How to Operate a Tradeshow Booth: real advice that you can actually use!

I've been reviewing some old blog posts by Jason Calacanis lately, who I think gives out some of the most useful and practical advice to startups. Here's one from latelast summer that he posted about How to Operate a Tradeshow Booth. If you've seen it, its worth another look. If you haven't, there's something useful in there for everyone! I think putting your goals in place and running your budget against key metrics are two areas he talks about that are so very important.

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I thought I would take a moment to discuss the bestpractices for running a booth or table at a trade show or conference.These points are general and are intended to apply to everything froma 50-person SIG (special interest group), where you're given a genericfolding table, to a custom-built booth at a trade show like CES, heldin the Las Vegas Convention Center.This list is far from comprehensive, but I did query a number of eventexecutives with it to get their insights.

Tips on How to Operate a Trade Show Booth--------------------------------

1. Define your goal=============In order to maximize your investment in a trade-show booth orconference table top, you must clearly define your goals. A booth isbut one of many ways to obtain value from a conference. In fact, evenattending a conference can be a way to grow your company. It'simportant that your entire team, from marketing to product to the CEO,agree on the goals long before committing to an event.The most frequent reasons I've heard for hosting a booth are:a) to obtain leads/clientsb) to further develop relationships with existing clientsc) brandingd) educating people about your company and productse) to support your industry or the people throwing the eventf) for the fun and enjoyment of the team attending the event (i.e. "a junket")g) recruitingh) courting investorsSince your goals are going to determine your strategy, you need toreally think about which one or two of these are the most important toyou. Most companies will look at the list above--the same list that'sin the marketing materials that sold you on getting a booth--and say"yeah, we want to do a little of all of that."If you focus equally on each of the goals above, chances are you'renot going to succeed in any real way at any of them. Once you have alist of goals, you really need to prioritize them. I like to forcemyself to define one clear goal, like "we're here to find aninvestor," "we're here to get press for the latest version of ourwebsite," or "we're here to find a CTO."As an exercise, consider forcing your team to select your top threegoals and assign a percentage of importance to each. As a follow-upexercise, ask your team to now select, hands down, the most importantsingle goal. If you have too hard a time with this task, you probablyshouldn't be hosting a booth--unless of course it's 1999 or 2000 andyou feel like burning through venture capital money as quickly aspossible in order to take your company public.

2. Pick the right event=============The goals mentioned above are very specific and they target specificcategories of people: venture capitalists, clients, employees, or thepress, for example. Now that you know your goals, you need to find outwhich conference to sponsor. Most professional conferences will eitherprovide a list of companies represented at the event or a nice shinypie chart with demographics.Now you can take their word for it, or better yet, you can do your ownresearch. The best way to figure out what trade show to go to is toask the types of people you want to meet what trade shows they love.For example, if you wanted to meet developers, ask a developer for alist of their favorite events.You might hear about eTech (sorry tohear it's not returning), SXSW Interactive or Lockergnome.If you're looking to meet angel investors, you might hear back aboutTechCrunch50 or Web 2.0. For CEOs, you're gonna hear the Wall StreetJournal's D Conference or TED. You get the idea; ask the people whoactually put their money down for tickets about which events theylove.

3. Develop a strategy and timeline=============After you've prioritized your goals, you're going to need a checklistand timeline. Your conference presence is going to have a lot ofmoving parts--far too many to just remember.For example, if you want to generate leads, then you should bring yourmost sociable team members and charge them with getting business cardsinto the raffle bowl. If your goal is to land actual clients at theshow, instead of just getting business cards, well then you're goingto want to bring your most knowledgeable sales people and focus onsocializing over drinks, lunch and dinner. If you want to landdevelopers, you'll probably want to bring your developers and set upan area for them to hang out with their laptops open. (That's whatdevelopers like to do).The main point is that different goals will lead to differentstrategies and a varied punch list.Signing up for a booth is easy but running one is not. Many marketingpeople are quick to sign up for a booth, but slow in preparing to runit. After you've defined your goals you need to develop a timelineleading up to the event, during the event and for post-event.

4. Budget properly=============The cost of the booth is typically 1/3rd to 2/3rds of your totalinvestment in attending an event. Someone just told me that the absurd$18,500 fee that people pay to demo on stage at the DEMO Conference istypically 1/3rd of the total spend once you add in travel, runningyour booth and preparing. $50k to launch at a conference--ouch!NOTE: That will be the last dig at DEMO, the conference that takesadvantage of startups desperate for attention, I promise! :-).Clearly, you need to budget for things like travel, hotels, signage,swag, raffle items, staffing, opportunity cost and food. If you canbarely afford the cost of the booth, you shouldn't be doing the event,because you're going to cut corners on things like staffing yourbooth, signage and giveaways--all of which are essential.Prepare a comprehensive budget for the event and make sure all yourstakeholders understand the true cost, so that they can measuresuccess post-event.

5. Run your budget against your key metrics=============Since you have your goals and costs defined, you might considerassigning a cost to each goal and metric. For example, if your goalsare equally to get prospective leads for the sales team and to recruitnew sales people, and you'd also like to brand yourself a bit, you canrun your costs against those categories:a) Land qualified leads: 40% ($4,000)b) Recruit potential sales executives: 40% ($4,000)c) Branding: 20% ($2,000)As you can see, I've modeled this conference as a local one-day eventwith a $10,000 cost: $5,000 for the booth, $1,000 for the raffle oftwo iPhones, $2,000 in swag, $1,000 for marketing materials and $1,000in staffing costs. Since you're spending $4,000 on generatingqualified leads, you can easily back into a cost-per-lead of $10 ifyou collect 400 of them or $20 if you collect 200 of them.If you normally pay a recruiter $10,000 to find a sales person, thenyou need to find a new sales person over 2-3 events to make thisworthwhile. If you land a new sales person or two at one event, you'reway in the black.These are the kinds of discussions you need to have before committingto an event. Again, unless you've got money to burn because yourcompany throws off huge profits like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft or NewsCorp. Those companies have departments that can burn money onconferences without giving it deep consideration because they'veearned that right. They have huge profits and your startup probablydoesn't. Startups and small- to mid-sized companies need to thinkabout these things deeply, because this money might be better spent onother bullets.

6. Who should work your booth=============As mentioned above, you want to pick the right category of person foryour goal. If you're recruiting sales people, you're going to want tobring not only your HR people (who do it for a living) but also othersales people to act as references for the HR people. If you're lookingfor developers, you need to bring your developers.After you've found the right category of person to manage yourpresence, you have to buy them a copy of the audiobook or print bookfor "How To Win Friends and Influence People." If you do this, pleasebuy it from the following URL at Audible since they sponsor my show,"This Week in Startups": http://www.audiblepodcast.com/twist :-)What they will learn in this famous book is, essentially, how to makeyourself a likable person, by smiling, showing interest in otherpeople and having a positive outlook. Sure it's corny, and maybe it'sobvious to many people, but it's well worth the investment of $10-30to get each of your folks both the book and the audiobook. (Make iteasy for them). In fact, insist on them listening to it and have abook club-style discussion about it before the show.

7. Getting people into your booth=============Be friendly, make eye contact and smile. Ask people one of the following things:a) "Hello, would you be interested in seeing our product?"b) "Hello, would you be interested in seeing our product and winning an iPhone?"c) "Hello NAMEonNAMETAG, how are you doing today?" -- response --"That's fantastic, glad you're having a good time. Let's win you aniPhone and show you want Mahalo does, shall we?"d) Hold out a candy bowl, and say with a big smile, "Candy?" -- waitfor thank you -- say one of the three lines above.If someone says "no, thank you," say something like:a) "OK, thanks, would you like to drop your card in to win an iPhone anyway?"b) "No worries, perhaps another time... enjoy the rest of the show!"c) "OK, enjoy the rest of the show. See you at the cocktail party!"The giving of the raffle or candy taps into the reciprocity effect inpsychology, which essentially states that if you do something nice forsomeone, they will feel compelled to return the favor. You give thecandy and they will see a demo. You give the chance at an iPhone andthey won't have a problem giving you their card.You can read more about reciprocity online, but basically it's whatthe Moonies do to you at the airport when they put a flower in yourhand and than ask for a donation. The book "The Power of Persuasion"has a good read/listen on this subject: http://bit.ly/eLhfr

8. How to demo your product=============Create a very short interactive overview of your product. For example,here is how I would demo Mahalo Answers:Me: "Have you ever used Yahoo Answers or seen a question from therecome up in a Google results?"Attendee: "Yes/No/Maybe."Me: "OK, great, well, Mahalo Answers is like that but way morepowerful. Here, you can see, I've asked people what their favoritecover to a Bob Dylan song is, and you can see I've received over 120answers in just three days, and many folks embedded a YouTube video ormp3 file!"Attendee: INSERT SOME OBSERVATION OR QUESTION HERE.ME: "Exactly! That's a great observation" (i.e. something to show youlistened to their response), "Let me have you try it... What questiondo you have today? Think of some problem in your life you're trying tosolve... maybe a vacation, car or product decision? Parenting orhealth?"As you can see I've set this up to be interactive and engage theperson and I'm showing--NOT TELLING--the core value of the product tothe user. I'm getting them right into the product and having them tryit. That is what you want to do: show the product and get thepotential user to TRY the product.

9. Do assume the Internet will be down=============I don't know if I've ever been to a conference of note that hadtotally stable Internet for the complete show, especially at techconferences. Have three different brands of EVDO cards as well as acanned demonstration or screencast of your product ready to go.1

0. Do offer swag=============Offer an easy to carry, memorable and hopefully useful piece of swag.If you're at Sundance and it's freezing, give out a scarf, gloves orwool cap--all with your logo. If you're at a beach resort in Hawaii,give suntan lotion with your logo on it, a sun visor or flip flops. Ifyou're in New York City, give folks a bike messenger bag, a customprinted Zagat guide or a journal with a pen.Don't give crummy t-shirts to people with a huge logo on it. Peoplemay take them but they won't wear them. If you are going to give folksa shirt, make it a beautiful shirt with a tiny, tiny logo on it. Makeit something someone very hip would be happy to wear to the club orgolf course. No one wants your huge logo across their chest unlessyou're a loved brand like Nike, Google or Apple.

11. Do have a raffle=============Collect business cards by having a raffle for whatever the mostrecently sold-out product in the world is. If there is a line forsomething to buy at the Apple Store or Best Buy, there will be an evenlonger line to get it for free at your booth. Have multiple handheldfishbowls ready so your booth agents can hold them out as people go byif need be.Email those people after the event and thank them for joining theraffle. Let them know they didn't win the XBOX 360, but that you areinviting them to a seminar about "how to save money with CRM" ifthey're interested. In other words, your follow-up pitch should offersomething else of value. Content is a great way to go, and the contentshouldn't be "all about Salesforce," but rather about what Salesforcecustomers care about.Try to go from the raffle to a conversation about amutually-interesting topic (i.e. a webinar) to the client. Going rightfrom raffle to client is too jarring and will feel like spam.Another idea is to send a lesser piece of swag in the mail with somecontent. So, something like: "Thank you for joining our raffle atTechCrunch50. I wanted to send you a complimentary copy of 'SiliconValley Bank's Guide to Doing Your Next Valuation' as a thank you. Ifyou have any follow-up questions, do let me know, and I look forwardto seeing you at next year's event or sooner!"

12. Have a fascinating business card=============File this under "purple cows," but having an interesting business cardcan go a long way. I'll never forget Charles Forman's business cardas long as I live. It's so innovative and cool that it got a story onGawker: http://bit.ly/2kuECT.TechCrunch50 demopit company Expensify featured their innovativebusiness card in their piece on the event: http://bit.ly/phCRWhen I launched Mahalo.com at the D Conference two years ago, I putthe names of each speaker on the back of my card in a Mahalo URL. Thatlet people see examples of our topic pages/search results forthemselves. Not as innovative as the two things above, but not tooshabby.Frankly, I'm thinking about knocking off Forman's card one of these days.Here's some more memorable business card examples: http://bit.ly/zqXUyWhat can you accomplish with your business card?

13. Wear a professional made name tag.=============A custom name tag looks better than the ones the conference gives out.Check out this one for Apple employees: http://bit.ly/2UgyW2

14. Have appropriate signage=============This is fairly obvious, but if you don't have your name around andabove the crowd height, your booth may get passed by. Big photos ofgood looking people are also good since that will catch the eye.People stop to look at photos of other people.

15. Don't hire booth babes or strippers=============Unless you work in the modeling, strip club or porn business, don'thire models, strippers or porn stars to work your booth--it'sinsulting to women. Now, that doesn't mean the folks in your boothcan't be attractive and well manicured. It just means, have sometaste. At last year's conference, someone had a bunch of strippertypes in hot pants and absurdly tight t-shirts. It was totally cheap,cheesy and lame. It's 2009, people, really.

Some assorted smaller tips that don't need much explanation:

16. Ask the conference producers for a discounted "introductory rate."

17. Have a big dish of candy next to your computers.

18. Have three times the number of staff for your booth as you need at one time.

19. Have your staff circulate through the show giving out swag, candyor party invites (if allowed).

20. Dress your staff in the company color scheme and with thecompany's logo on their front and back.

21. Consider having a game of chance (spin the wheel, blackjack, etc)at your booth.

21. Hold a post-conference recap with your team to evaluate how you did.

22. Hold a post-conference recap with the conference producers andtell them your pros and cons.

If you're interested in this you might be interested in my previous posts:

How to Demo your Startup (part one)http://calacanis.com/2009/09/08/how-to-demo-your-startup-part-one/

How to Demo your Startup (part two)http://calacanis.com/2009/09/08/how-to-demo-your-startup-part-two/

How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips)http://calacanis.com/2008/03/07/how-to-save-money-running-a-startup-17-really-good-tips/

What to do if your startup is about fail (or “Don’t Stop Believing”)http://calacanis.com/2009/02/27/what-to-do-if-your-startup-is-about-fail-or-dont-stop-believing/

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