I recently attended the GIE+EXPO and wanted to share with you some exciting news! We just launched GetGreenTurf.com, a new online resource and social site for turf professionals, with a client and I’m ecstatic.

The GIE+EXPO gave us the perfect opportunity to get in front of one of the audiences of the site – lawn care professionals – and create a buzz. Isn’t that what tradeshows are about?

Even though we tried to make a splash with our booth (green shoes, green iPads, green graphics, green green candy, carpet, etc.), we did have a goal for the show — to capture new users for the site and create a good first impression.

This rings true to all B2B marketers. There were two big things I learned from this show that I wanted to delve deeper into:

Engage at the booth and your brand image will gain.
Differentiation. We all struggle with it, but at a tradeshow, it’s crucial that you stand out even more. You don’t have to do this with just your booth activities, graphics or displays (although it helps); you can differentiate by taking your brand to the next level by engaging in conversation and personalization.

Regardless of the market you’re in, companies attending tradeshows are looking for information, and they want it from someone friendly and informative. Perfect opportunity! At the GetGreenTurf.com booth, I made it a point to give my spiel but also ask questions to engage my audience.

I wanted to hear more about them and their challenges. I turned it around on them in hopes of tying in our product to their needs.  I tried with all my little heart to make a good impression and make their experience at our booth well worth the visit. Your brand will shine even brighter if you’ve taken on the task of extending the company image personally.

Take your leads seriously and you’ll earn back what you spent.
When I think about all the planning and money that goes into a tradeshow booth, I get a little light-headed. B2B marketers more than ever need to start thinking about how they’re going recover those costs and more. Consider lead retrieval technology, website enrollment or paper forms to get their contact info down.

The majority of the time, more will disclose their information if they have a chance at winning something. You can capture some great lead data but how you flip those is what counts. Even more, you need to nourish those leads immediately, no later than the week right after the tradeshow.

Our team was quick to get an email follow up to the attendees of the show that stopped by our booth and we thanked them for stopping by, and empowered them with CTAs to take the next step for information.

Capturing, nuturing and converting those leads into customers will ultimately drive the sales that will recover your costs, which is the obvious point here.  The ROI game is possible if your marketing and sales teams work together to engage, follow up and deliver.

Tradeshows are only as successful as you make them. Set yourself up for greatness by having the right people in the booth to extend your brand image and the right lead gen strategy.

Consider calling a Canyonite to help you with your next tradeshow and we’ll help you build a pre- and post-show strategy.

I have no shame in admitting that I am an avid gamer. I enjoy spending several hours of my free time delving into a digital world as my source of entertainment. Even if you don’t play video games, I would be willing bet that you have at least heard of the major game franchise Call of Duty, which is one of my favorites. If not, all you need to know is that it is a warfare based shooter type game that as sold millions of copies world-wide.

With the recent record-setting release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the game’s developer Activision, also released a web site/program that lets players login and track and analyze their in-game statistics—and users are flocking to it. That’s right; there is a high demand, for the viewing and tracking of analytics in the gaming world. Now as a big fan of both analytics and video games, I was impressed to see such a program developed.

Just as you would go into Google Analytics, or your Mailchimp campaign reports and view you total clicks, visits, bounce rates, etc., gamers can now track in-depth game statistics such as their total kills, deaths, assists, headshots, and any sort of statistic relating to the game you could think of (there is more statistics revolving around this game than you would think).

One of the main goals of this site is to allow players to track their progress and analyze potential weaknesses or strengths in their gameplay. This may sound silly, but many people (myself included) take it seriously, just like people take any other hobby seriously. For example (I will try and reduce the video game jargon here but bear with me), a player might realize that he gets killed by grenades, or claymore mines A LOT.

He may not have thought much about it before, but the numbers don’t lie, and he decides to start using a selectable ability that grants you a stronger resistance to such explosives. Voilà, an analytic exposed a weakness, and the user was able to alter his strategy to better counter it, just like they’re meant to do.

Now if you lost me and my video game talk, the analogy was simple: analytics are helpful. Not to mention, they are incredibly easy to use and understand if you spend some time figuring out the basics.

Having analytics for any web-based project is crucial. The information and focus you gain from it is unparalleled in helping to develop further strategy and improvements. So don’t be afraid to dive into some numbers and acronyms, after all, if it gets confusing, chances are there is a tutorial or explanation built in.

What are your favorite uses for analytics?

In today’s instant gratification society, we’re constantly encountering scenarios where we have to quickly and efficiently digest gobs of information. It flies at us from every corner of our Foursquare worlds.

As a B2B marketing communications agency, Canyon is  constantly challenged to communicate complex products and services to our clients’ targets, so sometimes it’s important to quickly convey data and information visually.

Now more than ever, this is accomplished by developing infographics. It’s an easy way to present complex information or a process quickly and clearly. There are blogs dedicated to cool infographics and good infographics and Fast Company even has an infographic of the day.

The cool thing is they can even be interactive.

As we’re continually inundated with millions of communications, we need to find a way to make things easy to understand and for our audiences to comprehend. Next time you’re adding a sweet Gantt chart to that PowerPoint, think…is there a better way to help visualize and communicate this info?

Have you had success with an infographic? What’s your favorite infographic?

All my co-workers know that Christmas is my favorite time of year. The holiday spirit immediately kicks in for me on Thanksgiving Day when watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade, and of course, the Black Friday commercials.

Every year, stores around the nation brace themselves for Black Friday as bargain shoppers camp out to get the greatest discount. One could say that Black Friday is the bargain consumer’s paradise and it has turned into the traditional start of the holiday shopping season in the U.S. Not only has Black Friday store spending become the holiday norm, but online spending as well. This year, Black Friday saw $52 billion in store sales and $816 million in online sales.

This year’s outrageous holiday shopping activity got me thinking about ways B2B can take advantage of Black Friday strategies offline and online. Is there any way we can do something like this in the B2B space?

I found a great article that outlines how the end-of-year consumer supply and demand benefits retailers around the holiday season and how B2B companies could potentially match the same supply and demand.

Consumers have continued to cut back on money, leaving them with more money to spend at the end of the year, creating strong profits for many companies, and in return, giving these companies more money to spend. So, what is the supply in B2B? This article outlines what B2B companies can do to match the demand and the ability to spend:

• Make it easy for companies to spend with a range of prices to meet their budgets
• Address the need to invest, i.e. Communicate that the product or service will bring opportunity to grow and advance the business
• Know your customer’s budgetary cycle
• Understand customer needs and wants; prepare way in advance for the holiday season

Do you think it’s possible to promote B2B business sales on Black Friday? Why or why not?

Whoever is reading my post, I hope you have wonderful holiday and a happy new year!