Building Brand Awareness at Tradeshows

By Susan A. Friedmann, CSP

Branding is a basic marketing concept that is designed to set your products/services apart from the competition. By using a particular name, phrase, design, symbol, or a combination of these you can create a unique identity.

When choosing a brand name, consider the following five criteria:

1. It should suggest product/service benefits.
2. It should be simple, memorable, and unique.
3. It should fit the image of the company.
4. It should have positive connotations for the target market.
5. It should be easy to pronounce and to pictorialize.
   

Branding is not a sales and marketing gimmick. Instead it refines and defines corporate culture and identity. A brand must have meaning to its consumers, its organization, and its employees. Brand is an emotional link between you and your customer. It is what people buy when they buy your product or your company. The most important part of a brand’s identity is the promise it makes to customers. The essence of branding is simplicity and timelessness.

Integrating Brand Awareness Into Your Exhibit Program

Since exhibiting is a powerful extension of your company’s advertising, promotion, public relations, and sales function that automatically means it is an excellent way to enhance brand awareness. Everything your company stands for, no matter how large or small, is being exhibited on the show floor. This means there needs to be total consistency, congruity, clarity, and focus in every aspect of your exhibiting program – before, during, and after the show.

Here are three important points to consider as you plan to integrate brand awareness into your tradeshow program.

1. Consistency and repetition are vital in creating brand awareness. People buy brands they know and trust! A brand is a promise that companies make to their customers. Strong branding requires all levels of communication to agree with one another.
   
   
2. Ensure all your marketing and promotions are consistent and that they have your logo, colours, typeface, slogans, and characters. Everything you develop should have the same look and feel.
   
   
3. Peoples’ perceptions about your company, products, and services are a major factor in their choice of brand preferences and their buying behavior. All perception is subjective and based on experience. Individuals tend to interpret information according to existing beliefs, attitudes, needs, and mood.
   

The following is a 10-point checklist to act as a reminder for many of the questions you need to ask and answer as you plan brand integration into your exhibit program:

1. What needs to be done to ensure that your booth conveys total consistency, congruity, clarity, and focus of your company image and brand?
   
   Consider:
   
   • booth size
   • location
   • graphics
   • demonstrations
   • staff
     
   • handouts and giveaways
   • lead management
     
     
2. How can your graphics work best for you?
   
   
   • can they be easily seen and read in three seconds
   • use a simple and bold typeface
     
   • have striking and grabbing visuals
   • are instantly memorable
   • use a unique size or shape
   • reinforce your message
   • make your message a single, strong, provocative idea
   • use a “What’s in it for me?” message
   • use bold colours
     
     
3. What are the best promotional activities you can use to enhance brand awareness?
   
   
   • Personal invitations (e.g. with incentive and response form) · Direct mail with incentive
     
     
   • Pre-show advertising
     
     • trade and/or local publications
     • local media
     • Web sites (e.g. company, show, association)
     • broadcast faxes
     • association newsletters
     • city billboards
     • transit advertising
       
       
   • At-show advertising
     
     • show catalogs
     • show dailies
     • airport billboards, banners/electronic message boards
     • hotel closed-circuit television
     • hotel on-door or in-room promotion
     • kiosks/banners at show site
     • convention television channels
       
       
4. What types of PR communications could be used?
   
   Pre-show:
   
   
   • press releases for local and trade publications
   • product/service application articles
   • personal invitations to trade/local editors
   • company newsletters
     
     
   At-show:
   
   
   • press kits for the press office
   • press reception
   • video/slide presentation at the booth
   • reprints of articles as giveaways
   • seminars/workshops
   • contests
   • personalities/spokesperson at booth
     
     
5. What sponsorship opportunities exist and would complement your company image? Some of the most frequent sponsorship opportunities are:
   
   
   • press room
   • international lounge
   • speaker or VIP room
   • awards reception
   • educational programs
   • keynote sessions
   • coffee breaks
   • Luncheons/dinners
   • banners
   • badge holders
     
   • audio visual equipment
   • display computers
   • tote bags
   • shuttle buses
     
     
6. What advertising premiums will be consistent with your image and complement the message you want to convey?
   
   Consider:
   
   
   • budget
   • originality
   • usefulness and appropriateness for your target audience
   • distribution
     
     
7. Who are the best ambassadors for your company – the right people to staff the booth?
   
   
8. What training should they receive?
   
   Consider:
   
   • prospect qualification
   • booth etiquette
   • product knowledge
   • product demonstration
   • obtaining commitment
     
     
9. What is the best dress code to convey your company image?
   
   
10. What is the best way to follow-up after the show that is consistent with your exhibiting program?
    

Remember that branding is a process, a business system that fuels and sustains all customer/company relationships! Total consistency, congruity, clarity, and focus in every aspect of your exhibiting program – before, during, and after the show – are essential.

Susan A. Friedmann, CSP, is The Tradeshow Coach, Lake Placid, NY, working with exhibitors and show organizers to improve their tradeshow success through coaching, consulting and training. For a free copy of ExhibitSmart Tips of the Week, e-mail: susan@thetradeshowcoach.com; or visit her Web site: www.thetradeshowcoach.com. Published in Networking Today, October 2002.

Software Tips & Tricks "Fancy" Horizontal Lines in Microsoft Word 2000 & XP

By Laura Noble

The tip article, Horizontal Lines Made Easy....With Microsoft Word explains how to create horizontal lines that are relatively basic in appearance. This article discusses inserting "fancy" lines into a Word document.

1. Place insertion point at the beginning of a new paragraph.
   
   
2. From the Format menu select Borders and Shading.
   
   
3. Click on the Horizontal Line button.
   
   
   
   
4. The Horizontal Line box will open. Select a line and click on the Insert Clip icon.
   
   In Word XP, select the line and click the OK button.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Line will be inserted in document. See below for samples.
   

Note: If any of the "fancy" lines are not loaded on your computer, insert the Microsoft Office CD in the CD-ROM drive to access lines.

Stay tuned to Networking Today in the coming months for more Software Tips & Tricks from Noble Software Solutions.

Laura Noble is the owner of Noble Software Solutions. Laura can be contacted at 519-680-2689 or by e-mail at lnoble@noblesoftwaresolutions.com. www.noblesoftwaresolutions.com

Published in Networking Today, October 2002.

Changes in Attitude…Needing to be Needed by Clients

By Andrew Sobel

Being "needed" by clients can become a drug. I have seen many professionals exhibit these and other symptoms of excessive neediness and insecurity: · You check voice mail and e-mail far more frequently than is necessary. I have one friend who probably checks for e-mail messages twenty times a day, and he's not that unusual.

• You begin thinking excessively about other services you can sell your client, quite independently of an examination of what he really needs and wants.
  
  
• You feel insecure when a couple of days go by and you get few or no calls from clients. Never mind that you're busy and your clients are happy with your work – you still feel badly.
  
  
• You leave a message for a client and you don't hear from him for a few days or a week – and become absolutely convinced you have fallen out of favour.
  
  
• A client begins to make, on her own, decisions that she used to get your counsel on. It makes you feel like you're no longer part of her inner circle and that she doesn't really need you anymore.
  
  
• You believe, deep down, that at any time your leadstream could completely dry up, leaving you and/or your firm with no clients and no business.
  

The current economy makes these tendencies worse. Many service industries, from banking to consulting to public relations, have been experiencing difficult times for the last year and a half. You're not alone in this regard.

The antidote? First, remember that there may be an asymmetry to your relationship – your client's business may represent 20% of your daily life in the office, whereas for your client the equivalent figure might be 3% (he's probably got ten other projects going on besides the one you're focused on). Secondly, get a life and realize that you exist as a separate entity from your clients. I sincerely doubt if any business professional, on his or her deathbed, has murmured these dying words: "My clients needed me so much, I should have spent more time with them." If you're aware of such a story, I'd like to hear about it.

Andrew Sobel is the leading authority on client relationships and the skills and strategies required to earn enduring client and customer loyalty. He is coauthor of Clients for Life: How Great Professionals Development Breakthrough Relationships (Simon & Schuster). He can be reached at (505) 982-0211 or by e-mail at andrew@andrewsobel.com www.andrewsobel.com

Published in Networking Today, October 2002.

How “To Tell the Truth”

By Barbara Bartlein

Most baby boomers remember the hit TV show of the late 1950’s and 60’s called To Tell the Truth. Hosted by Bud Collyer and Gary Moore, a panel of celebrities would question three contestants to determine who was telling the truth. Entertaining and funny, it was amazing to see how often a participant would completely fool the panel and sell them on a series of well-spun lies.

But today employees, consumers, and stockholders are no longer laughing over the search for truth. Driven by “infectious greed,” according to Chairman Alan Greenspan, trust in Corporate American is in shambles. More than seven in ten Americans say that the CEO’s of large corporations cannot be trusted. Almost eight in ten believe that top executives will take “improper actions” to help themselves at the expense of their companies.

In the past year, the number of Americans who see Big Business as a threat to the nation’s future has almost doubled to 38% according to a recent Gallup Poll reported in USA Today. When more than 500 adults were asked which groups they trusted, the CEO’s of large corporations were second from the bottom with managers of HMO’s the least trusted group in the country. Incidentally, 84% of those surveyed indicated that they trust teachers the most.

Trust is one of the most basic human values and is taught beginning at birth. For society to function, trust is absolutely essential. When it is destroyed, societies falter and collapse. It is one thing to be wary of a door-to-door salesman selling encyclopedias and another to be suspicious of leader in a Fortune 500 Company.

Granting trust to others often happens in degrees based on personal experience. All of us can rebuild the trust in business and our personal lives by getting back to basics.

• Do what you say you are going to do. Yes, it sounds simple. But there are many folks who mistakenly believe that intentions count. Actions and results are the measures of accountability. Even though the leaders of Enron and WorldCom did not intend to harm employees and stockholders in their business decisions – that is exactly what happened. Driven by greed and murky ethics, they made decisions that affected the lives of thousands of people.
  
  
• Periodically do a value-check. It is all too easy to lose focus on what is important; family, friends, community, and helping others less fortunate. The greed driven, materialistic hub of corporate America made it all too easy for overpaid executives to pursue personal McMansions rather than uphold the commitment of a leadership role. Do a check on your values. Are you chasing titles and money believing the “more will make me happier” myth? Ground your life in the critical values of honesty, integrity, and caring for others. Remember, at the end of the day, we have to answer to the person in the mirror.
  
  
• Examine carefully the people who are promoted to leadership positions in your business and your life. Do they have a track record of good decision making and impeccable judgment? Are their lives focused with a moral compass so decisions are consistent? We all have a moral obligation to stand up and speak when we observe actions or behaviours that are questionable.
  
  
• Redefine business and personal success. The sole driver for success in recent decades has been money, balance sheets, and increasing net worth. True success is leading a life of significance and contributing to a larger good. The question should not be “How much do I have?” It should be, “How have I made a difference?” Pursue significance rather than success.
  
  
• Practice humility and self-disclosure. Trust builds when we are honest about what we know, what we feel and most importantly, what we don’t know. Share with employees and co-workers your observations, feelings, and thoughts on business dealings and transactions. Make a commitment to significance in your community. Remember; losers make promises, winners make commitments.
  

Sign up for Barbara's FREE email newsletter at www.barbbartlein.com.

Barbara Bartlein is the PeoplePro™. She helps businesses sell more goods and services by developing people. She can be reached at 888-747-9953, by email at: barb@barbbartlein.com or visit her Web site at www.ThePeoplePro.com.

Published in Networking Today, October 2002.