Marketing your NRA Show Exhibit

Reach Out to Your Buyers at the Teachable Moment

By Lorrie Baumann

Seth Godin points out in his blog today that in this brave new digital world, what's scarce, and therefore valuable, is connection. "Who trusts you? Who wants to hear from you? Who will collaborate and support and engage with you?" he writes. "These are things that don't scale to infinity. These are precious resources."

This is why it's so important for you to tell your story far and wide at a trade show. You're not just there to talk to the people who already know you and your products and who already trust you enough to do business with you; you're also there to engage with people who never heard of you before and know nothing about you other than what they can see in a quick glance as they pass your booth in their hurry down the aisle to the people they already know. Your job is to persuade them to trust you with a share of their valuable time at the show. Time at the NRA show is, after all, another precious resource that's in scarce supply.

How do you do that? You tell them the story of why they should go out of their way to stop and see you. You arrange for your story to reach them at a teachable moment when they're not distracted by their awareness that the clock is ticking and there's so much to see that's just down the aisle from you. 

Restaurant Daily News is the show daily with the widest distribution during the NRA Show. It reaches attendees at shuttle stops outside their hotels, so that they pick it up and read it on the ride to McCormick Place. Once the shuttles are in the busway, there's very little to distract the riders, so that's a great teachable moment. When they arrive at the convention center, your message is fresh in their minds, and they've learned something about you and your new products, so they know they need to see you. They arrive at your booth ready to hear what you have to tell them. 

Your job at that point is to make sure that what you have to offer them during their visit to your booth is truly worth a share of their valuable time and that you will both get something out of the experience, even if it doesn't result in an immediate order. And as Godin writes, "Connection and leadership and trust are going to get ever more valuable. Sure, go ahead and shake your head in agreement, but when you get back to work, are you busy working in the scarce universe or trying to build a place for yourself in the new one?"

Call Restaurant Daily News today to discuss how we can help you tell your story to NRA Show attendees at the teachable moment. 520.721.1300

Related articles

Capture the Attention of Your Audience at the NRA Show

How To Make Your CEO Happy During NRA

Scarcity and abundance in the digital age

Crafting a Memorable Marketing Message

By Lorrie Baumann

One of the benefits offered by advertising in any of the Oser Communications Group show publications is that you get the opportunity to tell your story in the publication’s editorial pages. That’s part of our philosophy that show publications should tell attendees about what’s available to them on the show floor. After all, that’s what the buyers came to see -- there’s a place for other activities during the show, but that place isn’t in the Oser Communications Group show daily.

Memorable marketing messages are simple, not dumbed down, but pared down to their core -- the one idea that you want your readers to remember even if they forget everything else you tell them. Think about John F. Kennedy’s 1961 message to Congress that the United States would put a man on the moon and bring him safely back home again before the end of the decade. Breathtaking in the magnitude of the challenge, that idea, if it had been expressed in an unclear gobbledygook, would undoubtedly have been forgotten as quickly as most of the ideas in the average presidential speech -- or even the other ideas in that particular speech.

Simple core messages help people avoid bad choices, such as the choice not to allocate a significant percentage of their time on the show floor to you and your products, by reminding them of what’s important. The clarion call of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech has certainly been an enduring reminder of Civil Rights values, and it has moved people much further than the distance across a crowded exhibit hall.

You don’t have to be Dr. King or a presidential speechwriter to compose an effective message that will bring buyers to you at a trade show. Just start by taking the time to be clear in your own mind about what you want most to get across to your audience and then write just that. Resist the temptation to dress it up with a lot of extraneous ideas. Then add your booth number at the end and send it over to us before your deadline.

Related articles

Attracting Attention at the NRA Show

Stress-Free Marketing Messages

By Lorrie Baumann

There’s research to say that if you start by making a few simple rules for yourself, you’re likely to end up with something that’s more creative than if you simply start by facing the blank page. Writers already know this. If I tell you to take 10 minutes and write a short story that includes a shoe, a key, and a character who tells a lie, you’re likely to be able to do that and you’ll have much more fun doing it than if I tell you simply to take 10 minutes and write something. Try it for yourself and see.
So start writing your next marketing message this way: Take 10 minutes and write a message that includes these three things: one main point you hope that trade show buyers will go home with after they visit your exhibit booth, one story about why your new product is better than your competitors’ and your contact information. That’s all you really have to do. Don’t struggle over it, just scribble something down in 10 minutes.
The story is easy -- Peter Guber tells us how to do that in Tell to Win. You need a hero dealing with a challenge. That’s all. So cast your end-user as the hero and tell us how she’ll use your product to solve a problem in her daily life. Or tell us how your product is going to help the noble retailer do better business.
At the end of 10 minutes, take what you have and set it aside for a while. Overnight, for preference, which is why you don’t want to wait until you’re on top of your deadline before you do this.
Then the next day, read over what you have and then THROW IT AWAY. That’s right, wad it up into a ball and toss it into a trash can. Then do a fast rewrite from scratch. You will ALWAYS find that this second version is better and comes more easily than that first version.
At the end of another 10 minutes, you’ll usually have a product that’s good enough to share around with your colleagues. Do that and see what suggestions they can offer you. Incorporate the best suggestions into your draft, and then you’re done! And you never even had to break a sweat!

Related articles

Storytelling Advice

How to Harness the Power of Storytelling for Your Small Business

Analytics Are Key to Long-term Brand Activity on Google+ says Punch Communications

The introduction of analytics to Google+ pages and communities will be key in ensuring that brands continue to invest time and resource into the social network, according to integrated PR, search and social media agency Punch Communications. Many brands are now realising the value of Google+, not only as a community platform, but also as a network where they can have conversations with their audiences that are different from those on other social networks.

However, as marketing teams come under continued pressure to generate tangible results from social media activity, analytics has become increasingly important in providing the information needed to track results and highlight successes. PR, search and social media agency Punch Communications suggests that in order to thrive as a brand engagement platform, Google+ needs to provide the analytics required by marketing teams. Rather than brands and agencies manually collecting data and reporting only on what is publicly available from Google+ pages and communities, a tool would make this process far more straightforward and free up time for marketers to spend on data analysis.

Pete Goold, managing director of PR agency Punch, said: "Over the past few years we've seen a shift in brand social media behavior. What was initially a land grab to gain more fans than the nearest competitors is now a much more focused discipline requiring tangible results and meaningful interactions with consumers. "Analytics for social networks has become a major part of the change, and Google+ is no different. The potential of Google+ as a brand platform is clear – introducing an analytics feature for pages will be key for Google+ to continue attracting brand activity that will make the network an even more engaging environment for users in future."

Punch Communications is an integrated PR, social media and SEO agency delivering campaigns for clients based all over the world.

Related articles

Google+ Communities offers brands a fresh way of engaging with social network users, says Punch Communications

3 Tips for Maximizing Your Opportunities at the NRA Show

3 Tips for Maximizing your Opportunities at NRA with Help from Restaurant Daily News

NRA is an incomparable once-a-year opportunity to meet the people who will matter to your success over the next year, saving you the time, energy and expense of countless round-the-world trips to meet all the people who gather in Chicago each May. Make sure you make the most of the opportunity to meet, not just the people you know you need to see, but also the potential partners, suppliers and customers that you don't even know are out there.

Restaurant Daily News - Your Best Advertising Deal at the NRA Show

Count on Restaurant Daily News for the best advertising deal during NRA!

Here's why:

ONLY Restaurant Daily News will be distributed in 60 locations throughout Chicago, including key hotels, shuttle stops and restaurants serving show attendees, to ensure that your message will reach your buyers where they live while they're in Chicago.

ONLY Restaurant Daily News will be distributed in hotel lobbies, along shuttle routes and in restaurants serving show attendees en route to McCormick Place, so your message can reach your buyers while they're planning their day.

ONLY Restaurant Daily News focuses on you and your products. While the NRA Show Daily is telling attendees what the keynote speaker had to say, Restaurant Daily News is telling attendees about the exciting products on the show floor.

ONLY Restaurant Daily News publishes FOUR daily issues during NRA to reach your buyers FIRST, last, and every day during the show!

Restaurant Daily News is published in full tabloid size. Our 11”x14” page is almost 25% larger than a Dealerscope page.

Restaurant Daily News is the oldest continuously published daily at NRA. For more than 35 years, Restaurant Daily News advertisers have counted on RDN to be at their hotels every morning BEFORE buyers have left for the show.

ONLY Restaurant Daily News is your BEST ADVERTISING BUY during the show. Compare rate cards and see for yourself that Restaurant Daily News offers more for your money during NRA!

Call 520.721.1300 today to reserve your space while great positions are still available!

  Download printable flyer here NRA1

Restaurant Daily News is a publication of Oser Communications Group, an independent publishing company not affiliated with the National Restaurant Association. It is not an official publication of the NRA show.

Restaurant Daily News Exposes Hot New Products at the NRA Show!

EXPOSED! Only on Restaurant Daily News, see how major Restaurant merchandisers are conspiring to overwhelm the international marketplace with products that are:

Hot!    Innovative!    Desirable!

WATCH as Restaurant Daily News exposes these hot new products through FOUR daily issues during NRA to be distributed in 60 locations throughout Chicago, including key hotels, shuttle stops and restaurants serving show attendees, to ensure that your message will reach your buyers where they live while they're in Chicago. No other publication does more to take your message outside convention center walls.

Restaurant Daily News, Your Best Buy During the NRA Show

Seen First, Last and Everywhere during NRA, Restaurant Daily News is your best advertising vehicle!

ONLY Restaurant Daily News, the oldest continuously published daily at NRA, is your BEST ADVERTISING BUY during the show. Compare rate cards and see for yourself that Restaurant Daily News offers more for your money during NRA!

ONLY Restaurant Daily News publishes FOUR, count 'em, FOUR, daily issues during NRA! Your ad runs in all four issues for one low price.

Does Print Still Work?

By Lorrie Baumann

Let me take off my shoes and wade into some deep water here. There’s a lot of evidence out there that marketers are losing faith in print as an effective advertising vehicle, so naturally, as a publishing company, this is something that we think about a lot. If we had any evidence that an online publication was an effective vehicle for a trade show daily, we could abandon our very expensive printing and shipping of paper publications, deliver the content online, drop our advertising rates and still make a profit doing what we love to do best. We’d all be happy.

The problem is that despite the documented evidence that paper publications might be less effective as advertising vehicles in other contexts, we see a lot of evidence that paper still works for the show daily. Attendees still take them when we hand them out, and our advertisers still see more traffic at their booths than nonadvertisers do.

Capture the Attention of Your Audience at the NRA Show

When you exhibit at a trade show, you’re setting up a special place to which you hope to draw an audience for a performance in which you will create an engaging and memorable experience for them. It’s theater.

Every Leader is an Artist by Michael O’Malley and William F. Baker contains a useful discussion on how to think about stagecraft within a business context. They point out that putting on a successful performance requires us to think about how we’re going to capture attention to draw an audience and how to create a sense of anticipation that focuses their attention on what we think is important for them to notice and remember as well as how to create an experience on stage that will maintain that focus through the performance.