Direct Mail, live!

Many marketing and circulation people hate exhibitions. It’s just the antipathy of the ordered, quiet environment we are naturally at home in. And worse, far worse, while you’re there, you actually have to talk to people – face to face. It’s an introverted genius’ worst nightmare!

However, a place where a bunch of potential subscribers, self-selected by a particular interest, gather together, hungry for information, is a perfect place to sell really quite a lot of subscriptions. An exhibition is just a direct mail campaign where the list members turn up in person.

To get the most from your presence, you need to follow seven steps:

1. Pick the right show…

Of course, just as with a direct mail campaign, the list matters the most. So the choice of show (sounds trite) is the most important thing. Just because it’s a show in your sector, that your subscribers ought to be interested in, doesn’t mean they’ll actually go.

How many times have you seen marketing people sat on a stand that some misguided publisher picked up in a contra-agreement with a show organiser who thought their show would be interesting to a magazine readership?

Make sure that the show is one your current subscribers go to in numbers – if they do, then people like them probably do. The best way to find out is to ask. A quick survey among your current subscribers, asking them which shows they attend, will point you rapidly at the ones you should focus on.

Ask the event manager for last time round’s demographics and audited attendance – all reputable shows now have these. This will be a great guide both to the type of person (again – does it match your subscriber typology) and to their numbers. Think back to this being like a DM campaign – you need numbers to allow your response rate to still give you enough return. It’s not ridiculous to apply DM rates of response to the exhibition numbers to give you a sense of what you might achieve. If you usually get 1%, and there are 20,000 visitors to the show, you might sell 200 subscriptions.

2. Plan, plan, and plan a bit more

The most important thing about planning is producing realistic targets. If you go in with reasonable expectations, then you stand a decent chance of meeting them. Also, of course, you will spend appropriately. This determines how much you can afford to spend on space, build, staff, literature, premiums … and so on.

Think about time. Time is the only resource you can’t control at the show. If it takes five minutes to have a successful or unsuccessful conversation about a subscription, then each salesperson can have 12 an hour, or a maximum of 84 a day for a seven hour show. Obviously, the flow of visitors won’t be even, so, actually, the number of possible conversations is probably two thirds of that. So, if you want to sell 200 subs a day, you’re going to need at least three people selling.

This stage will also reveal whether you should in fact not bother and spend the money on telemarketing the attendee list instead – or something. Being at exhibitions can produce great return, but you always need to compare it with the other ways you have of generating subscriptions.

What’s your offer? Usually, you can give a special discount, premium, term – use them, and plan to be really upfront about it. Design your stand to show that you’ve got an offer going on. Imagine the stand as a giant direct mail leaflet – make sure it tells your prospects what they can expect if they walk up to it. Don’t be shy now.

Once you have your targets and an appropriate budget, you can plan the rest. Being at an exhibition is a serious commitment, so treat it seriously and make it someone’s job – one person – to be in charge and project manage the whole thing – then, please, give them the time to do it properly.

3. Location, location, location

Pick the right spot – visitors rarely cover the whole show. Look at the show and think where your kind of person is likely to go. Site yourself next to large companies that your readers do business with. These are likely to act as magnets, and pull in a crowd you can feed off.

If you can, grab a corner plot – this gives you two flows to work off and doubles your possibilities. This more than makes up for the loss of display space from having two sides (or three) of your stand open.

Get on a wide aisle – most shows have some aisles wider than others, usually there are three metre and two and a half metre aisles. Studies have shown that wider aisles have more people walking down them than the narrow ones. More people mean more opportunities to sell. The wide aisles also tend to run the full length (or most of) the show. Again, this produces more traffic. Being on one of these ‘arteries’ will bring you more passing trade.

A final location tip – try to pitch near a feature (one of the organiser’s areas within the show designed to provide interest or entertainment for the visitor) or a bar, toilet, or some other essential pit stop. All of the above will get more than their fair share of passing trade. But beware, if you’re near a toilet, make sure you try to catch people on the way out – they may be in a hurry on the way in…

4. Promote your presence

Most organisers will allow exhibitors to use pre-registration lists for direct mail, or for e-mail. Build a campaign using these and your own prospect lists (perhaps a selection based on travelling time to the venue?) and send them details of your offer up front encouraging them to come and see you. Maybe they might be tempted by the offer, or by the paper hanging demonstration, or maybe by the opportunity to meet the editor, one of the world’s foremost authorities on paper hanging. Whatever – give them some excuses to come and see you, and some of them will.

Put something in your magazine that says "see us at the show – stand X". Put it in your e-mail autosignature. The more people you tell, the more that will come and say ‘hi’. The more that do that, the bigger the crowd on your stand, and the bigger the crowd, well, the more other people will want to see what’s going on. Forget mints, or stress toys – the thing that pulls people to your stand best is other people.

5. Who are you looking for?

Know your reader – picking them out saves you wasting time on those not likely to buy. Use the help you get from the organiser – some exhibitions give different coloured badges to different kinds of visitor. If you can ignore everyone with a purple badge, it really will help your hit rate. Remember, time is the most precious commodity at a show – you need to waste as little as possible talking to irrelevant people.

Sometimes, on a really busy show, you can try to pre-select appropriate targets using ‘spotters’ – people standing at the edge of your stand, or right in the aisle, just looking at people’s badges or characteristics and pulling them into the stand for the sales people to hit.

Another way of doing the same thing is to allow the visitors to self-select by showing interest in a demonstration or competition designed to appeal only to the right people. Then you can just look for anyone showing any interest in (for example) your paper hanging demonstration, and then jump on them and sell them Paper Hanger’s Week.

6. Don’t let the marketing team do the selling

Well meaning and lovely though they are, the typical marketing or circulation type is a shy sensitive soul who will be much happier reorganising the stand store room than out front cold selling. A short survey among a crop of experienced, exhibition-hardened marketing directors at Emap, Reed and Haymarket suggests that the biggest difference you can make for yourself is to lock the marketing team in a cupboard and hire professional subscription sales people.

Don’t be tempted to use ad sales people off the magazine. This is often suggested as a great solution. The truth is, you need someone who is used to selling the features and benefits of a subscription package. People who are more concerned with schedule selling will be too gentle, while the average classified rep’s ‘I’ll gnaw your leg until you buy’ technique may put more off than it converts.

In the exhibition environment, where time is precious, experience counts. Hire someone who knows what they’re doing. These people usually operate on the ‘basic plus commission’ model. Try to keep the commission element significant – that’s the way to keep them pushing at five to closing on the final day.

7. Tea

So – exhibitions – great opportunities – "Live" Direct Mail campaigns. Remember the steps above and you should succeed. Then you and the rest of the marketing team can slip out of the store room, retire to the quietest café in the venue, take off your exhibitor badges and have a nice cup of tea while the subs roll in, your dignity and shyness preserved.