Tradeshow Perception Success
We all know that trade shows are not cheap. The cost of booth space, product literature, airfare,
shipping, hotel costs, and meals can take a significant toll on a business’ bottom line. So if you are
already heavily invested in your trade show, why try to short cut the presentation of your
company and products at your booth? Poor professional image of your company will undermine
your return on investment. Too many companies provide a poor presentation of their company’s
products.

Here are two of the most important elements of a trade show that are absolutely vital to the
effectiveness of your booth’s success. After these two elements, you can start thinking about
other tips that are listed, but it is pointless to do anything else until you have taken care of the
first two items.

You have a great story to tell about your products, and we all wish we could just grab everyone
by the collar that walks by your booth and say, “Wait just a minute, are you nuts for passing by my
booth, do you know what this does, do you know how great and revolutionary it is.” Many people
walk by without even glancing at your products. Poor corporate image (what I call visual integrity)
and/or poor communication material that are not leading the prospects to get interested in
your booth create many missed opportunities.

Visual Integrity…Image is everything. “If you are going to cheapen and short cut
your image, why waste your money on the booth?”
Poor corporate image can kill all chances of a sale no matter how good your product or service is.
It’s simple; if you don’t look the part, chances are prospects won’t give you the time of day, let
alone visit your booth. Making sure that you have a professionally developed corporate image is
vital, and this goes beyond just talking about trade shows. If you have a website, brochure or any
other marketing material, you should have a good consistent image and message.

Visual communication
Knowing how to display and communicate your message to your prospects is crucial.
Think of your booth like a book on a shelf. Before the prospect knows anything about your book
and the story, they need to be intrigued by a stimulating and interesting cover that gives them a
quick insight into the book. Then a prospect will look at the inner flap of the book to read more
about it; they might look at the index, the preface and read a first few pages of the book. To
capture your audience’s attention, give them a little information, let them digest it, then give
them more and so on. You can compare luring people into your booth to fishing. You throw out
some good bait, hook the fish or prospect and slowly reel them in.
There is a lot of advice about tradeshows and there are other things to consider, but these
should be your first priorities. Once you have taken care of your tradeshow booths,
company image and communication, review the other tips listed below.

Planning:
Don’t wait until a week or two before your show and rush to get your signs, brochures and other
material. It will show in your tradeshow presentation.
Start planning early. Good regular tradeshow exhibitors routinely start planning their appearances
6 to 12 months in advance.

Research:
Research a trade show before you decide to exhibit. Ask yourself, does this show attract a large
number of people from your target audience?

Prepare Sales Reps:
In addition to your booth’s visual image, make sure that your sales reps understand your overall
message and be able to show the products well. Nothing is worse than having a great booth
with an unprepared or lazy sales rep that just does not fit or present the material correctly.
Remember your company is on display. What you are selling at a tradeshow is, primarily, first
impressions/perceptions about your company. Be professional, well-dressed, and mannerly at all
times. You never know who is watching.

Be Organized:
Take notes. Take time before the show to create a lead-card system to record pertinent information
and to facilitate post-show follow-up. Do not depend on your memory — no matter how
good you are. A few words scrawled on the back of a business card will not provide enough
information after the show is over, especially after you have met with many people.

Follow Up:
Many people skip this step – following up with their leads. If you have a prospect that shows
interest in your product at your booth, after the show, you must spend some time following up
with them in the form of a phone call, an email, a letter or all three. With businesses operating
with less people, prospects are very busy when they return from a tradeshow. They do not have
the time to make you a priority. Contact them and find out what their plan is. If they are not
interested now, schedule a follow up. This will give your prospect a mental deadline and time to
think about doing business with your company.

Giveaways:
If you are going to use giveaways, provide something that is relevant to your product. Just don’t
give them a trinket for the sake of giving them something or because the sales rep at the
promotional supply told you that it is the hot item of the year. Also, depending on who you are
trying to target, profile the prospect first before giving them something. For instance, if you are a
software company and want to provide free demos of your software, you might want to ask a few
questions to make sure that the prospect is a realistic potential buyer and not someone that
wants a freebie.

Hi, this is Tim with TM Media and on this video I briefly want to discuss the studios capabilities and what kind of work we’ve done and what kind of work we can do. Basically, TM Media is a marketing and design studio. We can handle any type of design work; whether it’s print or on the web. We can also consult clients on their actual marketing efforts; anything  from your message to the type of media you want to use to Internet media as far as marketing your website and all that fun stuff.

So we definitely have 2 different sides of the company. Let me talk a little more in depth on the design side. TM Media handles any type of print and website design as far as the print. It can go anywhere from a direct mail to a major anual report, catalogue, brochure whatever it may be in print, environmental design, signage, trade shows, displays, presentations. We handle anything pretty much in print we can take care of in design.

As far as the web we can pretty much do any type of website from the small business website that wants to show a representation of a company, which we call a show-and-tell website. It’s mostly visual and not too much functionality as far as buying things and things like that. And then we have the other side where we can build an e-commerce site where you’re actually creating a lot more functionality and online store basically.

We also get into the marketing of the site as well and that’s basically SEO (search engine optimization) all that type of marketing. That’s pretty much all we handle. Again, we handle the marketing end as well as the design end. I hope this helped give you a better idea of what our capabilities are. Feel free to view our portfolio, you’ll see a lot of our work and some of the different projects we’ve handled. Thank you very much for listening. Bye.

P.S. You can find more information to our brochure design, direct mail design, media kit design, stationary design, information design and much more on our print design page.

Hi, my name is Tim from TM Media and in this video what I want to talk about is the actual communication that goes into your marketing material. Now on a previous video, I talked about what I called “Visual Integrity.” And basically what that is, is basically an overall presentation of your company to a client through your marketing material.

So basically, what’s your marketing material look like? Is it professional, is it up-to-date… if you’re a high-end software company, do you look like a high-end software company through your marketing material or do you look like a local landscaper cutting grass?

So that’s what we talked about in that video. And you can view that labled, “Is Your Marketing Collateral Up To Par?”

On this video, what I want to talk about is the actual communication. So we have a marketing material, we’ve made it professional looking, we have a nice color scheme, it looks visually appealing, now what do you say in it? This is where a lot of companies just let it go. They just don’t even think about it. It’s kinda like a last minute thing they add into a project. It happens all the time. I’ll get word documentations that says to put something in the ad. A lot of companies just don’t even consider how they’re communicating with the client and how to slowly get them interested.

With all marketing material – I’m going to use direct mail as an example – but with all marketing material, this applies to most marketing material. There are differences depending if it’s a billboard compared to a direct mail, but let me use direct mail as an example. I get a lot of direct mail during the day and I see tons of them. I have a few in front of me now. Ones got a logo smack dab right at the top. Real estate ads I get all of the time and these are the best examples of what not to do. If you can imagine – close your eyes – and imagine a real estate ad. You almost can see it. You have a persons face – the realtor’s face  on the top left or logo at the top left or near their face, some information… maybe… and we’ll sell your house… and then their phone number. And that’s basically it and it’s suppose to motivate you to call them. Of course, it doesn’t work. And there’s just better ways to go about communicating with your potential clients.

Usually, the first thing people want to know when they’re presenting you with their… say direct mail piece… they wanna find out as soon as possible what you can do for them. And keep in mind that you have a split second to communicate with these clients; so, you do have to keep things short and sweet. Especially in the direct mail marketing. You have 2 seconds for it to be thrown in the trash or put somewhere for someone to call you. So you really need to think about getting your information over and communicating very effectively and quickly.

The first thing we want to do is interrupt their day – we want to stop them in their tracks and tell them that ‘hey, you gotta listen to this, ’cause it’s important to you and your family’ or whatever it is related to. We want them to stop and listen to your piece. The next thing we want to do is give them a little bit more information, not just dump a whole load of information on them though. You’re gonna want to give them a little taste of what’s to come – what you’re going to talk about. And then, the 3rd step is when you get into more detail; so you interrupted them, gave them a little preview of what you’re going to talk about and then you’re going to talk about your company and building a reason as to why they should work with you.

And then usually the 4th or 5th step is getting them motivated to call you. That can be done several ways. There’s a lot more to it, but it’s the general idea of how to communicate in a direct mail marketing piece. That does have a general application to several different pieces, whether it’s a brochure or other type of media kit or something like that. This video is just to get you thinking, not only about putting out professional looking material but also thinking up a strategy on how you’re going to communicate to your specific prospects and what their hot buttons are. What’s gonna get them to look at your piece and what’s it gonna get them to follow through whatever material you’re throwing at them?

So feel free, if you wanna call us, or if you want to email us and contact us our website link is here, or if you have any more questions or have a need for any of these services. We’ll have additional videos to follow as well with some more good information on this whole business. Thanks.

P.S. You can find more information to corporate branding, logo design, marketing collateral, corporate identity and much more on our identity design page.

Hi, my name is Tim with TM Media and what I want to do today is talk about what I call “Visual Integrity.” What in my mind, what visual integrity is the basically how you’re presenting your company and how you’re coming across your potential client through your marketing material.

Ever since we were younger, our parents would make sure we’re going out the door looking appropriately for whatever occasion we’re going to. If we’re going to school, we are dressing appropriately. If we’re going to church, we would probably dress a lot better for that occasion; so, basically, that’s what we do. We make sure how you’re representing your company before walking out the door. And we see a lot of different companies that look up to par and others companies that don’t look up to par.

Here’s basically 2 examples. We have Joe-the-landscaper that cuts grass for a living and is a fairly small company. And then you have Larry-the-lawyer, which is the much higher end market, dressed in the suit, carries a brief case, has a nice established office with nice furniture in it and stuff like that. And his marketing material needs to look up to par.

Now if you’re Larry-the-lawyer and your marketing material looks similar to Joe-the-landscaper, then you may have some integrity issues. So, that’s basically what we’re trying to do is have you think about how you’re projecting (no matter how wonderful your company is), how is that coming across in your marketing material?

We have seen companies that make multiple millions of dollars and they never attempted to upgrade or establish any kind of professional marketing material, identity, logo, anything. They might have put something together when they briefly started up or some in-house intern logo so they just went with that.

When you don’t see the money you’re losing from that, you don’t have an urgency to change that. If you did see the money actually being changed – say you have a direct mail catalog that just looks really unprofessional, the company is going to go with company b because they look a lot more professional; looks like they’ve been in business long even though you might be in business for 20 years.

That’s the whole point. Your visual integrity is not up to par and you’re losing customers because of it. That’s what this whole video is about, just to have you take a good look at what your material looks like out there. You can compare it to your competitor.

We just happened to have our roof done recently because in Hurst, Texas we had a major hail storm a year ago. We went through about 20 roofers until we picked the one we like. We had people showing up with a mustang with a ladder sticking out with a little magnet sign on it. We had people come in with these huge packets of media of ‘why to use us’ and presented very nicely; so you can figure out who we went with.

So really think about it and take a look at what you’re doing now and if you have any questions, feel free to give us a call or contact us at the link here and thank you very much for listening. Bye.

P.S. You can find more information to identity design, print design, interactive design and much more on our main pages.

Hi, my name is Tim with TM Media Design, I am one of the creative directors and owner of the design firm.

What I want to talk about today is what I think you should look for when hiring a creative design firm. Now, the first thing that comes to people’s mind is to look at the portfolio and yes, that is definitely a priority. You do want to take a good look at some of the different projects the design firm has produced and usually that is represented on a website. A good design firm should have a website in this day of age to be able to show you different works and different projects they have completed.

Another thing you want to find out is you want to understand and get some details on exactly what their creative process is and find out what happens from start to finish. That is extremely important. You can find a lot of firms that will eat up a lot of your time and money if they don’t have a good creative process setup. They can go basically 30 miles down a road you didn’t want to go 1 mile down on a creative direction; so, you really want to look at that.

Time Lines – you really want to get a feel that the firm is realistic on their time line. All I can say on that is use your common sense. If they say they can do a 60 page magazine in 2 days, chances are they it’s not gonna get done. So use your own common sense on that. Also, you want to find out how their budgeting works – do they seem realistic in their budgeting. Now, a good design firm will ask you basically point blank – what is your budget? And I know a lot of firms, especially companies that have never dealt with a design firm, kinda step back and say “why do you want to know that?”

Well, what they’re trying to find out is #1, they’re trying to find out if you’re realistic in what you’re talking about and if you understand a little bit of the value of some of the work that’s created. So, for instance, you come in and you want a 20 page catalog and you want to spend $50, of course chances are the design firms are going to say “sorry, we can’t touch that.”

So that’s one thing they’re trying to find out. Another thing they’re trying to find out is the level of expectations from the client. Regardless of what the project is, it can be a flier, a large catalog – to try get a feel of the expectations of that project, it’s definitely a good to have an idea of the budget. For instance, there’s a small company (a small accounting firm, a small local service) that needs a brochure, that can fairly be inexpensive. If it’s the same project and it has to be approved by 100 different people in IBM corporate, then that project can take 2 years to complete; so, that’s another reason why they’re asking just  to get a level of expectations from the client.

A third thing they’re trying to find out is – there’s probably about 300 different ways to approach a project; so, what they’re trying to find out as well is – chances are the company that’s dealing with the design firm doesn’t have a huge education in graphics or what’s possible and depending on a project there are many ways we can approach it and manipulate the project – so that’s another reason why they might ask about the budget, because they might not be able to do some things or go down a certain direction, but they might be able to present you with another process that would meet your budget.

Last thing is and I think it’s the most important thing is you want to find out how the communication is setup and how the communication is processed between the firm and the client. You want to really make sure that the design firm is really going to take charge and communicating with you effectively and making sure they’re getting all your feedback and information.

That is what you are paying for right there in my mind. Our design firm can have some of the best designers in the world, but if we don’t get on the same page with our client, chances are we’re going to have a large failure on our hands. So you really want to make sure their whole process – and this incorporates with the creative process as well – you really want to find out how about they go about doing business, how they communicate with clients, manage the projects and again go from beginning to end of the project.

And that’s pretty much it. I’ll have some more videos out getting into more details of different topics later on down the road. I hope this was helpful. You can contact us at info [at] tmmediainc.com or you can visit us on the web at www.tmmediainc.com. Thank you very much.