Don't Just Do Trade Shows. Do Trade Shows Right.

Today's post was contributed by Margit Weisgal, author of Show and Sell: 133 Business-Building Ways to Promote Your Trade Show Exhibit. Margit writes for The Baltimore Sun on Baby Boomers' issues and interests.

When it comes to finding and interacting with a qualified audience, trade shows continue to be at the top of the list. 

Trade shows are the only place where you can customize your marketing message to fit the person in front of you (all the technologies out there still put prospects in groups); and the only place where you can create impressions that last longer than a few seconds.

But (and there’s always a "but"), trade shows have to be done right. 

Doing it "right" means training your staff to ask questions. Why? Because how they interact with visitors is very different from any other conversation they have.

Booth staff should always ask visitors questions before pitching them. Who are you? What do you do for your company? What brought you to the show? To our booth? What’s your agenda for the show?

Only when you understand what’s in it for them, can you be memorable, by positioning your response in terms of visitors' needs.

We do business with people we like, trust, and respect. That only happens when you listen first and talk later. And that’s doing it right.

Events, One. Robots, Nothing.

Robots will ruin content marketing in coming years and make events the top channel for B2B content sharing.

With 71% of B2B executives already down on marketers' content, it won't be long before 99% of them shut their eyes to it.

Marketing automation users are to blame. 

In their frenzied efforts to target personas, they've forgotten persons.

The persons least targeted are, in fact, the folks who share the content that most influences buyers.

As salespeople know, sales result from speaking and sharing the right content with the worker bees who forage at trade shows.

That's why the event industry has been forever able to tout its channel as B2B's Number 1 "sales accelerator;" and why events have perennially been B2B companies' Number 1 choice among media for lead generation and relationship management.

The demise of content marketing will soon make events the top medium for content sharing, too.

DISCLOSURE: My employer serves the event industry.

B2B Marketers: Help Customers Browse Your Content

When will B2B marketers get the memo?

Minimalism is back.

The style's all the rage with runners, designers, gastronomers, photographers—even white guys.

But B2B marketers keep pushing bloated content.

When will they get it? When you subtract, you attract.  

Tight copy encourages browsing.

In their writer's guide Clear and Simple as the Truth, Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner implore writers to write in the "classic style," cutting the excess and making every word count.

Making words count boosts your content's value. 

And that discourages skimming.

"It is possible to skim certain styles," Thomas and Turner write. "Most after-dinner speeches are presented in styles that claim only part of our attention. Many textbooks and news articles are written in styles that allow us to bounce over words and phrases and still feel that we have extracted the sense accurately."

By making words count, you encourage readers to browse.

"Classic style allows browsing but not skimming. We may turn to just one paragraph, say, in an essay, or even to one sentence, and focus on just that. But once we focus on a unit in classic style, and intend to understand it, then we must pay attention to every detail. Writer and reader assume that every word counts. If the reader skips a single word or phrase or sentence, the sense of the unit may be lost. Classic style contains crucial nuances, which can be lost in skimming."

Skim-reading is mindless; browsing's another thing. Browsing is considerate. Browsing is window-shopping.

Customers love to window-shop.

So help them.

"Perfection is achieved, novelist Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, "not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

Why Monkey with Your Brand?

Mathematician Émile Borel said a century ago, if you provided an infinite number of monkeys typewriters, eventually they'd produce Hamlet.

Today he might say, if you provided them smartphones, eventually they'd produce The Godfather.

Despite having limited time and money, marketers seem convinced amateurs can produce broadcast-quality videos.

Why do they monkey with their brands?

In his blog, Prathap Suthan, chief creative officer at agency Bang In The Middle, warns marketers of their folly.

"There are billions of sadly made films finding their way into the great social sewer. They comprise all kinds of trash. Including films made by big brands which they conveniently call web films. 

"Hello, your audience doesn’t realize the difference between a film made for the web versus television. For people, including all of us reading us, it’s a film. Most are badly made. Some are downright ugly. Very few are beautiful, and therefore shareable. 

"Now the thing is, take your eyes off quality and finesse, and you have a sad film representing your company, product, or brand. A social film has to be equivalent to a regular TV film. It’s not just a web film anymore. 

"Save yourself from the gutter and the clutter. Bad content is arsenic. It will eat your brand from inside."

It's 2016. How Do You Make Customers Click?

Powerful headlines grab customers' attention, as David Ogilvy insisted.

But that was in 1963. Only basements, barns and cartoons had mice.

What makes customers click in 2016?

Subheads.

Eye-tracking studies show customers dwell longer on headlines than any other part of a web page. (Ogilvy nailed it.)

But, even when you care to say the very best, headlines can't say it all.

Their smaller, wordier siblings, subheads can. 

Subheads expand and inspire. They let you telegraph additional benefits and urge customers to act.

Headlines hook customers. 

Subheads reel them in.

Want examples of effective subheads?

Here's a baker's dozen, courtesy of Hubspot.