Welcome to “Exhibitor Lounge” sponsored by Exhibit Edge.com. I am your host and Trade Show Mixologist, Michael Gray. Here, each week, you receive simple, practical, and proven tips to improve your trade show marketing strategy and get better results while maximizing your budget.
Many people look at Marketing and Sales as basically the same thing. Marketing and sales functions are very different but they do need each other to work effectively. Today, let’s take a closer look at how marketing is truly different from sales. A couple of videos ago I mentioned that your exhibit is a marketing tool, not a sales tool. To effectively market your company you need to know what marketing truly is. So today I am hiring you as the new marketing manager. What is your job? Is it to increase sales? Not directly. If you look at marketing from its pure definition your job description would be similar to the following points:
1. Establish your company’s competitive position
2. Identify your ideal customer
3. Locate potential markets
4. Generates quality sales leads
5. Develops effective selling tools
6. Analyze competitor’s business strategies and tactics
7. Define, prioritize, and promote your products or services and finally
8. Organize and transfer customer information to other departments
A full time Marketing Manager would need to stay on top of new product rollouts, organization and maintenance of customer contact Information, market research, pricing analysis, public relations, trade shows, marketing communications, media selection, internal communications, and most important is your corporate vision and strategy.
Marketing is a business philosophy. You must set the tone and position your company as the leader in your industry. You must find your niche and exploit it. This is important for customer retention. Today social media is a key to marketing. Strategies include videos, testimonies, groups, blogs, website hierarchy, and many technology savvy campaign outlets.
In summary, marketing is a strategic part of a company’s success. It is the foundation that describes and promotes your company and therefore is the catalyst for sales. A strong emphasis on a marketing strategy will make the sales process much more effective. Learn the keys to Marketing and you will find the sales you need to grow. Basic keys to Marketing are:
- Create a corporate vision, philosophy and identity. If you don’t know who you are how can you tell others about you? At Exhibit Edge our corporate identity is our “why” – our mission statement. “We care, serve and challenge the ordinary to maximize our customer’s vision and success.”
- Make sure that you train your sales and marketing professionals to talk the same language so that your message is inline.
- Understand and research your ideal client and promote to them. Once they find you a potential client will do their research to make sure you are a good fit. The more information you have out there for them to see will be an important element for closing sales. This is where social media will play an important part of your strategy. Give your sales people the tools they need so Marketing and Sales can operate together for a common goal – to increase revenue.
As always, please respond with your questions or comments and let others know about EXHIBITOR LOUNGE.COM. We will see you next week. Until then, I am your host Michael Gray telling you to RELAX in the Exhibitor Lounge.