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Exhibiting at Trade Shows: How to Prepare

Trade shows and exhibitions have some of the highest ROI of any form of marketing. Aside from providing a great arena to meet qualified leads they also offer great opportunities to catch up with the latest developments in your industry. Check out competitors and maybe get a bit of inspiration for your next ground breaking product.

The problem is that trade shows require a large initial investment to get those opportunities and leads, so preparation is vital to ensure you aren’t throwing money away.

Objectives: Why are you going to this event? (hint: the answer isn’t because we can, or everyone else is doing it) Make sure you and your staff know what you want to achieve and plan accordingly, whether it’s to get a record number of qualified leads, great press coverage or an inside look at another industry, create a metric and make sure you have a way to track it. Preferably you should do this stage before you have even chosen an event. You can then pick the event which best fits your objectives rather than tying your objectives to the event.

Training: Staff surely don’t need to be trained just to talk to people? Well, actually yes they do. Good exhibition communication is often a mixt of counselling and acting. Your exhibitors need to be able to listen to the problems of the visitors coming to the stand so that they can offer them solutions, not products. They need to be able to listen sympathetically while hiding the fact they are tired and have been on message nearly all day. Much of the literature around trade shows suggests reps should spend 80% of their time listening and 20% talking.

Training your staff is vital to achieving this mix, and hopefully creating enthusiastic representatives. Depending upon what your budget is you can either hire outside experts to coach your staff on the finer points of exhibiting techniques alternatives a more affordable approach would be set aside an afternoon (at least) before the event to brief your staff. The briefing needs to include any products or services they need to be aware off, proper data capture methods and some practice of talking to visitors.

Consistent messaging: Having a consistent message is a vital part of any marketing and branding effort. Events are no different, and you should make sure that you are using your brand colours and logo’s on marketing literature, display stands and even clothing at a minimum. If there is any time when you are representing your company then sales meetings and trade shows are it.

Clothes are particularly vital when it comes to the message you want your brand to convey. A professional consulting company will probably want to wear suits, with any branding confined to lanyards and maybe ties in the company colours. In contrast a tech start up might prefer the branding opportunities available in a more relaxed approach such as adopting branded polo shirts. Similarly you need to think carefully about any promotional products you offer. For example if you want to promote your green credentials a pile of plastic tchotchkes will look hypocritical at best. A far better approach would be to create a report that can be downloaded from your website using a code only available at your stand. This will make you look both more professional and greener.

Pre-event Marketing: So you have trained your staff well, provided branded material and you have a great looking stand. But does anyone know where to find you, or why they should try? This is where pre-event marketing comes in. You need to tell people that you are going to be at the event and why they should care. While this can be as basic as taking advantage of the show organiser’s pre-event publicity, pushing it on your website, social media and offline marketing material can bring in a huge amount of interest. Try to come up with a promotion that will bring relevant people to your booth like a preview on a new product, a workshop or a chance to talk with an industry expert.

Eating and Sleeping: One thing you cannot do is leave your booth unmanned, but you also can’t expect everyone in your staff to spend all day on it. The simplest and most effective thing to do is arrange a schedule beforehand so that everyone will have at least one chance to sit down grab a bite to east. This will help your stand look professional, as there is no bigger turnoff than seeing a messy stand with discarded food wrappers. If it is at all possible then you should have a minimum of two people on the stand at all times. This will means that there is always someone to cover in case of emergencies and that visitors won’t to have to wait too long to find someone to talk to.

Similarly always book hotels and transport as far in advance as possible. This will not only save you money, it will also mean you can get rooms as close as possible to the exhibition centre. A five minute walk beats an hour long commute any day.

Hopefully this guide should help make any exhibits a success and ensure that you come out of the event with lots of great leads.

About the Author: Written by Daniel Frank on behalf of Nimlok Exhibition Stands

Image: Phil Sexton / Flickr

Thinking about FX trading from home ? 5 Common FX trading mistakes to avoid

Trading forex is simple, but it’s not easy. There are only a handful of currency pairs that are traded by most forex investors. However, the nuances of trading in this market are almost infinite. Before you make a single trade, make sure you understand the basics and avoid these five common FX trading mistakes.

Don’t Trade Forex Like You Trade Stocks

Stock traders often employ something called “averaging down.” This strategy is used when a stock position moves against the investor. For example, an investor buys 1,000 shares of a stock for $20 a share, and the share price drops to $15 per share. The investor may buy more of the stock at $15. When his 1,000 shares at $20 are averaged in with his new share purchases at $15, It produces an average share price that is higher than $15 but lower than $20.

Normally, this is a good thing because the stock trader expects to recover any losses. When he does, he realizes a higher average gain since his cost basis is lower. In forex, however, the market is much larger. The market can move against you and remain in an opposing trend for longer than you can remain solvent. Don’t average down when trading forex. Instead, rely on stop losses to maximize your profit.

Set A Stop Loss

A stop loss is like a safety net. Imagine working on a scaffolding 10 stories in the air without a harness. You might be fine working up there for a while, but the first time you lose your balance and fall, it’s all over. Stop losses limit your loss in the markets so that one bad trade doesn’t wipe you out completely. Use them. Instead of wiping out your entire account, you’ll only suffer small, recoverable, losses.

Stop losses also help to increase your gains. Since you are limiting your losses, you can use this strategy to buy back into the market when the trend reverses and exceeds your original stop loss amount.

Don’t Try To Trade Right After Late-Breaking News

New does affect markets in a dramatic way. However, it’s not always clear how the markets will react. Don’t try to out-think the market. You can’t do it. Instead, wait for a trend to develop. Then, trade on the trend. New forex investors tend to mistakenly believe that late-breaking news stories will have an immediate and predictable effect on the markets.

Often what ends up happening is that the market reacts somewhat unpredictably at first. Disruptive news reports often cause a “whiplash” effect, market orders and stop losses are triggered, exacerbating the issue. If you try to trade on this kind of movement, it’ll be like gambling in a casino.

Wait For The Trend, Forget Revenge

You’ve probably heard the phrase “don’t get emotional when trading.” It’s helpful advice, but many newbie traders ignore it. When you lose money, it’s understandable to want “revenge” on the market. However, the market doesn’t care how much you’ve lost. Revenge trading often involves increasing leverage or investment position to make up for previous losses.

This is an incredibly dangerous strategy. You risk losing even more money because emotions can easily cloud your judgment making it impossible to make any objective investment decisions. Instead, wait for another trend to develop, and trade on that trend. Forget your emotions for a moment, and rely on the goals and rules you initially established prior to trading.

Know When To Cash Out

There’s an old Kenny Rogers song, called “The Gambler” It contains advice that’s actually useful for forex investors. “You have to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em. Know when to walk away, and know when to run.” New forex traders sometimes have the problem of “knowing when to fold ’em” and “knowing when to walk away.” When the market turns against you, don’t let your losses run all the way to your stops. Thinking that you can “handle” the downs and that the market will rebound is a fallacy. The market may rebound, but you’ll be out of money before it does. Walk away from losing trades, and don’t get involved in market trends where you know you can’t win or where winning is improbable.

About the Author: Guest post contributed by freelance finance writer Elizabeth Goldman on behalf of Sunbird FX the specialists in currency trading and trading oil CFDs.

How SEO Can Help Your Small Business

When running a business website, you want your site to get as much traffic as possible to increase the chances of making sales. Since traffic is ultimately the life blood of your online business, figuring out how to increase this traffic should be priority number one for your business. By engaging in some good SEO practices, you may be able to increase your site’s traffic without spending a lot of extra money along the way.

Search Engine Traffic

When you use leading SEO services or methods to improve your site’s rankings in the search engines, you may be able to increase your traffic substantially. The nice thing about using this method is that the traffic can keep coming for months or years without having to pay for it again and again. By comparison, if you use paid traffic methods like pay-per-click marketing, you’ll have to pay for each visitor that makes his way to your site. This means that there is a lot of pressure to convert each visitor that comes to your site. Otherwise, you’ll be throwing away a lot of money every day on this type of Internet marketing.

With search engine traffic, it keeps coming again and again without a lot of expenses on your part. You may have to occasionally pay for more search engine optimization work until your site gets up a certain level of traffic. This is usually much cheaper than having to pay for each individual visitor that comes to your site.

Converting More Sales

When you work with a good search engine optimization service, you may also be able to convert more sales on your site. When visitors come to your site, they want to find what they’re looking for. If your site ranks highly for a given search term and then you sell something related to that search term on your site, this will increase the odds of a sale when the visitor arrives. If your site is not optimized properly, visitors might find it for terms that are not really that relevant to what you offer. This leads to customers finding your site when they’re actually looking for something else. When this happens, they will be much less likely to make a purchase or fill in the form that you have to capture their contact information.

Considerations

If you want to take your small business website to the next level, engaging in some search engine optimization can make a big difference. It might seem costly on the front end, but you’re making a long-term investment in the success of your business overall. By the time you’re done, your site may be receiving loads of free traffic from the search engines and your sales may be much better off overall.

How To Raise Capital For Your Business When Your Bank will not Help

Raising capital for a business seems like it should be pretty straightforward. It’s not. Banks often want you to post significant collateral for your business. If you’re just starting out, you probably don’t have anything that the bank can hold as security for the loan. While that might seem like a major roadblock, you can overcome this by raising capital through other sources.

Angel Investors

Angel investors are people who invest in businesses in exchange for a share of the profits that you generate. These investors are always accredited investors and act as either direct advisers for your company or as major shareholders. You have to be incorporated in order to attract angel investors, but many companies exist to make this process easier for you.

For example, the Go BIG Network Investors’ Circle are networks that connect you to angel investors. Inc.com also publishes an updated database of angel investor networks so that you can stay focused on developing your business.

Reverse Merger

Going public is one way to raise funds for your company. By going public, you can issue shares of your company to the general public, and investors will buy those shares from you. The money you get from those investors can be used for any business-related purpose. Of course, investors become part shareholder in the company, so you’ll need to work for your investors’ best interest by growing the company.

Shareholders can also vote on who remains on the board of directors and can affect the direction of the company indirectly through this type of voting. While going public is often expensive, there is an easier way to do it than issuing an initial public offering (IPO). It’s called a reverse merger. A reverse merger is when you purchase an existing public company that has failed, but is still public. Once you buy the company, you structure it so that it buys out your existing, non-public, company. The result is that you now own a public company and can sell shares to the public and raise the funds you need.

Peer-To-Peer Lending

Peer-to-peer lending is a relatively new form of lending when compared to traditional banking. It refers to the process of borrowing money from private investors, using a traditional bank as the intermediary. Companies like prosper.com exist entirely for this purpose. Investors sign up to the website and loan money to promising borrowers.

The loans are typically repayable within 3 years, but you may negotiate the interest rate on the loan. After you place a loan listing, investors bid on your loan. The bidding process is part of the funding process. With each bid, your loan becomes partially funded. An investor may contribute $50, $100, or $1,000 or more towards your total loan amount. Instead of one bank funding your entire loan amount, many investors make a partial contribution to your loan. When your loan is fully funded, the financial intermediary sends the money to your bank account via a direct deposit transaction.

Factoring

Factoring is similar to a cash advance. A factoring company advances you money based on your current accounts receivables. In other words, you sell your invoices to a factoring company, and that company advances you an amount of money equal to 75 to 85 percent of the total value of the invoices. The factoring company may also charge you a fee on top of the discounted rate it advances you. This is a good option if you need liquidity now, or your company is starved for cash and it normally takes you a long time to collect on your invoices.

About the Author: Guest post written by Elizabeth Goldman and brought to you by Wonga – the short term loan experts.

Office Supplies Do Not Have To Cost An Arm And A Leg!

When compared to other important acquisitions for the office (furniture and equipment), office supplies appear to require a minimal investment. However, how do you explain the fact that each year billions of dollars are spent on purchasing office supplies only in the United States? While the price of acquiring these basic supplies is rather low, keep in mind that you will need to restock quite frequently. Therefore, when you add up the individual investments dedicated for this purpose in a single month, you will be surprised to learn they are not as cheap as you initially thought.

In order to avoid spending a large portion of your business budget on office supplies, you need to set up a process of managing and controlling the consumption. Managing the supplies should start with verifying your past orders and determining which of the items are absolute necessities and which are simply nice to have. In case you discover items that are present on constantly ordered list, but nobody really uses them, then you can start to eliminate them systematically. In addition, you should re-evaluate the office supplies you are acquiring regularly and see if you can get them for less.

Due to the fact that most businesses have an online presence today, you can save a lot of time and effort when comparing office supplies offers. In short, you do not have to go down to the depot and note down the prices because you can check that out on websites and office supplies portals. Besides comparing and reviewing the offer, you can choose to order the office supplies directly from online sources. In the eventuality that you are making an order online, it is advisable to account for the shipping fee. Nonetheless, take note that most reputable office supplies providers will include free shipping for orders worth a minimum threshold.

If you are happy with the office supplies provider (new or old) and you purchase a significant amount of supplies each month, then you should negotiate a purchase contract. In order to be able to turn the tide of the deal in your favor, it is advisable that you evaluate which of these items you acquire more frequently. Afterwards, focus on getting a lower price or a discount and you will benefit from great savings. As a side note, because the purchase contract means regular expenses and hefty amounts of office supplies, this strategy works optimally for larger companies (with at least 100 employees).

Another method of conserving some of the cash spent on office supplies is to consider bulk orders. Therefore, instead of purchasing 100 sheet packs of paper often, a better approach is to acquire 1000 sheet packs at once. While this is by far the best method through which small companies can reduce the costs on office supplies, there are two crucial aspects worth mentioning. First off, the company must have the necessary budget to afford purchasing 1000 sheet packs (or other bulk supplies). The second aspect implies figuring out if you have the necessary (available) space to store bulk office supplies in a manner that will not negatively impact on the working space.

Be prudent and smart when it comes to amassing savings on your office supplies!

About the Author: Gerard Lee owns a stationary outlet whose mainly involved in selling office supplies. Through his blog he is willing to let people know how they can save money on buying office supplies.