On CEIR's blog, adman Gary Slack laments the tradeshow industry's thundering indifference to customers—an indifference, alas, I can vouch for.
"More than any other B2B medium or sales channel, the exhibition industry—meaning trade show producers, contractors, CVBs—is remarkably unconnected with senior B2B marketing leadership, the people who set marketing budgets and make the ultimate decisions on how much gets invested in face-to-face marketing," Slack says.
No matter where or when B2B marketers gather, you can count on the show industry to be a no-show, Slack says.
"Go to any B2B marketing conference and rarely if ever do you hear exhibition industry execs attending, much less speaking or even exhibiting. Yet practically every other recipient of B2B marketing dollars is represented, either in the audience or on the dais or in the exhibit hall, or all three."
This week is bittersweet for me.
It would have seen the inauguration of DARE, a marketing conference I planned with two partners to help bridge the gap between B2B CMOs and the exhibition industry.
We had to cancel the event 120 days out, for lack of sponsors and endorsements by show organizers.
Despite 12 months' effort to reach hundreds of tradeshow industry players, both large and small, only three suppliers—Freeman, Kubik and SpotMe—bought sponsorships before we cancelled DARE; and only one show organizer—NAB Show—endorsed the conference.
DARE sank in the vast sea of indifference to customers.
I'd chalk it up to a severe case of "fat, dumb and happy."
"As long as exhibitions themselves remain so essential to B2B sales success, maybe you don’t have to work as hard trying to grow your slice of the big B2B budget pie," Slack says.
"But by not engaging directly with senior B2B marketers at the events they attend to learn the latest, you are jeopardizing mindshare that some day may be critical to your survival."
The use of the word "advice," in effect, invited prospects to co-create the restaurant. That triggered a gratifying sense of tribal togetherness.
"Companies struggle to get consumers to feel bonded with and therefore loyal to their brands," Cialdini says. "It’s a battle they’ve been winning by inviting current and prospective customers to co-create with them novel or updated products and services, most often by providing the company with information as to desirable features.
"However, within such marketing partnerships, consumer input must be framed as advice to the company, not as opinions about or expectations for the company. "The differential phrasing might seem minor, but it is critical to achieving the company’s unitization goal. Providing advice puts a person in a merging state of mind, which stimulates a linking of one’s own identity with another party’s. Providing an opinion or expectation, on the other hand, puts a person in an introspective state of mind, which involves focusing on oneself. These only slightly different forms of consumer feedback—and the nonetheless vitally different merging-versus-separating mind-sets they produce—can have a significant impact on consumer engagement with a brand.”
I often encounter folks who've opted, or been forced, to freelance.
A great many share something in common: they don't want to work two jobs.
Unfortunately, that's what you have to do to succeed.
Because it ain't easy to cultivate "1,000 true fans." Else, we'd all do it.
Editor Kevin Kelly first expressed the idea a decade ago:
You can define a "true fan" as anyone willing to send you $100 a year for your product. Provided your cost of goods is low, a freelancer can get by comfortably with only 1,000 true fans.
And the money need not arrive in lump sums; it can trickle in (fans can subscribe, say, at the price of $8.34 a month for 12 months).
However you're paid, the bar to success is low, Kelly says.
"To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans."
Besides keeping costs low, the challenge freelancers face is difficult enough to put most of them off.
To succeed, you have to cultivate 1,000 solid relationships―both financial ones (no one else can profit from your work) and professional ones (fans must like and trust you).
It's easy to attract 1,000 or more fair-weather fans (just ask Paul Reubens). But you need 1,000 diehards.
And, although digital platforms that enable relationships with diehards abound, nurturing those relationships could kill you.
"The truth is that cultivating a thousand true fans is time consuming, sometimes nerve racking, and not for everyone," Kelly says.
Nine of 10, in fact, told Bonfire Marketing they value real over every other brand attribute.
Customers today back brands they perceive to be honest, and shy from those they don't, says Andrew Reid, author of The Authenticity Handbook. "Authenticity is now a business imperative," Reid says.
