December 10, 2024 • 44 mins
Ever wondered how face-to-face marketing can catapult your brand beyond the constraints of online sales platforms? Join us as we unravel the strategic shift from Amazon’s ad-heavy sales model to the dynamic realm of trade shows. With insights from our guests, Mike and Matt, we'll guide you through their transformative experience at a major trade show, targeting pool professionals and builders. Discover how an interactive booth experience, like the "Pool Olympics," can captivate audiences and create lasting brand impressions.
In our discussion, we move through the lessons learned from engaging directly with industry pros. From the critical choice of booth location on a main aisle to creative promotional strategies using QR codes, we’ll share the nuances of effective trade show tactics. Uncover the importance of product durability and attractive warranties that can take attendees by surprise and ensure your brand stands out. Learn why distinct QR codes are key to better tracking and how they can inform your future marketing decisions.
Finally, we tackle the financial intricacies of trade show participation. Explore how a customizable backlit booth sourced from an overseas manufacturer can provide both flexibility and cost efficiency. We also discuss innovative ways to gather contact details using tools like Popple and how to maintain engagement through product giveaways. Whether you’re venturing into trade shows for the first time or seeking to refine your strategy, this episode provides actionable insights to maximize your brand's presence and market penetration.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to the Brand Fortress HQ Tactics
Tuesday.
This is our podcast episodewhere we talk about different
tactics for building brands onAmazon and beyond.
Today we have a reallyinteresting episode that I'm
excited to bring to you guysabout the power of face-to-face
marketing.
We think a lot selling onAmazon and e-commerce about ads
(00:21):
on Amazon and ads on otherplatforms and TikTok and social
media, but there's a lot ofpower in just being able to talk
to people face-to-face, tointeract directly with people
around your brand.
And today Mike and Matt aregoing to share a pretty unique
experience that they had ofbeing at a trade show that was
within their target market, whatthat looked like, what they
(00:41):
learned from it.
We've talked a little bit onprevious episodes what that
setup to the trade show lookedlike, which I think is also very
important.
So I encourage listeners to goback and listen to those,
because there's a lot of workand planning that went into that
trade show before you guys evenstarted.
But with that, I guess Mike,I'll turn it over to you on.
Maybe start with just at a highlevel, or if you can kind of
(01:04):
recap what got you interested inthe trade show and at a high
level.
You know what was some of theprep that you did to be
successful at the trade showSure.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
So the first thing was is that the decision to do
(01:41):
the trade show was very muchprompted by the, I guess the
idea that we needed to move intoother territory outside of
Amazon in order to not only.
We've been in a position wherea large portion of our sales on
Amazon are now all ad-based,which obviously is very
expensive these days, since adcosts on Amazon are way more
than they used to be.
So from my perspective, theonly way that we really kind of
(02:04):
turn that trend around a littlebit on Amazon and begin to move
toward a higher percentage ofsales coming from organic, which
obviously is from ranking thenis to get more brand exposure
off platform so that our brandbecomes something that people
(02:26):
are actually searching for onAmazon because they heard about
us someplace else.
We all know the more that yourbrand is being searched on
Amazon in reference to or incombination with the key phrases
and terms and products that yousell, the more likely you start
moving up in the rankings onAmazon just by virtue of the
fact that Amazon expects you'regoing to get more conversions
out of that because people arelooking for you, so there's a
lot of value there.
Also, amazon pays attention tohow Google is ranking you and
(02:49):
things of that nature.
So there's a lot ofoff-platform stuff that can
affect the Amazon algorithm interms of ranking.
So the other thing was is thatwe know that our market on
Amazon is mostly residentialusers.
We do sell to some commercialusers on Amazon, but mostly it's
going to be residential.
We recognized not too long agothat it made a lot of sense for
(03:10):
us to move into the commercialmarket with our products.
Now, for anybody who doesn'tknow, who hasn't maybe listened
to previous episodes, we sell asuper high quality like premium
grade pool cleaning tools, sopoles and nets and brushes,
things like that.
Essentially they are pro grade,but we have sold to primarily
the residential market eversince we started about 10 years
(03:32):
ago.
What became obvious was ifwe're going to sell a pro grade
unit, why don't we start sellingit to the actual pros that
would also use it Becausethey're going to buy in bulk?
There's a lot of things aboutour warranty that makes sense
for a commercial market, becauseinstead of unlimited free
replacement, it's unlimited 50%off replacement and so we
actually make money on thosereplacements.
So it's kind of like aconsumable.
(03:54):
And at that point it becameclear okay, if we're going to
move into the pro market, thenhow do we get there?
Like, what are the ways that weget our brand in front of those
individuals that are the buyersfor these companies, whether
they're pool cleaning pros,whether they're pool builders or
developers, things of thatnature?
And it just became obvious thetrade show made a lot of sense
(04:15):
for us to, for us to dip our toein, and really not even dip our
toe in, but, like, if we'regoing to do it, then let's go
big at it, right?
So we went to one of thebiggest trade shows in the U?
S for pool professionals andpool builders and kind of that's
.
That was the road to, you know,getting in there and making
that decision.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Okay, yeah, and I think that that you know, a key
takeaway there that I have is isthat, yes, expanding off Amazon
, but also looking at how canyou take that same product into
a little bit different customersegments, which I think is
really important there.
So I know, you know, and wetalked again about a little bit
about it on a different episodebut one of the things that you
(04:55):
were implementing in order to,you know, go beyond just hey,
here's a booth, here's someinformation.
Investing in this, you reallyhave to have something that's
more interactive, that's goingto catch people's attention, and
that type of stuff.
And you had, you know, a boothset up around the pool, olympics
, and some activities and thattype of stuff.
Can you give us a quickoverview of what those
activities were and how you gotpeople engaged at the, at your
(05:17):
booth, sure, so yeah it, we.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
I've never done a trade show.
I've been to some, but I'venever done one myself, so it
wasn't something that I had alot of experience in, but it
became.
I just thought it made perfectsense that a lot of the booths
that I have seen at trade showsin the past were simply we're
here, products.
(05:44):
You know, we've got a littlevideo running and I'm sitting at
my booth waiting for somebodyto stop by my booth and then
I'll tell them about my productif they happen to show up right.
And so for a lot of you know,businesses that do trade shows,
I feel like they don't get a lotof traffic to their booth
because they don't really doanything that would encourage
people to show up there, and soI wanted to do something
different.
I wanted to do something notonly that I thought would draw
people to the booth, but alsothat we could get video of and
(06:05):
get pictures of, and get up onsocial media and utilize that in
other ways.
So we decided that we wanted tohave some sort of a competition
at the booth.
We thought that that would drumup more activity.
People would show up at thebooth, people would see people
at the booth, and so that woulddraw others to the booth, and
then the question was okay, well, what does that look like?
(06:26):
What are we going to do?
So for us, the thing that madethe most sense was creating this
competition, which was basedaround our actual products, so
that we could get our productsinto the hands of the users that
we felt like we wanted to sellto, so that they could feel this
you know, the durability of theunits, our warranty.
(06:48):
One of the things that's reallyuseful for a pool pro with
regards to our warranty is thatnot only is it unlimited 50% off
replacement which nobody elsein the category is even offering
a warranty to commercial users,much less, you know, at a
discounted rate.
You know of that nature butalso that the units that we sell
are very modular.
So instead of when their poolrake dies and they need a new
(07:12):
one, with everybody else, theygot to go out and basically pay
the standard wholesale rate forthat product and to replace it
because there's no warranty.
With us, not only is it 50% off, but instead of replacing the
entire rake, they can replacethe handle or the rim or the net
, you know.
So it's much less expensive,but part of that that we needed
(07:32):
to really drive home in terms ofthe message was not only is it
inexpensive, but it's easy to do.
It's easy to actually replacethe handle or replace the net or
something, because time ismoney for these guys, right.
So what we did was part of thecompetition was a disassembly
and reassembly station.
So we had a table set up, wehad three of our products.
We had our brush, our net and ashortened version of our pool
(07:55):
pole sitting on this front table, and the idea behind the
competition was you disassemble,completely disassemble the unit
and completely reassemble theunit and we'll time you, and
whoever gets the best time onany given day will win that item
.
So if you were the best on thepool net, you win a pool net.
If you were best in a pool pool, you win a pool pool.
(08:16):
We also had a couple ofstrength stations, which was
inclined pushups and invertedrows for individuals that maybe
are a little bit more fitnessoriented and thought maybe they
could, you know, break out abunch of push-ups.
And the idea behind that was wehad it set up so that our pool
poles were the stands, so thestands for the push-up, you know
(08:37):
section, and the inverted rowswere our pool pole.
The idea was it was stressingthe locking mechanism on our
pool pool, so every timesomebody did another push-up,
they were stressing that lockingmechanism, so we were able to
show the durability of the unit.
Honestly, we had a lot ofinterest.
We had a lot of people show upat the booth and actually
compete in the competition.
We had people come backnumerous times to improve their
(08:59):
times.
We saw a lot of people whowould see people at the booth
and that would draw them to thebooth like, hey, what's going on
here?
But, honestly, the biggestbenefit to it was once people
got it in their hands and theywere able to see so we had.
We literally thought so I did adisassembly and reassembly of
(09:21):
all of our tools and it lookedlike okay, yeah, pretty much
everybody should be able to dothis in three minutes.
You know, if they've never seenthe product, they've never done
it before.
Like, three minutes is a goodtime, right, I didn't want to
make it too much shorter thanthat because I wanted them to be
successful, right?
Like the idea was hey, this iseasy, so I wanted them to
succeed, but we didn't want to,you know, make it too, you know,
(09:44):
too long either.
So three minutes was it.
We found that we had a bunch ofpeople who managed to fully
disassemble and reassemble allof the units in as little as
like 20 seconds.
Wow, and and on one I think theminimum was like 45 seconds
versus what I thought like twoto three minutes.
Right.
But the nice thing about thatwas then we could tell people
(10:06):
when they came up to the boothand they're and we're talking
about the product, we can saylook, we had a 15 year old kid
who fully disassembled andreassembled this net in like 30
seconds.
So if you need to do this out inthe field and you got to swap
out a handle, you can re.
You could put every piece onthis unit, like fully
disassemble it and reassemble itin 45 seconds.
(10:26):
So if you've got to just do ahandle, imagine how quickly you
could be back on the job If youjust keep handles, you know,
keep the individual parts in thetruck, so that then you're just
back to work, right.
So it was really a veryexperiential way for us to show
them how easy it is to replacethose parts.
And then also, obviously, whatis the cost to do so, like hey,
it's 50% off on the net or ahandle or whatever that is.
(10:50):
So it actually worked outreally well and we had a lot of
people who are very interestedin it and it taught us a lot,
because we got to have a lot ofconversations with pool pros and
so we learned a great deal fromhaving those conversations with
people.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Okay, it people.
It was such a brilliant.
I mean everything was so wellorchestrated.
I mean I was part of theconversations that we all had
before the trade show happened,months before the trade show
happened, and then I had theopportunity to be at the trade
show and watch it all unfold.
And I mean all of the thingsthat Mike said that I think that
(11:23):
were in his head as potentialbenefits of doing this Pull
Olympics.
But I got to see it firsthand.
And what happened to this kid?
This 15-year-old kid came back.
I mean he probably all in allspent six hours at our booth
over the course of a couple ofdays because he was so
competitive and this is apredominantly male industry and
(11:46):
I think that males arepredominantly more competitive
than females are and I meanpeople would go and get their
friends and bring hey, let's seeif you can do more pushups than
me.
Or hey, let's see if you canput this together.
We had an uncle and a nephewthat were razzing each other but
, like Mike said, every time wehad some guys there that were
competing against each other,we'd have 10 more people that
(12:06):
would come up to see what wasgoing on because of the ruckus
and one of the things that wedidn't do that I think was a
little bit of a miss is theymost booths or most trade shows
have that scanning tool whereyou can scan someone's their
lanyard and then get theircontact information.
We didn't do that but likethere are so many people that
(12:30):
came up to watch that I hadconversations with that didn't
necessarily want to compete,that were interested in what we
had to say but didn't stop forvery long, if I, if we had some
sort of a tool or we could havescanned, we could have got a
bunch more people on the list.
So I think it could have been alittle bit more successful in
that regard.
But I mean, the whole thingwent just to plan and I think it
went even better to plan basedon how competitive, how much of
(12:50):
a competitive nature, thecompetition was and then how
many people came as a result ofnot only the competitive part of
it but also just to see whatthe ruckus was.
It was brilliant and I washonored to be a part of it and
we learned so many lessons forthe next trade show.
And that was I was honored tobe a part of it and, like I, we
learned so many lessons for thenext trade show and that was the
other thing is that we it wassuccessful enough to where trade
(13:11):
shows are going to become partof part of getting in front of
those pool pros.
And one more thing I want to add.
You know I'm still kind offairly new to the pro-tough
family and being able to havethose conversations with the
pool pros.
I think all of this starts withhaving a better product or
having a good product, becausethat, you know, being able to
have that conversation with thepool pro and show him and have
(13:34):
him be able to handle the toolsthat are more durable very
easily identifiable as moredurable than the tools that
they're using but then havingconversations with them about
the warranty, like I can't, Ican't count.
I lost count of the number ofpool pros that looked at me
after I told them about 50, that50% off unlimited replacement
warranty, and they asked me whatthe catch was.
Like Mike said, there's nobodyin the industry that does that.
(13:57):
The pool, the tools are better.
In general, we offer a warranty.
Like it's literally a nobrainer.
And that's what I learned bybeing face to face with these
pool professionals and I don'tthink that we would have learned
that in the same way if we werejust having phone calls or
emails with those poolprofessionals.
So, yeah, it was, it was, itwas great.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Well, and Matt, you talked a little bit about
lessons learned and I'd love tohear from both of you guys, you
know, based on this experience,you know, what are maybe a
couple you know what are maybe acouple.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
You know two to three of those lessons learned that
are on your guys's list for nexttime.
So I'll say that one of thelessons that we learned that I
think is going to be reallycritical is location.
We were I don't even want tosay lucky enough.
Honestly, this is a God thingas far as I'm concerned, because
we were in.
We were placed in a boothbecause we were late to the game
, you know, getting ourselvesregistered for the trade show.
We were in a booth that was wayback off in a corner and our
original plan because we knewthat was going to be problematic
(14:53):
, our original plan was that wewould have people at least one
person at all times, walking thetrade show with essentially a
billboard on their back, youknow, like with with a t-shirt
or polo advertising thecompetition and the unlimited
50% off replacement warranty andwhatnot, and the booth number
just to get people back thereand a QR code that they could
(15:14):
scan, which would give them themap and would direct them to
where we were exactly.
We ended up not really havingto do that because, I don't know
, a month before the trade show,I happened to jump in to check
on something I don't evenremember what it was it was
something related to the map ofthe trade show and recognized
there was an opening for a boothand it wasn't even technically
(15:37):
an opening, it was held bysomebody, but it was getting
pretty close and so I asked Pamand just said, hey, would you
investigate this?
You know, like, because thiswould be a really good place
placing for us.
Turned out they weren't goingto come, so we got their boot
and we ended up on a main aisle,so we got a lot of traffic just
rolling by our booth.
(15:58):
But here's the thing we learnedthat that location and I mean
everybody knows location,location, location, right, like
it's important.
It's not as if we didn'talready know that going in.
But what we did discover was ifyour booth is interesting, like
if there's something going onthere that draws people's eyes
and draws their attention, andyou have good location, you will
(16:21):
get people coming into thebooth without having to walk out
into the aisle and drag peoplein.
They will just show up,naturally.
So one of the things that wewill absolutely do going forward
is make sure that we are onsome sort of a main aisle that
we know we're going to be ableto get traffic, you know, just
naturally walking by our booth.
So as long as we're interestingenough that we'll get people
(16:43):
coming in.
So that was one thing.
Another thing is we had QR codeseverywhere and the QR codes
mainly were they took them to alanding page.
On that landing page they couldregister for the competition
and a few other things.
There was information about thecompany and I think that was
really valuable.
We had people scanning.
We had a little in fact I'vegot one in my pocket because we
(17:04):
have some extra ones.
We did these little mint tinswhich basically became our
business card.
So anytime somebody was at thebooth and we wanted to send them
away with something, we wouldjust give them this.
There's like a hundred littlemini mints in this thing.
It's super tiny, easy to pop inyour pocket, but there's a QR
code on it that they can scanand would take them to the
landing page.
And of course, we can changethat If you do that.
(17:30):
By the way, if you use QR codes, make sure that you're set up
in a way that you can changewhere they go after the trade
show, so that during the tradeshow it can go to a trade show
specific landing page.
After the trade show, you cansend them to the homepage or
send them wherever it is thatyou want them to go.
But we had QR codes everywherefor people to scan.
And one of the things that wedidn't do and I would highly
recommend is, if you're going todo that, because we put them on
coffee cups.
So we had coffee at the booth.
(17:51):
We had QR codes on the coffeecup so that as you're walking
around, you know it wasadvertising, the pool, olympics
and our booth number and youcould.
You know, if you want to tellsomebody about it, you could
just hand them the cup and theycould scan the QR code, give
them directions back to ourbooth.
But we did.
We use the same QR code oneverything because it all went
to the same place.
Yep, bad idea, because now wedon't know which which items got
(18:14):
the most scans.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
You know like where people actually come from the
coffee cups, or they come fromthe mince, or do they come?
Speaker 2 (18:20):
from the future trade show, everything will have its
own QR code so we can track that.
But it was very effective.
We had a lot of scans on thoseQR codes and so it did work
quite well.
So that would definitely be atakeaway.
That, I think, was a valuableone.
There's plenty of other ones,but, matt, I don't know if you
want to jump in there and talkabout some of the other stuff.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Yeah, I mean I think the other one that we put a lot
of work into that I think wasimportant.
Now it does add a considerablecost but I think and I did see
examples of people that didn'tdo this Our booth was really
cool, like it was backlit, itwas big, I think having a good
(18:58):
booth.
I did go walk the floor acouple of times and I literally
saw a Chinese manufacturer thathad a folding table that didn't
even have a tablecloth.
It said exhibitor.
On the back, like that wastheir label, was just exhibitor.
And to be honest, I'm not a poolprofessional, so like I don't
even know what they were selling, I have no idea what was on the
table.
So like I think, investing in Ithink Mike's going to talk a
(19:21):
little bit about overall budget,of what it costed, of the trade
show in general, and I thinkthe booth was probably a big
part of that but I think it wassuper important and I think it
legitimized the business as awhole.
I think you know appearance andI mean first impressions are
important and I think investingin having you know something
(19:41):
like that, you know a real nicebooth, that kind of sets
people's mind at ease whenthey're coming up to you.
But I think that is superimportant.
So that was one of the things Ilearned, to be able to pass on
to other people is you reallyhave to invest in what that
first impression looks like?
I think that was another bigthing that I learned as well.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Yeah, on the topic of the booth, first of all, I was
really pleased with how thebooth came out.
But one of the things that whenwe were initially looking at it
but one of the things that whenwe were initially looking at it
, so we wanted a really gooddesign we had a 10 by 20,
basically two 10 by 10 slots.
So we had a 10 by 20 booth andwe needed that because one side
(20:19):
was the show side and one sidewas the competition side and we
needed that kind of divisionthere.
We decided fairly early on thatwe wanted it to be backlit.
I thought that that was goingto add a lot and if we had the
right design, that that wouldhelp.
And I will say, when weassembled this, it looked good
even before we plugged it in,let's say.
(20:40):
But once you backlit it itreally drew your attention.
So I would highly recommend abacklit booth.
But here's the thing we startedlooking at companies in the US
that could do that for us andthe cost was going to be about
15 grand for the booth and I waslike first trade show, don't
(21:03):
know how this is going to go.
No way I'm investing that kindof money in a booth.
What are our alternatives?
So what we did, we wentoverseas.
We went to Alibaba and look forwho makes these things, because
I knew the guys in the U?
S weren't making them Like theywere buying them from somebody.
So we went to a manufactureroverseas that makes these booths
.
We managed to buy the exactsame booth for $3,000.
(21:26):
And now we paid two grand toship it into the U US because we
needed it really fast.
So we had to ship it by air.
But we spent five grand totalfor a $15,000 booth and if we
hadn't needed it so quickly andwe could have sent it over with
one of our product shipments orsomething in a container, you
know, we probably would havegotten away for 3,500 bucks you
(21:49):
know for for the whole thing.
So I would you know, if youwant to go with a backlit booth,
definitely look overseas to toa good manufacturer in China,
because the one that we used wasactually terrific.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
How did you do the design for the booth Like?
Was that done from somebodyseparate from who you ordered it
from?
Or was that the like?
Who did the design for it for?
Speaker 2 (22:08):
you guys, they would have done it for us.
We just I wasn't entirelyconfident, you know, in their
design team.
You know, maybe they would havedone a great job, I don't know,
but we actually had a designerthat did it.
Matt had somebody that he'dalready worked with, and so we
brought him in and he did thedesign.
Took a little bit of work, butit came out really good.
Another recommendation that Iwould make this is something
(22:28):
that we decided to do as we werewalking through the process of
design was we designed the boothso that it's configurable.
So the way that it comes is itbasically comes in 10-foot
lengths, like there's a 10-footwall, another 10-foot back wall,
and then we've got a 10-footside wall and then you just kind
of put them together and itcomes with a fabric that you put
(22:51):
on each side.
So what we did was because mythought when we started working
through it was well, if we go toother trade shows, I don't know
if the configuration of ourbooth is going to be the same.
What if we decide we want toput the competition on this side
because we're in position, ormaybe we only get a 10 by 10
space?
We can't afford, you know wecan't do the 20 by 20.
(23:12):
So we actually made the designso that everything was basically
reversible and configurable, sowe could set it up any way we
wanted and it would still work.
So that's one thing I wouldrecommend with the design is
make sure you design it withthat in mind that if you're in a
space where you want to shiftthe position of things, you can
actually do that, so you don'thave to repurchase new, you know
(23:33):
graphics for the for the booth,okay.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
And then you know since we're on budget, I mean
you know if you're comfortablesharing kind of ballpark, by the
time you paid for a booth andyou know what it costs to be in
the trade show and you knowgetting out there and all that
type of stuff.
If you're comfortable sharingkind of ballpark, all in, where
did you end up?
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah, no, I'm plenty comfortable with that.
We haven't done the full totalyet, we're still putting those
numbers together.
But if we talk about some ofthe major expenses getting the
booth space so we did two 10 by10 booths Each 10 by 10, I think
, was like 3 800.
So we were in the area of 7, 7500 bucks for the booth space
(24:15):
itself, they will absolutelynickel and dime you on every
single little thing that youneed.
So, like coffee, you know, fortwo days was like 700.
You know like it was.
It was just you and you.
If you've never done a tradeshow, when you you get those
numbers back you're going tothink that it's a joke.
You're literally going to thinkit's a joke.
It's not a joke, it's for real.
You know, electricity, gettingelectricity to your booth was
(24:38):
like I don't know.
We paid another $300, $400 justto have electricity, you know.
So there's all sorts of stufflike that, that the overall cost
for the booth, for some of theadditional items that we needed
for the booth.
You know the booth space, youknow all of that it probably
costs us.
You know about.
(24:58):
Well, let's see, we had fiveand some 12.
I would say you're probablylooking at like 15 grand for the
, the booth itself, leasing thespace for the booth and all of
the incidentals and stuff at thetrade show for the booth.
You're probably in that 15grand range.
And again, that assumes thatyou went overseas to get your
(25:21):
booth done, because that was abig savings for us.
Now, beyond that, we had travelexpenses.
We brought in six people, so wehad airfare for six people.
We had an Airbnb that we rented, you know, near the venue, for
a week, essentially because weneeded some prep days so that we
could get things figured out.
We wanted to have somedecompression days afterward so
(25:41):
the team could just kind ofenjoy being together.
And you know, if you're aremote team, that was actually a
big benefit to us as well wasjust having this remote team
come together and personally geta chance to actually interact
and get to know each otherbetter.
So that was actually asignificant value to us.
It's hard to calculate that,but I would consider that a very
(26:02):
big value of having done it.
But I mean, you're probably, ifyou're bringing people from in
the US from in the US versusoverseas you know that'll lessen
your transportation costs.
But they weren't insignificant,you know.
I would say a couple of grandtotal, you know, maybe, well,
once you account for the Airbnb,probably a few grand for that.
(26:23):
We had to rent, you know,vehicles.
We needed two vehicles, soyou've got rental costs there,
(26:51):
no-transcript, and literallythat's probably, you know, five
grand.
You know, in terms of the total, man, hours and things like
that.
So it wasn't cheap by any means, you know.
Was it cheap However so I wouldsay that rough estimates would
suggest that the next trade showthat we do will be no more than
(27:15):
a third of the total expensethat we put into this one, and
maybe as much as a quarterbecause there will be so much
less time invested, because wealready know what we're doing.
We figured it out, we've got thetemplate.
You know, like there's a fewthings we want to change, but
ultimately it went well.
So there's not a lot of expensethere.
You know we already have thebooth.
You know we kind of understandthe trade show game a little bit
(27:36):
.
So, in terms of minimizing ourexpenses there and things like
that, so you know, in that sensethe first trade show is going
to cost you a fortune.
Additional trade shows will bemuch less expensive than the
first one.
Once you kind of figure outwhat you're doing and you have a
lot of those items.
But remember, you have totransport them so and you have
(27:57):
to store them in between tradeshow events.
So bear in mind that that'salso another expense that you're
going to have to consider ishow do we store it, how much is
that going to cost, and how muchis it going to cost to get it
from here to the next trade show?
You know, all of that's goingto come into play.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
So just kind of looking at those as like startup
costs.
Like when you do that first one, hey, you know there's going to
be significant amount of likeanything that new that you do,
whether it's a new product oryou know a new marketing channel
.
There's going to be startupcosts and kind of that learning
curve that you just have to planfor in advance.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Right, yeah, for now, the one thing that I think,
first of all, the title of thispodcast episode is the Power of
Face-to-Face Marketing.
We haven't really talked a lotabout how this trade show, what
the benefits of that were, but Ithink if you were to ask Mike
and I will after I get done withthe question what the ROI was,
(28:48):
first of all, I think that theROI is a little bit difficult to
calculate because I don't thinkit's going to be a lot of, it's
not going to be immediate, butfrom my standpoint, the like I
said before having conversationswith pool pros, which isn't
something that I've had theopportunity to do up until now
One thing like I've, I've donelots of research into the
(29:08):
competitors on Amazon in thisparticular category, and our
price point is a lot higher thanmost of the cheap Chinese
competitors that are selling thesame products.
What I learned at the show isthat the pool professional tools
, which not a lot of them, areeven sold on Amazon, at least
not by the brand.
Our prices are in line with alot of those brands.
(29:31):
So it's not the same apples toapples comparison in terms of
price point, and that was animportant lesson for me.
But then also hearing peoplethat use our tools and hearing
their stories about how it savedthem time.
It saved them money.
It gave me.
The one of my big tasks for thebrand in the upcoming year is
(29:52):
penetrating that pull pro market.
And because I was able to havethose face-to-face conversations
with the people that actuallyuse the tools.
I, for me, it's not even aquestion of how is that?
You know, it's not somethingthat we've done before, it's not
been an effort of the brandbefore, but you know how is that
going to look, how are we goingto have those conversations?
How are those conversationsgoing to be received?
(30:14):
Because of those conversationsthat I had face to face with
these pool professionals, I.
Now, for me, it's just aquestion of how fast can we get
in front of every poolprofessional in the United
States?
Because what I learned is thatour tools are a no brainer for
most of those pool professionals.
They're better quality than thetools they're using.
Now there's a 50% off lifetimewarranty replacement, like it is
literally a no brainer and itdoesn't.
(30:36):
You don't have to go that farout to calculate what the return
on investment of using thetools are.
So for me, the knowledge of ourtools are better than what
they're using and it's going tosave them money in the first
couple of months, like, I am soconfident that when I start
picking up the phone to callthese pool professionals,
there's no way they're going tobe able to tell me no, because I
(30:56):
know what the benefit is goingto be to them.
So that really was the biggestbenefit for me to having those
face-to-face conversations, andI don't.
It's going to be hard tocalculate the ROI of what the
show was because, like, I thinkit's exponential in my opinion.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Yeah, I think that that's probably the most
valuable piece that came out ofthis is that, as an entire team,
every single individual at thebooth discovered exactly what
Matt just said, and that is weknew what we thought about how
our product would fit into thepro market, because it's not
like we haven't sold to any pros.
We have like 2000 pros on ouremail list.
(31:36):
You know that buy our productsand more than that who aren't on
our email list.
So it's not like we haven'tsold to them but we haven't
talked to them a lot, like itwas kind of like the residential
market is who we sell to.
The pool pros just happen toshow up Like they just filter in
.
The pool pros just happen toshow up Like they just filter in
.
We don't really, you know, andto our detriment, quite frankly,
(31:58):
like that I didn't recognizethat opportunity a lot sooner
and was essentially forced intorecognizing that opportunity.
By the way, things are going onAmazon because of, you know,
chinese sellers and stuff.
That's.
That's on me because, honestly,I should have figured that out
a long time ago, but ago.
But as we started thinkingabout it, it became fairly clear
to me that it makes sense thatthis is how our products and our
(32:20):
warranty would be received bythat market.
But that's way different thanactually standing in front of
dozens and dozens and dozens ofpool pros, all of whom look at
you like you're an alien whenyou tell them what they're
getting and what the cost is,and when you finally get to the
point of them understandingthere is no catch, this is what
(32:42):
it is.
You know, the light bulb goesoff and they're like how many
can I buy?
You know, like that, that wasthe response.
You know, it was just that way.
And so when you see that inreal time, right in front of you
, that's the opportunity I thinkthat you really gain is.
Okay, yeah, we made, we madesales at the trade show.
There are sales that came inafter the trade show.
There are some volumeorders-face opportunity to see
(33:03):
in their eyes what they thoughtof our product and our warranty
and our company and recognizingoh yeah, we just have to get in
front of them, we will sell tothem.
It's just a matter of how, andnow it doesn't matter, like it
(33:23):
can be trade shows, google ads,whatever Like it doesn't matter
the venue or the medium, we justhave to get our name in front
of them.
Trade shows will be one ofthose mechanisms that we use.
But now we know, just get infront of them and it'll work.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Well, I'm curious because you said with you talked
about the QR code and kind ofthe Pool Olympics and that type
of stuff and collecting some ofthat information.
What was your thought goinginto it and what did that
implementation look like?
You know, once you collect thatinformation, to follow up with
those folks after the trade showto stay top of mind, because I
mean, you know, we all know thatads work.
(34:00):
However, ads also require money, whereas you know having
somebody on an email list,especially once you've had that
face to face interaction, givesyou essentially the capability
to interact with them foressentially free.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Yeah.
So, first of all, everybody whoregistered for the competition,
of course, ended up on our list.
They received some informationspecific to pool pros and yada,
yada.
I would say, in terms of what Ihad in my head versus what
actually happened, there was alittle bit of a discrepancy
there in the sense of I had itset as you could register to
(34:38):
compete or you could register tovote, and the register to vote
was what do you think the topscore or the best score is going
to be for this event, for thisevent, for the whole event, you
know, whatever, and if you arecorrect in that, then you'll win
the same thing as the personwho actually competed.
Right, I thought that we wouldget a lot more response out of
(35:00):
that.
The truth is, we got virtuallyno response out of that.
So for me, I was looking atthat as an opportunity to build
a much larger list as a resultof that, because I thought there
would be way more people whowould decide not to compete but,
you know, might still want towin something.
You know, and maybe that's howwe presented it, maybe there's
ways that we could make it moreeffective.
But realistically, like when Ilook at the numbers.
(35:22):
We had virtually nobody sign upfor that and the majority of
people signed up to compete, ifthey signed up for anything.
So that was a lesson learned.
We probably will do away withthe voting and you know future
events.
But also it it it made it moreobvious that we need the lanyard
scan opportunity because we'llget a whole lot more people on
(35:42):
the list that way, because therewere a lot of people who showed
up at our booth that we aren'tgoing to have a good opportunity
to follow up with later becausewe didn't get their information
, because it wasn't as easy.
You know, like there's just toomany people.
We found a tool that I think isactually going to work really
well for that.
Here's another thing every tradeshow that you go to, they have
that.
Well, I shouldn't say every,I've only been to one, but the
(36:03):
ones that we investigated theyhave that.
You know like you pay 700 bucks, you know whatever it is.
You know maybe it's less atsome of them, but to get a
scanning device or to be able toput an app on your phone so you
can scan their badge and gettheir information, it's pretty
pricey, of course, especially ifyou're going to do that at
every trade show.
Also, what I found out is it'sglitchy.
(36:24):
Like a lot of these trade shows, the devices don't work
properly all the time.
You know, if you download theapp, the app doesn't always work
properly.
It doesn't scan business cards,it only scans their badge.
So if they don't have the badgehandy or they lost it now all
of a sudden, you've got no wayto track that.
So we actually found a servicecalled Popple P-O-P-L that will
(36:46):
scan business cards.
It will scan badges of almostany type at any trade show.
I tested it.
Cards it will scan badges ofalmost any type at any trade
show.
I tested it.
I pulled up sample badges onGoogle just from other trade
shows and whatever.
Every single one of them itscanned and it uses AI on the
background to go out onto theinternet and find as much
contact information about thatperson as it can.
(37:07):
So it takes all the informationfrom the badge, puts it in
there, then it goes and getstheir phone number, their
LinkedIn, their email address,throws that in there as well.
You can tag them, you can addnotes, you can automate it so
that it connects to Zapier orany of these other kind of tools
, so you can automate thisprocess of following up and all
(37:27):
these things.
I would highly recommend thatbecause the cost is going to be
less like for an entire year forour entire team to have this on
their phone and be able to doall of that than for one trade
show to pay, you know, for theservice to be able to scan those
codes.
I highly recommend it.
Get those, get those people onyour list.
(37:47):
Make sure you have an automatedflow so that you know it's
processing.
That would be a reallyimportant and valuable tool.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
So, and one thing that comes to my mind and then
we do need to wrap up here inthe next couple of minutes is,
with that process is, you know,if you, first of all I would
encourage you know anybody who'slistening out there is come up
with something unique andinteresting, like you guys did
for the pool Olympics.
However, if, for whateverreason, you can't, or in
addition to that, one thing thatwe found incredibly useful at
those trade shows and yes, Iknow that it's used a lot, but
(38:16):
it's also used very effectivelywhich is a product giveaway, you
know, and make it a bundlethat's your products, that's,
you know, valuable enough towhere people are going to want
to register, and those types ofthings Cause, then what it also
does for you is not only givesthem a reason to sign up, but
also to email them and say, hey,after the trade show, here's
the winner.
But it also gives you a bite atthe apple to say hey, if they
(38:38):
weren't the winner, you can givethem a specific coupon code or
additional add-on product orsome sort of special promo, just
for them to at least kind ofprime the pump.
And think about that firstemail which impacts your
deliverability.
I mean people want to open anemail to figure out you know who
won that giveaway from,whatever, and so you know that
(39:00):
can be a really powerful thingeither to do on its own or in
addition to.
You know, again, I think havingsomething unique, like what you
guys did, that really ties intothe brand is ideal, but if you,
you know, for whatever reasonyou don't have that you want to
look for something in additionto.
I think we've seen, we've usedthat strategy before very
successfully.
The last couple of minutes herethat I want to kind of wrap up
(39:20):
with is you know, not everybodyout there is going to have that
budget in order to spend, youknow, 20 plus grand on going to
a trade show.
You know, what kind of maybesome quick ideas or
recommendations do you guys havefor those folks that maybe
don't have that budget but wantto do some face-to-face
marketing?
Speaker 3 (39:42):
The first thing that I would say is that you don't
necessarily have to be anexhibitor at the trade show.
There's no matter what categoryyou sell products in.
I can pretty much guaranteethat there's some sort of a
trade show.
That is's no matter whatcategory you sell products in.
I can pretty much guaranteethat there's some sort of a
trade show that is relevant tothe people that are buying those
types of products, and evenjust going and being one of the
attendees of a trade show isvaluable.
(40:03):
There were a couple of serviceproviders that approached us
that were very, very unique inthe way that they.
I mean, there was one Amazonagency that had a whole
presentation that they handed usthat was very specific to our
brand, and so she didn't pay tobe at the show, but she made a
big impression.
There's also an SEO agency thatwe're probably going to end up
(40:23):
working with because of it.
So you don't necessarily haveto be an exhibitor and spend,
you know, $15,000 on a booth,just going there and being
present and learning Like therewere.
You know, like I would havegotten value just by sitting on
some of the sessions that someof the pool professionals were
sitting at.
So, like.
You don't have to be anexhibitor, even just going find
(40:44):
a trade show that is relevant tothe people that are buying your
products and just go as a as anattendee.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
I also think, too, just the idea.
And, of course, if you're anAmazon seller, hopefully you
know that these exist, although,to be honest, for a lot of
years I didn't know.
But you know, like the Amazonconferences, you know, like one
of the things that happens atthese Amazon conferences is all
of these additional side eventsthat happen, these networking
events that occur that are puton by all sorts of other you
know, individuals, organizations, businesses, whatever.
(41:10):
That is an opportunity for youto connect with these Amazon
sellers.
Well, the same thing happens atall these other trade shows.
So, like there's, there'snetworking events that are
happening at these trade showsbefore, after, during, you know,
whatever.
Participate in those networkingevents that give you an
opportunity to connect withthose individuals.
You know, and again, they don'tcost anything People.
(41:31):
They're not charging yougenerally to walk in the door to
these networking events.
Maybe they charge a little bit,but it's not much and it's well
worth being in there.
I would also say one of thethings that you should probably
step back and consider is isthere a way for your product to
be relevant to a commercialbuyer who would buy it,
(41:54):
potentially in bulk quantities,if there's any creative way that
you can come up with that isreasonable.
That makes your product aviable option for these
commercial buyers.
Consider the potential for asingle order that might be as
much as a thousand individuals.
And how can you connect withthose bulk buyers Right?
(42:17):
There are plenty of events thatyou could attend where you're
going to meet up with people whowill buy onesies and twosies
Right, there's nothing wrongwith that.
But if you can instead attendan event where you can hobnob
with people who might buy ahundred or a thousand, 10,000
units that's a much more yourROI on that is likely to be much
better.
If you actually are talking tothese people and networking with
(42:38):
these people and connectingwith them, just one contact
might easily pay for that andcut your trip, even if you had
to pay for airfare and the wholenine yards.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
Well, and I think I'll build off of that before we
wrap here, which is I know wetalked a lot about trade shows,
but really this is aboutface-to-face marketing, and so,
whether it's when you work withthose bigger buyers, helping
support them by demoing yourproduct in their store we did a
lot of sampling and demos for acoffee brand that I used to have
in grocery stores, and so thatwas a much more cost-effective
(43:08):
way to get a lot of that sameface-to-face feedback.
So there's other ways to do itbesides trade shows.
Trade shows are great, butthere's other budget-friendly
options.
So I would just encouragelisteners to think about how you
can test out some face-to-facemarketing, because I think, even
if you're well-connected withyour customers, you've been
doing it for a while.
I guarantee that you'll learnsomething from doing some
(43:31):
face-to-face marketing with yourcustomers in that process.
So I would just, yeah,encourage all our listeners to
do that and want to thankeverybody for listening and
we'll be back next time foranother Tactics Tuesday.
Welcome everyone to the Brand Fortress HQ Tactics
Tuesday.
This is our podcast episodewhere we talk about different
tactics for building brands onAmazon and beyond.
Today we have a reallyinteresting episode that I'm
excited to bring to you guysabout the power of face-to-face
marketing.
We think a lot selling onAmazon and e-commerce about ads
(00:21):
on Amazon and ads on otherplatforms and TikTok and social
media, but there's a lot ofpower in just being able to talk
to people face-to-face, tointeract directly with people
around your brand.
And today Mike and Matt aregoing to share a pretty unique
experience that they had ofbeing at a trade show that was
within their target market, whatthat looked like, what they
(00:41):
learned from it.
We've talked a little bit onprevious episodes what that
setup to the trade show lookedlike, which I think is also very
important.
So I encourage listeners to goback and listen to those,
because there's a lot of workand planning that went into that
trade show before you guys evenstarted.
But with that, I guess Mike,I'll turn it over to you on.
Maybe start with just at a highlevel, or if you can kind of
(01:04):
recap what got you interested inthe trade show and at a high
level.
You know what was some of theprep that you did to be
successful at the trade showSure.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
So the first thing was is that the decision to do
(01:41):
the trade show was very muchprompted by the, I guess the
idea that we needed to move intoother territory outside of
Amazon in order to not only.
We've been in a position wherea large portion of our sales on
Amazon are now all ad-based,which obviously is very
expensive these days, since adcosts on Amazon are way more
than they used to be.
So from my perspective, theonly way that we really kind of
(02:04):
turn that trend around a littlebit on Amazon and begin to move
toward a higher percentage ofsales coming from organic, which
obviously is from ranking thenis to get more brand exposure
off platform so that our brandbecomes something that people
(02:26):
are actually searching for onAmazon because they heard about
us someplace else.
We all know the more that yourbrand is being searched on
Amazon in reference to or incombination with the key phrases
and terms and products that yousell, the more likely you start
moving up in the rankings onAmazon just by virtue of the
fact that Amazon expects you'regoing to get more conversions
out of that because people arelooking for you, so there's a
lot of value there.
Also, amazon pays attention tohow Google is ranking you and
(02:49):
things of that nature.
So there's a lot ofoff-platform stuff that can
affect the Amazon algorithm interms of ranking.
So the other thing was is thatwe know that our market on
Amazon is mostly residentialusers.
We do sell to some commercialusers on Amazon, but mostly it's
going to be residential.
We recognized not too long agothat it made a lot of sense for
(03:10):
us to move into the commercialmarket with our products.
Now, for anybody who doesn'tknow, who hasn't maybe listened
to previous episodes, we sell asuper high quality like premium
grade pool cleaning tools, sopoles and nets and brushes,
things like that.
Essentially they are pro grade,but we have sold to primarily
the residential market eversince we started about 10 years
(03:32):
ago.
What became obvious was ifwe're going to sell a pro grade
unit, why don't we start sellingit to the actual pros that
would also use it Becausethey're going to buy in bulk?
There's a lot of things aboutour warranty that makes sense
for a commercial market, becauseinstead of unlimited free
replacement, it's unlimited 50%off replacement and so we
actually make money on thosereplacements.
So it's kind of like aconsumable.
(03:54):
And at that point it becameclear okay, if we're going to
move into the pro market, thenhow do we get there?
Like, what are the ways that weget our brand in front of those
individuals that are the buyersfor these companies, whether
they're pool cleaning pros,whether they're pool builders or
developers, things of thatnature?
And it just became obvious thetrade show made a lot of sense
(04:15):
for us to, for us to dip our toein, and really not even dip our
toe in, but, like, if we'regoing to do it, then let's go
big at it, right?
So we went to one of thebiggest trade shows in the U?
S for pool professionals andpool builders and kind of that's
.
That was the road to, you know,getting in there and making
that decision.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Okay, yeah, and I think that that you know, a key
takeaway there that I have is isthat, yes, expanding off Amazon
, but also looking at how canyou take that same product into
a little bit different customersegments, which I think is
really important there.
So I know, you know, and wetalked again about a little bit
about it on a different episodebut one of the things that you
(04:55):
were implementing in order to,you know, go beyond just hey,
here's a booth, here's someinformation.
Investing in this, you reallyhave to have something that's
more interactive, that's goingto catch people's attention, and
that type of stuff.
And you had, you know, a boothset up around the pool, olympics
, and some activities and thattype of stuff.
Can you give us a quickoverview of what those
activities were and how you gotpeople engaged at the, at your
(05:17):
booth, sure, so yeah it, we.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
I've never done a trade show.
I've been to some, but I'venever done one myself, so it
wasn't something that I had alot of experience in, but it
became.
I just thought it made perfectsense that a lot of the booths
that I have seen at trade showsin the past were simply we're
here, products.
(05:44):
You know, we've got a littlevideo running and I'm sitting at
my booth waiting for somebodyto stop by my booth and then
I'll tell them about my productif they happen to show up right.
And so for a lot of you know,businesses that do trade shows,
I feel like they don't get a lotof traffic to their booth
because they don't really doanything that would encourage
people to show up there, and soI wanted to do something
different.
I wanted to do something notonly that I thought would draw
people to the booth, but alsothat we could get video of and
(06:05):
get pictures of, and get up onsocial media and utilize that in
other ways.
So we decided that we wanted tohave some sort of a competition
at the booth.
We thought that that would drumup more activity.
People would show up at thebooth, people would see people
at the booth, and so that woulddraw others to the booth, and
then the question was okay, well, what does that look like?
(06:26):
What are we going to do?
So for us, the thing that madethe most sense was creating this
competition, which was basedaround our actual products, so
that we could get our productsinto the hands of the users that
we felt like we wanted to sellto, so that they could feel this
you know, the durability of theunits, our warranty.
(06:48):
One of the things that's reallyuseful for a pool pro with
regards to our warranty is thatnot only is it unlimited 50% off
replacement which nobody elsein the category is even offering
a warranty to commercial users,much less, you know, at a
discounted rate.
You know of that nature butalso that the units that we sell
are very modular.
So instead of when their poolrake dies and they need a new
(07:12):
one, with everybody else, theygot to go out and basically pay
the standard wholesale rate forthat product and to replace it
because there's no warranty.
With us, not only is it 50% off, but instead of replacing the
entire rake, they can replacethe handle or the rim or the net
, you know.
So it's much less expensive,but part of that that we needed
(07:32):
to really drive home in terms ofthe message was not only is it
inexpensive, but it's easy to do.
It's easy to actually replacethe handle or replace the net or
something, because time ismoney for these guys, right.
So what we did was part of thecompetition was a disassembly
and reassembly station.
So we had a table set up, wehad three of our products.
We had our brush, our net and ashortened version of our pool
(07:55):
pole sitting on this front table, and the idea behind the
competition was you disassemble,completely disassemble the unit
and completely reassemble theunit and we'll time you, and
whoever gets the best time onany given day will win that item
.
So if you were the best on thepool net, you win a pool net.
If you were best in a pool pool, you win a pool pool.
(08:16):
We also had a couple ofstrength stations, which was
inclined pushups and invertedrows for individuals that maybe
are a little bit more fitnessoriented and thought maybe they
could, you know, break out abunch of push-ups.
And the idea behind that was wehad it set up so that our pool
poles were the stands, so thestands for the push-up, you know
(08:37):
section, and the inverted rowswere our pool pole.
The idea was it was stressingthe locking mechanism on our
pool pool, so every timesomebody did another push-up,
they were stressing that lockingmechanism, so we were able to
show the durability of the unit.
Honestly, we had a lot ofinterest.
We had a lot of people show upat the booth and actually
compete in the competition.
We had people come backnumerous times to improve their
(08:59):
times.
We saw a lot of people whowould see people at the booth
and that would draw them to thebooth like, hey, what's going on
here?
But, honestly, the biggestbenefit to it was once people
got it in their hands and theywere able to see so we had.
We literally thought so I did adisassembly and reassembly of
(09:21):
all of our tools and it lookedlike okay, yeah, pretty much
everybody should be able to dothis in three minutes.
You know, if they've never seenthe product, they've never done
it before.
Like, three minutes is a goodtime, right, I didn't want to
make it too much shorter thanthat because I wanted them to be
successful, right?
Like the idea was hey, this iseasy, so I wanted them to
succeed, but we didn't want to,you know, make it too, you know,
(09:44):
too long either.
So three minutes was it.
We found that we had a bunch ofpeople who managed to fully
disassemble and reassemble allof the units in as little as
like 20 seconds.
Wow, and and on one I think theminimum was like 45 seconds
versus what I thought like twoto three minutes.
Right.
But the nice thing about thatwas then we could tell people
(10:06):
when they came up to the boothand they're and we're talking
about the product, we can saylook, we had a 15 year old kid
who fully disassembled andreassembled this net in like 30
seconds.
So if you need to do this out inthe field and you got to swap
out a handle, you can re.
You could put every piece onthis unit, like fully
disassemble it and reassemble itin 45 seconds.
(10:26):
So if you've got to just do ahandle, imagine how quickly you
could be back on the job If youjust keep handles, you know,
keep the individual parts in thetruck, so that then you're just
back to work, right.
So it was really a veryexperiential way for us to show
them how easy it is to replacethose parts.
And then also, obviously, whatis the cost to do so, like hey,
it's 50% off on the net or ahandle or whatever that is.
(10:50):
So it actually worked outreally well and we had a lot of
people who are very interestedin it and it taught us a lot,
because we got to have a lot ofconversations with pool pros and
so we learned a great deal fromhaving those conversations with
people.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Okay, it people.
It was such a brilliant.
I mean everything was so wellorchestrated.
I mean I was part of theconversations that we all had
before the trade show happened,months before the trade show
happened, and then I had theopportunity to be at the trade
show and watch it all unfold.
And I mean all of the thingsthat Mike said that I think that
(11:23):
were in his head as potentialbenefits of doing this Pull
Olympics.
But I got to see it firsthand.
And what happened to this kid?
This 15-year-old kid came back.
I mean he probably all in allspent six hours at our booth
over the course of a couple ofdays because he was so
competitive and this is apredominantly male industry and
(11:46):
I think that males arepredominantly more competitive
than females are and I meanpeople would go and get their
friends and bring hey, let's seeif you can do more pushups than
me.
Or hey, let's see if you canput this together.
We had an uncle and a nephewthat were razzing each other but
, like Mike said, every time wehad some guys there that were
competing against each other,we'd have 10 more people that
(12:06):
would come up to see what wasgoing on because of the ruckus
and one of the things that wedidn't do that I think was a
little bit of a miss is theymost booths or most trade shows
have that scanning tool whereyou can scan someone's their
lanyard and then get theircontact information.
We didn't do that but likethere are so many people that
(12:30):
came up to watch that I hadconversations with that didn't
necessarily want to compete,that were interested in what we
had to say but didn't stop forvery long, if I, if we had some
sort of a tool or we could havescanned, we could have got a
bunch more people on the list.
So I think it could have been alittle bit more successful in
that regard.
But I mean, the whole thingwent just to plan and I think it
went even better to plan basedon how competitive, how much of
(12:50):
a competitive nature, thecompetition was and then how
many people came as a result ofnot only the competitive part of
it but also just to see whatthe ruckus was.
It was brilliant and I washonored to be a part of it and
we learned so many lessons forthe next trade show.
And that was I was honored tobe a part of it and, like I, we
learned so many lessons for thenext trade show and that was the
other thing is that we it wassuccessful enough to where trade
(13:11):
shows are going to become partof part of getting in front of
those pool pros.
And one more thing I want to add.
You know I'm still kind offairly new to the pro-tough
family and being able to havethose conversations with the
pool pros.
I think all of this starts withhaving a better product or
having a good product, becausethat, you know, being able to
have that conversation with thepool pro and show him and have
(13:34):
him be able to handle the toolsthat are more durable very
easily identifiable as moredurable than the tools that
they're using but then havingconversations with them about
the warranty, like I can't, Ican't count.
I lost count of the number ofpool pros that looked at me
after I told them about 50, that50% off unlimited replacement
warranty, and they asked me whatthe catch was.
Like Mike said, there's nobodyin the industry that does that.
(13:57):
The pool, the tools are better.
In general, we offer a warranty.
Like it's literally a nobrainer.
And that's what I learned bybeing face to face with these
pool professionals and I don'tthink that we would have learned
that in the same way if we werejust having phone calls or
emails with those poolprofessionals.
So, yeah, it was, it was, itwas great.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Well, and Matt, you talked a little bit about
lessons learned and I'd love tohear from both of you guys, you
know, based on this experience,you know, what are maybe a
couple you know what are maybe acouple.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
You know two to three of those lessons learned that
are on your guys's list for nexttime.
So I'll say that one of thelessons that we learned that I
think is going to be reallycritical is location.
We were I don't even want tosay lucky enough.
Honestly, this is a God thingas far as I'm concerned, because
we were in.
We were placed in a boothbecause we were late to the game
, you know, getting ourselvesregistered for the trade show.
We were in a booth that was wayback off in a corner and our
original plan because we knewthat was going to be problematic
(14:53):
, our original plan was that wewould have people at least one
person at all times, walking thetrade show with essentially a
billboard on their back, youknow, like with with a t-shirt
or polo advertising thecompetition and the unlimited
50% off replacement warranty andwhatnot, and the booth number
just to get people back thereand a QR code that they could
(15:14):
scan, which would give them themap and would direct them to
where we were exactly.
We ended up not really havingto do that because, I don't know
, a month before the trade show,I happened to jump in to check
on something I don't evenremember what it was it was
something related to the map ofthe trade show and recognized
there was an opening for a boothand it wasn't even technically
(15:37):
an opening, it was held bysomebody, but it was getting
pretty close and so I asked Pamand just said, hey, would you
investigate this?
You know, like, because thiswould be a really good place
placing for us.
Turned out they weren't goingto come, so we got their boot
and we ended up on a main aisle,so we got a lot of traffic just
rolling by our booth.
(15:58):
But here's the thing we learnedthat that location and I mean
everybody knows location,location, location, right, like
it's important.
It's not as if we didn'talready know that going in.
But what we did discover was ifyour booth is interesting, like
if there's something going onthere that draws people's eyes
and draws their attention, andyou have good location, you will
(16:21):
get people coming into thebooth without having to walk out
into the aisle and drag peoplein.
They will just show up,naturally.
So one of the things that wewill absolutely do going forward
is make sure that we are onsome sort of a main aisle that
we know we're going to be ableto get traffic, you know, just
naturally walking by our booth.
So as long as we're interestingenough that we'll get people
(16:43):
coming in.
So that was one thing.
Another thing is we had QR codeseverywhere and the QR codes
mainly were they took them to alanding page.
On that landing page they couldregister for the competition
and a few other things.
There was information about thecompany and I think that was
really valuable.
We had people scanning.
We had a little in fact I'vegot one in my pocket because we
(17:04):
have some extra ones.
We did these little mint tinswhich basically became our
business card.
So anytime somebody was at thebooth and we wanted to send them
away with something, we wouldjust give them this.
There's like a hundred littlemini mints in this thing.
It's super tiny, easy to pop inyour pocket, but there's a QR
code on it that they can scanand would take them to the
landing page.
And of course, we can changethat If you do that.
(17:30):
By the way, if you use QR codes, make sure that you're set up
in a way that you can changewhere they go after the trade
show, so that during the tradeshow it can go to a trade show
specific landing page.
After the trade show, you cansend them to the homepage or
send them wherever it is thatyou want them to go.
But we had QR codes everywherefor people to scan.
And one of the things that wedidn't do and I would highly
recommend is, if you're going todo that, because we put them on
coffee cups.
So we had coffee at the booth.
(17:51):
We had QR codes on the coffeecup so that as you're walking
around, you know it wasadvertising, the pool, olympics
and our booth number and youcould.
You know, if you want to tellsomebody about it, you could
just hand them the cup and theycould scan the QR code, give
them directions back to ourbooth.
But we did.
We use the same QR code oneverything because it all went
to the same place.
Yep, bad idea, because now wedon't know which which items got
(18:14):
the most scans.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
You know like where people actually come from the
coffee cups, or they come fromthe mince, or do they come?
Speaker 2 (18:20):
from the future trade show, everything will have its
own QR code so we can track that.
But it was very effective.
We had a lot of scans on thoseQR codes and so it did work
quite well.
So that would definitely be atakeaway.
That, I think, was a valuableone.
There's plenty of other ones,but, matt, I don't know if you
want to jump in there and talkabout some of the other stuff.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Yeah, I mean I think the other one that we put a lot
of work into that I think wasimportant.
Now it does add a considerablecost but I think and I did see
examples of people that didn'tdo this Our booth was really
cool, like it was backlit, itwas big, I think having a good
(18:58):
booth.
I did go walk the floor acouple of times and I literally
saw a Chinese manufacturer thathad a folding table that didn't
even have a tablecloth.
It said exhibitor.
On the back, like that wastheir label, was just exhibitor.
And to be honest, I'm not a poolprofessional, so like I don't
even know what they were selling, I have no idea what was on the
table.
So like I think, investing in Ithink Mike's going to talk a
(19:21):
little bit about overall budget,of what it costed, of the trade
show in general, and I thinkthe booth was probably a big
part of that but I think it wassuper important and I think it
legitimized the business as awhole.
I think you know appearance andI mean first impressions are
important and I think investingin having you know something
(19:41):
like that, you know a real nicebooth, that kind of sets
people's mind at ease whenthey're coming up to you.
But I think that is superimportant.
So that was one of the things Ilearned, to be able to pass on
to other people is you reallyhave to invest in what that
first impression looks like?
I think that was another bigthing that I learned as well.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Yeah, on the topic of the booth, first of all, I was
really pleased with how thebooth came out.
But one of the things that whenwe were initially looking at it
but one of the things that whenwe were initially looking at it
, so we wanted a really gooddesign we had a 10 by 20,
basically two 10 by 10 slots.
So we had a 10 by 20 booth andwe needed that because one side
(20:19):
was the show side and one sidewas the competition side and we
needed that kind of divisionthere.
We decided fairly early on thatwe wanted it to be backlit.
I thought that that was goingto add a lot and if we had the
right design, that that wouldhelp.
And I will say, when weassembled this, it looked good
even before we plugged it in,let's say.
(20:40):
But once you backlit it itreally drew your attention.
So I would highly recommend abacklit booth.
But here's the thing we startedlooking at companies in the US
that could do that for us andthe cost was going to be about
15 grand for the booth and I waslike first trade show, don't
(21:03):
know how this is going to go.
No way I'm investing that kindof money in a booth.
What are our alternatives?
So what we did, we wentoverseas.
We went to Alibaba and look forwho makes these things, because
I knew the guys in the U?
S weren't making them Like theywere buying them from somebody.
So we went to a manufactureroverseas that makes these booths
.
We managed to buy the exactsame booth for $3,000.
(21:26):
And now we paid two grand toship it into the U US because we
needed it really fast.
So we had to ship it by air.
But we spent five grand totalfor a $15,000 booth and if we
hadn't needed it so quickly andwe could have sent it over with
one of our product shipments orsomething in a container, you
know, we probably would havegotten away for 3,500 bucks you
(21:49):
know for for the whole thing.
So I would you know, if youwant to go with a backlit booth,
definitely look overseas to toa good manufacturer in China,
because the one that we used wasactually terrific.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
How did you do the design for the booth Like?
Was that done from somebodyseparate from who you ordered it
from?
Or was that the like?
Who did the design for it for?
Speaker 2 (22:08):
you guys, they would have done it for us.
We just I wasn't entirelyconfident, you know, in their
design team.
You know, maybe they would havedone a great job, I don't know,
but we actually had a designerthat did it.
Matt had somebody that he'dalready worked with, and so we
brought him in and he did thedesign.
Took a little bit of work, butit came out really good.
Another recommendation that Iwould make this is something
(22:28):
that we decided to do as we werewalking through the process of
design was we designed the boothso that it's configurable.
So the way that it comes is itbasically comes in 10-foot
lengths, like there's a 10-footwall, another 10-foot back wall,
and then we've got a 10-footside wall and then you just kind
of put them together and itcomes with a fabric that you put
(22:51):
on each side.
So what we did was because mythought when we started working
through it was well, if we go toother trade shows, I don't know
if the configuration of ourbooth is going to be the same.
What if we decide we want toput the competition on this side
because we're in position, ormaybe we only get a 10 by 10
space?
We can't afford, you know wecan't do the 20 by 20.
(23:12):
So we actually made the designso that everything was basically
reversible and configurable, sowe could set it up any way we
wanted and it would still work.
So that's one thing I wouldrecommend with the design is
make sure you design it withthat in mind that if you're in a
space where you want to shiftthe position of things, you can
actually do that, so you don'thave to repurchase new, you know
(23:33):
graphics for the for the booth,okay.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
And then you know since we're on budget, I mean
you know if you're comfortablesharing kind of ballpark, by the
time you paid for a booth andyou know what it costs to be in
the trade show and you knowgetting out there and all that
type of stuff.
If you're comfortable sharingkind of ballpark, all in, where
did you end up?
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah, no, I'm plenty comfortable with that.
We haven't done the full totalyet, we're still putting those
numbers together.
But if we talk about some ofthe major expenses getting the
booth space so we did two 10 by10 booths Each 10 by 10, I think
, was like 3 800.
So we were in the area of 7, 7500 bucks for the booth space
(24:15):
itself, they will absolutelynickel and dime you on every
single little thing that youneed.
So, like coffee, you know, fortwo days was like 700.
You know like it was.
It was just you and you.
If you've never done a tradeshow, when you you get those
numbers back you're going tothink that it's a joke.
You're literally going to thinkit's a joke.
It's not a joke, it's for real.
You know, electricity, gettingelectricity to your booth was
(24:38):
like I don't know.
We paid another $300, $400 justto have electricity, you know.
So there's all sorts of stufflike that, that the overall cost
for the booth, for some of theadditional items that we needed
for the booth.
You know the booth space, youknow all of that it probably
costs us.
You know about.
(24:58):
Well, let's see, we had fiveand some 12.
I would say you're probablylooking at like 15 grand for the
, the booth itself, leasing thespace for the booth and all of
the incidentals and stuff at thetrade show for the booth.
You're probably in that 15grand range.
And again, that assumes thatyou went overseas to get your
(25:21):
booth done, because that was abig savings for us.
Now, beyond that, we had travelexpenses.
We brought in six people, so wehad airfare for six people.
We had an Airbnb that we rented, you know, near the venue, for
a week, essentially because weneeded some prep days so that we
could get things figured out.
We wanted to have somedecompression days afterward so
(25:41):
the team could just kind ofenjoy being together.
And you know, if you're aremote team, that was actually a
big benefit to us as well wasjust having this remote team
come together and personally geta chance to actually interact
and get to know each otherbetter.
So that was actually asignificant value to us.
It's hard to calculate that,but I would consider that a very
(26:02):
big value of having done it.
But I mean, you're probably, ifyou're bringing people from in
the US from in the US versusoverseas you know that'll lessen
your transportation costs.
But they weren't insignificant,you know.
I would say a couple of grandtotal, you know, maybe, well,
once you account for the Airbnb,probably a few grand for that.
(26:23):
We had to rent, you know,vehicles.
We needed two vehicles, soyou've got rental costs there,
(26:51):
no-transcript, and literallythat's probably, you know, five
grand.
You know, in terms of the total, man, hours and things like
that.
So it wasn't cheap by any means, you know.
Was it cheap However so I wouldsay that rough estimates would
suggest that the next trade showthat we do will be no more than
(27:15):
a third of the total expensethat we put into this one, and
maybe as much as a quarterbecause there will be so much
less time invested, because wealready know what we're doing.
We figured it out, we've got thetemplate.
You know, like there's a fewthings we want to change, but
ultimately it went well.
So there's not a lot of expensethere.
You know we already have thebooth.
You know we kind of understandthe trade show game a little bit
(27:36):
.
So, in terms of minimizing ourexpenses there and things like
that, so you know, in that sensethe first trade show is going
to cost you a fortune.
Additional trade shows will bemuch less expensive than the
first one.
Once you kind of figure outwhat you're doing and you have a
lot of those items.
But remember, you have totransport them so and you have
(27:57):
to store them in between tradeshow events.
So bear in mind that that'salso another expense that you're
going to have to consider ishow do we store it, how much is
that going to cost, and how muchis it going to cost to get it
from here to the next trade show?
You know, all of that's goingto come into play.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
So just kind of looking at those as like startup
costs.
Like when you do that first one, hey, you know there's going to
be significant amount of likeanything that new that you do,
whether it's a new product oryou know a new marketing channel
.
There's going to be startupcosts and kind of that learning
curve that you just have to planfor in advance.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Right, yeah, for now, the one thing that I think,
first of all, the title of thispodcast episode is the Power of
Face-to-Face Marketing.
We haven't really talked a lotabout how this trade show, what
the benefits of that were, but Ithink if you were to ask Mike
and I will after I get done withthe question what the ROI was,
(28:48):
first of all, I think that theROI is a little bit difficult to
calculate because I don't thinkit's going to be a lot of, it's
not going to be immediate, butfrom my standpoint, the like I
said before having conversationswith pool pros, which isn't
something that I've had theopportunity to do up until now
One thing like I've, I've donelots of research into the
(29:08):
competitors on Amazon in thisparticular category, and our
price point is a lot higher thanmost of the cheap Chinese
competitors that are selling thesame products.
What I learned at the show isthat the pool professional tools
, which not a lot of them, areeven sold on Amazon, at least
not by the brand.
Our prices are in line with alot of those brands.
(29:31):
So it's not the same apples toapples comparison in terms of
price point, and that was animportant lesson for me.
But then also hearing peoplethat use our tools and hearing
their stories about how it savedthem time.
It saved them money.
It gave me.
The one of my big tasks for thebrand in the upcoming year is
(29:52):
penetrating that pull pro market.
And because I was able to havethose face-to-face conversations
with the people that actuallyuse the tools.
I, for me, it's not even aquestion of how is that?
You know, it's not somethingthat we've done before, it's not
been an effort of the brandbefore, but you know how is that
going to look, how are we goingto have those conversations?
How are those conversationsgoing to be received?
(30:14):
Because of those conversationsthat I had face to face with
these pool professionals, I.
Now, for me, it's just aquestion of how fast can we get
in front of every poolprofessional in the United
States?
Because what I learned is thatour tools are a no brainer for
most of those pool professionals.
They're better quality than thetools they're using.
Now there's a 50% off lifetimewarranty replacement, like it is
literally a no brainer and itdoesn't.
(30:36):
You don't have to go that farout to calculate what the return
on investment of using thetools are.
So for me, the knowledge of ourtools are better than what
they're using and it's going tosave them money in the first
couple of months, like, I am soconfident that when I start
picking up the phone to callthese pool professionals,
there's no way they're going tobe able to tell me no, because I
(30:56):
know what the benefit is goingto be to them.
So that really was the biggestbenefit for me to having those
face-to-face conversations, andI don't.
It's going to be hard tocalculate the ROI of what the
show was because, like, I thinkit's exponential in my opinion.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Yeah, I think that that's probably the most
valuable piece that came out ofthis is that, as an entire team,
every single individual at thebooth discovered exactly what
Matt just said, and that is weknew what we thought about how
our product would fit into thepro market, because it's not
like we haven't sold to any pros.
We have like 2000 pros on ouremail list.
(31:36):
You know that buy our productsand more than that who aren't on
our email list.
So it's not like we haven'tsold to them but we haven't
talked to them a lot, like itwas kind of like the residential
market is who we sell to.
The pool pros just happen toshow up Like they just filter in
.
The pool pros just happen toshow up Like they just filter in
.
We don't really, you know, andto our detriment, quite frankly,
(31:58):
like that I didn't recognizethat opportunity a lot sooner
and was essentially forced intorecognizing that opportunity.
By the way, things are going onAmazon because of, you know,
chinese sellers and stuff.
That's.
That's on me because, honestly,I should have figured that out
a long time ago, but ago.
But as we started thinkingabout it, it became fairly clear
to me that it makes sense thatthis is how our products and our
(32:20):
warranty would be received bythat market.
But that's way different thanactually standing in front of
dozens and dozens and dozens ofpool pros, all of whom look at
you like you're an alien whenyou tell them what they're
getting and what the cost is,and when you finally get to the
point of them understandingthere is no catch, this is what
(32:42):
it is.
You know, the light bulb goesoff and they're like how many
can I buy?
You know, like that, that wasthe response.
You know, it was just that way.
And so when you see that inreal time, right in front of you
, that's the opportunity I thinkthat you really gain is.
Okay, yeah, we made, we madesales at the trade show.
There are sales that came inafter the trade show.
There are some volumeorders-face opportunity to see
(33:03):
in their eyes what they thoughtof our product and our warranty
and our company and recognizingoh yeah, we just have to get in
front of them, we will sell tothem.
It's just a matter of how, andnow it doesn't matter, like it
(33:23):
can be trade shows, google ads,whatever Like it doesn't matter
the venue or the medium, we justhave to get our name in front
of them.
Trade shows will be one ofthose mechanisms that we use.
But now we know, just get infront of them and it'll work.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Well, I'm curious because you said with you talked
about the QR code and kind ofthe Pool Olympics and that type
of stuff and collecting some ofthat information.
What was your thought goinginto it and what did that
implementation look like?
You know, once you collect thatinformation, to follow up with
those folks after the trade showto stay top of mind, because I
mean, you know, we all know thatads work.
(34:00):
However, ads also require money, whereas you know having
somebody on an email list,especially once you've had that
face to face interaction, givesyou essentially the capability
to interact with them foressentially free.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Yeah.
So, first of all, everybody whoregistered for the competition,
of course, ended up on our list.
They received some informationspecific to pool pros and yada,
yada.
I would say, in terms of what Ihad in my head versus what
actually happened, there was alittle bit of a discrepancy
there in the sense of I had itset as you could register to
(34:38):
compete or you could register tovote, and the register to vote
was what do you think the topscore or the best score is going
to be for this event, for thisevent, for the whole event, you
know, whatever, and if you arecorrect in that, then you'll win
the same thing as the personwho actually competed.
Right, I thought that we wouldget a lot more response out of
(35:00):
that.
The truth is, we got virtuallyno response out of that.
So for me, I was looking atthat as an opportunity to build
a much larger list as a resultof that, because I thought there
would be way more people whowould decide not to compete but,
you know, might still want towin something.
You know, and maybe that's howwe presented it, maybe there's
ways that we could make it moreeffective.
But realistically, like when Ilook at the numbers.
(35:22):
We had virtually nobody sign upfor that and the majority of
people signed up to compete, ifthey signed up for anything.
So that was a lesson learned.
We probably will do away withthe voting and you know future
events.
But also it it it made it moreobvious that we need the lanyard
scan opportunity because we'llget a whole lot more people on
(35:42):
the list that way, because therewere a lot of people who showed
up at our booth that we aren'tgoing to have a good opportunity
to follow up with later becausewe didn't get their information
, because it wasn't as easy.
You know, like there's just toomany people.
We found a tool that I think isactually going to work really
well for that.
Here's another thing every tradeshow that you go to, they have
that.
Well, I shouldn't say every,I've only been to one, but the
(36:03):
ones that we investigated theyhave that.
You know like you pay 700 bucks, you know whatever it is.
You know maybe it's less atsome of them, but to get a
scanning device or to be able toput an app on your phone so you
can scan their badge and gettheir information, it's pretty
pricey, of course, especially ifyou're going to do that at
every trade show.
Also, what I found out is it'sglitchy.
(36:24):
Like a lot of these trade shows, the devices don't work
properly all the time.
You know, if you download theapp, the app doesn't always work
properly.
It doesn't scan business cards,it only scans their badge.
So if they don't have the badgehandy or they lost it now all
of a sudden, you've got no wayto track that.
So we actually found a servicecalled Popple P-O-P-L that will
(36:46):
scan business cards.
It will scan badges of almostany type at any trade show.
I tested it.
Cards it will scan badges ofalmost any type at any trade
show.
I tested it.
I pulled up sample badges onGoogle just from other trade
shows and whatever.
Every single one of them itscanned and it uses AI on the
background to go out onto theinternet and find as much
contact information about thatperson as it can.
(37:07):
So it takes all the informationfrom the badge, puts it in
there, then it goes and getstheir phone number, their
LinkedIn, their email address,throws that in there as well.
You can tag them, you can addnotes, you can automate it so
that it connects to Zapier orany of these other kind of tools
, so you can automate thisprocess of following up and all
(37:27):
these things.
I would highly recommend thatbecause the cost is going to be
less like for an entire year forour entire team to have this on
their phone and be able to doall of that than for one trade
show to pay, you know, for theservice to be able to scan those
codes.
I highly recommend it.
Get those, get those people onyour list.
(37:47):
Make sure you have an automatedflow so that you know it's
processing.
That would be a reallyimportant and valuable tool.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
So, and one thing that comes to my mind and then
we do need to wrap up here inthe next couple of minutes is,
with that process is, you know,if you, first of all I would
encourage you know anybody who'slistening out there is come up
with something unique andinteresting, like you guys did
for the pool Olympics.
However, if, for whateverreason, you can't, or in
addition to that, one thing thatwe found incredibly useful at
those trade shows and yes, Iknow that it's used a lot, but
(38:16):
it's also used very effectivelywhich is a product giveaway, you
know, and make it a bundlethat's your products, that's,
you know, valuable enough towhere people are going to want
to register, and those types ofthings Cause, then what it also
does for you is not only givesthem a reason to sign up, but
also to email them and say, hey,after the trade show, here's
the winner.
But it also gives you a bite atthe apple to say hey, if they
(38:38):
weren't the winner, you can givethem a specific coupon code or
additional add-on product orsome sort of special promo, just
for them to at least kind ofprime the pump.
And think about that firstemail which impacts your
deliverability.
I mean people want to open anemail to figure out you know who
won that giveaway from,whatever, and so you know that
(39:00):
can be a really powerful thingeither to do on its own or in
addition to.
You know, again, I think havingsomething unique, like what you
guys did, that really ties intothe brand is ideal, but if you,
you know, for whatever reasonyou don't have that you want to
look for something in additionto.
I think we've seen, we've usedthat strategy before very
successfully.
The last couple of minutes herethat I want to kind of wrap up
(39:20):
with is you know, not everybodyout there is going to have that
budget in order to spend, youknow, 20 plus grand on going to
a trade show.
You know, what kind of maybesome quick ideas or
recommendations do you guys havefor those folks that maybe
don't have that budget but wantto do some face-to-face
marketing?
Speaker 3 (39:42):
The first thing that I would say is that you don't
necessarily have to be anexhibitor at the trade show.
There's no matter what categoryyou sell products in.
I can pretty much guaranteethat there's some sort of a
trade show.
That is's no matter whatcategory you sell products in.
I can pretty much guaranteethat there's some sort of a
trade show that is relevant tothe people that are buying those
types of products, and evenjust going and being one of the
attendees of a trade show isvaluable.
(40:03):
There were a couple of serviceproviders that approached us
that were very, very unique inthe way that they.
I mean, there was one Amazonagency that had a whole
presentation that they handed usthat was very specific to our
brand, and so she didn't pay tobe at the show, but she made a
big impression.
There's also an SEO agency thatwe're probably going to end up
(40:23):
working with because of it.
So you don't necessarily haveto be an exhibitor and spend,
you know, $15,000 on a booth,just going there and being
present and learning Like therewere.
You know, like I would havegotten value just by sitting on
some of the sessions that someof the pool professionals were
sitting at.
So, like.
You don't have to be anexhibitor, even just going find
(40:44):
a trade show that is relevant tothe people that are buying your
products and just go as a as anattendee.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
I also think, too, just the idea.
And, of course, if you're anAmazon seller, hopefully you
know that these exist, although,to be honest, for a lot of
years I didn't know.
But you know, like the Amazonconferences, you know, like one
of the things that happens atthese Amazon conferences is all
of these additional side eventsthat happen, these networking
events that occur that are puton by all sorts of other you
know, individuals, organizations, businesses, whatever.
(41:10):
That is an opportunity for youto connect with these Amazon
sellers.
Well, the same thing happens atall these other trade shows.
So, like there's, there'snetworking events that are
happening at these trade showsbefore, after, during, you know,
whatever.
Participate in those networkingevents that give you an
opportunity to connect withthose individuals.
You know, and again, they don'tcost anything People.
(41:31):
They're not charging yougenerally to walk in the door to
these networking events.
Maybe they charge a little bit,but it's not much and it's well
worth being in there.
I would also say one of thethings that you should probably
step back and consider is isthere a way for your product to
be relevant to a commercialbuyer who would buy it,
(41:54):
potentially in bulk quantities,if there's any creative way that
you can come up with that isreasonable.
That makes your product aviable option for these
commercial buyers.
Consider the potential for asingle order that might be as
much as a thousand individuals.
And how can you connect withthose bulk buyers Right?
(42:17):
There are plenty of events thatyou could attend where you're
going to meet up with people whowill buy onesies and twosies
Right, there's nothing wrongwith that.
But if you can instead attendan event where you can hobnob
with people who might buy ahundred or a thousand, 10,000
units that's a much more yourROI on that is likely to be much
better.
If you actually are talking tothese people and networking with
(42:38):
these people and connectingwith them, just one contact
might easily pay for that andcut your trip, even if you had
to pay for airfare and the wholenine yards.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
Well, and I think I'll build off of that before we
wrap here, which is I know wetalked a lot about trade shows,
but really this is aboutface-to-face marketing, and so,
whether it's when you work withthose bigger buyers, helping
support them by demoing yourproduct in their store we did a
lot of sampling and demos for acoffee brand that I used to have
in grocery stores, and so thatwas a much more cost-effective
(43:08):
way to get a lot of that sameface-to-face feedback.
So there's other ways to do itbesides trade shows.
Trade shows are great, butthere's other budget-friendly
options.
So I would just encouragelisteners to think about how you
can test out some face-to-facemarketing, because I think, even
if you're well-connected withyour customers, you've been
doing it for a while.
I guarantee that you'll learnsomething from doing some
(43:31):
face-to-face marketing with yourcustomers in that process.
So I would just, yeah,encourage all our listeners to
do that and want to thankeverybody for listening and
we'll be back next time foranother Tactics Tuesday.
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