Yeah, the reality is we all know it's a problem. I can't think of a CMO I haven't spoke to who says, yeah, we go to these shows and I cannot tell you if that a hundred thousand dollars was actually worth something or not. Like it is a known problem in the industry, but it's a hard problem to solve.

Alison French: And so I think getting into the accountability and the transparency is a nice way to give leadership some measures to try to drive it forward. 

Chris Dunn: You know, and I, and I love, um, kind of the tactical aspects that you've actually given us, right? Because it's not, it's not just like, Hey, uh, Jim, here's, here's your 40 leads that you're gonna go, go Yep.

Chris Dunn: Attempt to have conversations. It's the idea of like, okay, first I research, I do the [00:24:00] cold outreach. You know, the call, the email, whatnot. So even if I walk in and I haven't spoken to him yet, hopefully he recognizes my name because I've made a couple efforts to contact him. Yep. And then this, you know, there's, there's a process there and it's, again, it's just not just throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks.

Alison French: And it's like J Blunt says in his, um, fanatical prospecting, it takes 40 interactions with a prospect before they're even like, familiar enough with you to want to even reply to an email. And so that's when I think like. Video gets so powerful because you can run matched audience ads, so you can take your entire prospect list, start serving them ads before the show, during the show, et cetera.

Alison French: So if you're good with your via like your video content and you're creative and you're putting faces to the people who are walking up, like you create this synergy where they're just more familiar with you and you're like teeing your reps up for a better outcome because you've aligned your marketing efforts all towards the same goal and it's.

Alison French: What is that goal like? Are we looking for book demos? Are we looking for conversations? Are we looking for people to attend an event? Like whatever goal you're working [00:25:00] towards, if you can use all the channels you have available to help support the reps to drive that ultimate a outcome of revenue, it's.

Alison French: Makes everyone's jobs easier, you're gonna spend less money because everybody's aligned. You're gonna drive better outcomes because everybody's aligned. I think it's just a really wonderful way, and it just gets into the execution, like how do you get everybody together to make sure you pull it off from all the different channels in the different angles?

Alison French: Especially with, I think a lot of organizations have different agencies and different people pulling the levers. That gets a bit tricky, but it's, it's doable. 

Chris Dunn: You know, you mentioned video. This guy over here. Mm-hmm. He's got a little experience in, in that aspect. Um, so I know you guys, we were chatting in the green room ahead of time and um, and this was a place that I, I certainly wanted to camp 'cause I thought it would be really interesting.

Chris Dunn: So Brendan, you've got some examples of things that, that you guys have done that kind of, you've seen really kind of move the needle. Um, as well as Allison. So. Brendan, tell us a little bit about the, the project you were telling [00:26:00] us, uh, earlier the, the best American or greatest American bartender or something to that effect.

Brendon Hamlin: Yeah. Well, it's called World class. World class. It's a, it's a bartender competition. Um, okay. And this goes back to, this feeds into the notion of the strategy of before, during, and after. So our processes that we're creating. Promos before the event happens. Then me and my team are on site during the competition, filming everything that's happening on site for three days and producing content inside the event that goes out to social media every single day.

Brendon Hamlin: And then afterwards, we're doing recaps that talk about who the, who the, uh, winner was, and then also, uh, promoting next year's event with. With apply now. So get involved. And we, we have seen a 40% increase in people, uh, committing and, and, and participating to, to join. It's an industry, uh, audience, but still that's a huge increase in the number of people.

Brendon Hamlin: And it just shows that, that that kind of a strategy does work when it's [00:27:00] focused, when it's, when you put the effort into it, when you, you carve out the time and the, and the, um, importance of it that it's, that it delivers. 

Chris Dunn: Just outta curiosity, uh, obviously you guys are a creative agency of sorts where you have a specialty, but did, did you guys kind of.

Chris Dunn: Uh, piggyback on to this organization that's, that's hosting the competition. And did you come to the table and say, here's the playbook that we think will work and we're gonna produce these things for you? Or was there like more of a, a traditional marketing agency or ad agency that was involved in the middle that basically hired you guys to do the, the hard production work?

Chris Dunn: And then kind of, let's roll the playbook out. Here are the videos. We're gonna drip 'em out, we're gonna send 'em out during the show. What was the, I guess what were the different, uh, kind of teams and, and lanes that, uh, that everybody kind of had on that I. 

Brendon Hamlin: Sure. So it, there is an agency involved, there's, there's the client and then there's the agency involved.

Brendon Hamlin: And then we're, we're one of their video partners. And so, [00:28:00] but this has evolved over, this is our fifth year doing this. And so it's evolved over time where we, we look at it each year, we're like, what can we do better? How can we, you know, how can we push out better content? What, you know, all the, all the tech that we're gonna bring to it, the, the angles we're gonna shoot and that kind of thing.

Brendon Hamlin: But the process, this, this arc of. Content and the this before, during, and after is something that we developed together and really came and, and said, yeah, this makes a lot of sense. Like, let's make sure PE people are there. Let's show 'em what's happening while it's going on. And then let's, let's tell 'em what happened afterwards.

Brendon Hamlin: And not just a sizzle reel, but this is substantive, you know, reel, um, you know, excitement about the event and everything, showing who won. And then also, you know, a call to action to get people to apply for the next year. And it's worked and it starts out. Nationally. So they're in regions and then they whittle it down.

Brendon Hamlin: And then there's, uh, you know, the, the, the top people are the ones that, this year it's in Atlanta. And, um, uh, so it's a really fun event. But [00:29:00] yeah, it's been a strategy that's sort of evolved over the years. Oh, that's, that's really cool. Now Allison, you 

Chris Dunn: also had a couple examples of people that you've seen do a great job and maybe some other folks who, who didn't do a great job.

Chris Dunn: We don't have to call 'em my name, but, um, yeah, 

Alison French: no, absolutely. Wonders and losers. I think it's interesting, so a client I'd worked with had the more traditional approach of like, okay, we're gonna show up at a booth, at a conference and, um, in the healthcare space and maybe a little occasional pre-show email here or there from one sales rep to the people, but nothing focused.

Alison French: They do a lot of dinners and drive connections that way, but nothing really focused on like demo set thing. Um. Getting activation. So typically they'd walk away from a show with maybe five to 10 leads. Then they'd have to work to convert those leads to a demo. So we really came into focus on what is the outcome that would make this show a success from an ROI perspective.

Alison French: And we set the goal of 20 book demos by the time the show's over. So if we can eliminate the [00:30:00] step of going from lead to demo, if we can make the demo happen on the show floor. That's going to create a better outcome for the organization. And so ultimately by kind of integrating everything, so there is a video component on the show floor there, a video dashboard or a video billboard I should say.

Alison French: Plus, we are serving those ads on social media. Getting the founders to be posting and on the brand and everyone on the show floor. So you're really creating that stand round sound experience for the targets we're going after. And ultimately, they're able to walk away with 29 book demos. So they're targeting, I think, around 40 accounts going into it.

Alison French: So it's a pretty great thing, but it's, compared to previous years, it was like a 500% increase on. Outcomes, and it was simply by going in with the, everyone had the same plan, so the team was trained on this is what we're focused on. We're focused on booking demos. We had everyone driving the demo bookings to a QR code so we could pixel them for retargeting and other ads.

Alison French: There was just a lot of. Tactics that everybody was focused on the same thing. It wasn't, oh, I'll grab your business card and set up an appointment. Everybody knew, [00:31:00] here's a QR code, here's the landing page you're using on the website. Here's how we're trying to drive these outcomes. We also recognize you have to motivate people's behaviors.

Alison French: Everybody is busy. When you're exhibiting at a conference and people are there, the attendees are there to learn, getting them to come to your booth. You have to motivate their behavior and that. It depends on the audience. Do fishbowls work? I've never seen it. Maybe, um, business card fishbowls, but what does work consistently across the board is a pair of air pods and it, when you're targeting surgeons who make quite a good living and you can still get them to come by your booth for a free pair of air pods, like there's something about the perceived value of the giveaway to their time and energy.

Alison French: And so you just have to figure out what that is for your specific audience and. We broke it down to a cost per lead analysis in the sense that what would you spend on paid media? What would you spend on the other channels to try to acquire this lead? Can we just do some cold outbound and use this consistent [00:32:00] message that anyone comes by the book booth and books.

Alison French: A demo during the show is gonna get a free pair, pair, editor pods handed to them. You know, they literally had to go to the website via a QR code, complete the calendar, and then they get handed a pair of AirPods. Uh, we didn't have problems with no-show rates. Everyone still came like there was no, all the potential issues we worried about.

Alison French: But ultimately we got 29 of our exact laser focus, ICP to come by the booth and take the action to get on that demo with us. And it was just overarching a great campaign. And the same thing we talked about earlier. That's the focus, like that is the audience that we're going after year round. So you've started that conversation.

Alison French: Even if they might not close, now that you've met them, you've had the friendly interaction, they've had the demo, and now it's just about nurturing them until they're ready to make that purchase decision. 

Chris Dunn: Alright, let me, let me. Jump in here with a, a clarification question or just kind of take this a little bit deeper.

Chris Dunn: So I'm glad you mentioned kind of, you know, in, in investment on our end, in the trade show world, we, we, we [00:33:00] all understand that doing shows properly is very expensive, but the difference between doing them properly and doing them poorly. That's where the results tend to. Mm-hmm. Obviously show themselves.

Chris Dunn: Right. So what you just described a company that was going to show, and they were having meh results because they were putting in meh efforts, was spending X 

Alison French: Yep. 

Chris Dunn: To do what you talked about. New strategy, much more focused, laser focused, ICP going after these people. We had a plan, we had, we had high quality giveaways.

Chris Dunn: Do you have any visibility into what the previous spend was versus the, the spend that they ended up with to execute, let's call it Yeah. The right way? 

Alison French: The extra lift. It wasn't that sign. Mm-hmm. It wasn't that significant, to be honest. I mean Right. It 

Chris Dunn: wasn't like three or four. Yeah. The video billboard wasn't, 

Alison French: yeah, the video billboard wasn't.

Alison French: Expensive investment, don't get me wrong. Mm-hmm. And, but even if we would've taken that out of it, every other component of that [00:34:00] strategy would've just been a shift in marketing dollars to go after that audience anyways. But it was that we slowed down. Mm-hmm. We took the time and we got everyone aligned on the same goal, I think is really, really key.

Alison French: And then. Yeah, I mean obviously they didn't have me the year before. Um, and I come with a price, so like I can't say that. Sure. 

Chris Dunn: Yeah, exactly. There wasn't that. But if you're gonna spend 200,000 and get crappy results or you wanna spend, 

Alison French: I'm gonna say that 50,000 or whatever, 20% increase amazing 

Chris Dunn: results.

Alison French: Yeah. Not significant in the grand 

Chris Dunn: and May. Yeah. Maybe that's one and a half X, but maybe it's not even. Maybe it's not even near that. Right. So yeah, the real cost of of not doing it well is coming home with maybe five me leads versus 29 highly qualified. Already gone through the demo. 

Alison French: Exactly. Yeah, 

Brendon Hamlin: exactly.

Brendon Hamlin: And I can, if I can just add onto that, when it comes to, to our, our world, so [00:35:00] many times they look at a video production company as like, just an expense that's too much, too far. Not, you know, too much to, to, to deal with. And it's, and it can be, and I, and I understand that, but then you still have somebody that pulls out their phone and just takes one picture of the booth or whatever, and then that becomes your post event.

Brendon Hamlin: Post, which is, which I don't think is, um, is good enough. And so if you are only going to have somebody on your team do that, then you should designate somebody to do that. You know, it's not, don't, don't add that onto somebody else's plate. Like bring somebody in that that has that as their job. And or if they're gonna interview everybody with their phone, that's fine.

Brendon Hamlin: Do that with your phone. But do it. Have somebody dedicated to that because I think that the results that you get out of that when you have somebody focused in that area, can be really, really meaningful. Even if you don't bring a company like us in to, to do it professionally, [00:36:00] at least designate somebody to, to handle that because it can really, it can really matter and it can't, and it doesn't necessarily have to be a big.

Brendon Hamlin: Added expense. 

Alison French: No, we actually, 

Brendon Hamlin: but it's that strategy that you're talking about, Allison, that's so important. 

Alison French: We walked a show myself and a salesperson, and had a member of the team who was really savvy with social media and we would team chat. We had a thread on teams and we'd team chat, her videos, interactions, and she was just like our, it was as though she was in the room with us and posting and tagging and getting, and then the brands would reshare our po.

Alison French: It was just this beautiful synergy. Yeah. Of. Pulling all the resources together to be focused on, we've made this investment to travel here and be here. How do we get as much out of it as possible? And it was great because she could edit the videos and she could, it just made it that wee bit more polished, right?

Alison French: Even though we didn't have a budget for a production company to join us. 

Chris Dunn: Right. 

Alison French: If you take the time to slow down, I think people can really, and give them the tools they [00:37:00] need to capture the information and be successful. It can go a long way. 

Chris Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Agree. Go slow to go fast. There we go. So, I mean, and uh, Brendan, just to kind of bring this back home and cir circle the wagon and tie it together with, uh, you know, Tyson, who's on our team here at BlueHive, he's our kind of digital guru.

Chris Dunn: He's a little bit of, he's everything guy, right? He's video and he's content creation and mm-hmm. Um, and interactive and so forth, and. Um, you know, we also do shows. We eat our own dog food. We go out and, and, and show ourselves at shows. Um, this past year, uh, he had a prior obligation he could not join us, and we did have myself and, uh, and Dana who joins me here often, and we took some videos and we, there was a plan, but it was not the same.

Chris Dunn: Like when Tyson goes to the show and he's the guy capturing the content, he's got the eye, he knows what he's looking for. Mm-hmm. It's his work and the, the, the output. You know, at the end of the day of what we were able to create and put together, [00:38:00] was that much better? Yeah. So in some instances, it doesn't always work out perfectly, but to, to know that going in and say, and I, I, I agree, like it doesn't have to be a a, a huge spend on the production, uh, group if you don't have the budget there.

Chris Dunn: But, but assign that task to somebody who's capable. Um, yes, have them do a little bit of research and uh, and map out some things. Get a couple of inexpensive little microphones that people can. You know, do interviews with, and the sound is better. Just little stuff like that that just can become a game changer.

Chris Dunn: Yeah, yeah. It all, it all helps a lot. I. Absolutely. So, hey, listen, uh, here on the toolbox, we aim to come in at around 35 to 40 minutes, and we're kind of right in that ballpark here. So we're gonna start the wrap up process. Alison, this has been tremendous. I appreciate you coming on board. You've shared some amazing information in a very short period of time, so thank you so much.

Chris Dunn: Uh, but you're not off the hook yet because we'd like to end the, uh, the show here with, Hey, can you leave our audience with like [00:39:00] three real little. Uh, nuggets or takeaways that are maybe game changers, uh, uh, all of the things that you've talked about, boil it down or maybe introduce something new. Um, yeah.

Chris Dunn: That, that people can use as a, as a, as a takeaway. 

Alison French: Yeah. So, as I said, go in with the list. You need to go. You can hope for badge scans. That can be absolutely part of your strategy is who's gonna come by the booth, but go into the show with a list of people you're targeting to drive demand to your booth.

Alison French: Then make sure the people on the floor. Have that list, whether it's a journal or I have an app I've created called Show Scout. It's really like an in-person CRM that keeps everybody laser focused on exactly who you're supposed to be talking to at that show, and then find a way to capture the conversations and create that feedback loop for your post show automations in the sense that your follow up should be built out and in your CRM before you even get to the show.

Alison French: So you should have a. Template created for who your hot leads are and warm and everybody else, and those you [00:40:00] forgot to miss. Or the those that you weren't able to meet with, have it already ready in your CRM then. Use your notes, or in my app called the Ska app, you can rate opportunity potential who you met.

Alison French: Use those as triggers. So when you import the data into your CRM, it all just goes out and you don't have to think about it, and you don't have to chase your sales rep down and say, who did you talk to? Or did you end up meeting this person? Tell me more. Tell me about the conversation. You can pull the notes in and customize it.

Alison French: With ai, there's so many things you can do. If you're equipped with the right tools, just get the automation ready for the follow-up before the show. And then make sure you have a feedback loop in place with your team that's on the floor. That's more than just badge scans because badge scans are hard.

Alison French: Depending on the show, you don't know what day it's coming. You don't necessarily remember what the conversation was like. Find a way to have your post show follow up, be triggered by the actual activity that's happening, and then you just don't have to worry about it. 'cause there's nothing worse than going and dropping a couple hundred grand on an event to only find out [00:41:00] four weeks later.

Alison French: Your team hasn't followed up with anybody. So. Plan for the fact that they're not gonna follow up and give them and make it as easy as possible. I mean, literally, show Scout was created because sales team ghosted me on the floor and we had this very intricate multichannel campaign that was meant to deploy at certain hours of the show, and I didn't know what was happening on the floor.

Alison French: Because they are busy selling. They weren't telling marketing what was going on. And so it was simply the first iteration of this tool was just press this button and tell me if you met them. So we knew to not look like idiots. 'cause that's my big thing in marketing, is never step on salespeople's toes with their prospects or customers.

Alison French: And so you don't wanna be the idiot that sends out an automation that falls flat because it's wrong. So you need that feedback loop. And then if you've got that feedback loop, everything else can be seamless.

Alison French: It's so simple 

Chris Dunn: and yet so, so true. And we see it all the time. It's so hard. I mean, I 

Alison French: literally had [00:42:00] to build a tool to solve this problem 

Chris Dunn: because it, you're fixing it, right? You, you've identified the issue and you're. You're solving your own, not your own problem, but a ma a major problem. So obviously people are gonna want to know how do I get a hold of Alice in French?

Chris Dunn: 'cause man, I need her help. Oh, love. So how do people, how, how do people reach you? 

Alison French: Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. I think it is French, Allison. Um, oh, there we go. Perfect. Yep. It's French Allison 

Chris Dunn: right there. Thank you. 

Alison French: And I am, my company's website is join lto.com. So I am a fractional CMO for B2B startups, and then I also have kind of a product I service business to help brands do better job turning trade shows into revenue.

Chris Dunn: Fantastic. Well, this has been spot on. What a great conversation. I know a lot of folks who are tuning in, whether they've seen it live or if they'll catch it later on. All of the different channels. Um. You can, you can watch this live after the fact. It also will post to YouTube. It'll also, uh, be [00:43:00] on your spa, on your favorite, uh, podcast channel, Spotify, apple, whatever it is.

Chris Dunn: So. Thank you so much for joining us, Brendan. Fantastic job sitting in the big seat over there. Thanks for, uh, for backing me up. That was pretty awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Um, Alison, thank you so much for joining us. I, I'm so happy that you were able to swoop in and save us. Oh, I appreciate it. This was great.

Chris Dunn: Um, initially again, we connected really recently. We were gonna have her on as a guest in the summertime and someone else fell through, so she swooping. Oh, it's 

Alison French: my honor. Saved the day 

Chris Dunn: and, uh, all day long. 

Alison French: So good. Yeah, talking about marketing is my happy place. 

Chris Dunn: You, he brought the I We can see the passion.

Alison French: Yeah. I love it. Indeed. You brought the 

Chris Dunn: goods. I sincerely love it. We thank you so much. So I appreciate it guys. Hey everybody, thank you so much. Thanks for joining us here in the toolbox and we'll see you next week. Same time, same place. Cheers. 

Alison French: Bye guys.