Trade Shows Should be an Important Part of Your Marketing Strategy

Commentary & Analysis

Trade Shows Should be an Important Part of Your Marketing Strategy

By Adam Dewitz
Published: November 30, 2007

This past week WhatTheyThink.com ran a series of videos from its analysts and commentators on the trade shows print services providers should exhibit at or attend. We all know the importance of attending printing industry trade shows and events if we want to stay on top of the latest technologies and trends, but we should also have the trade shows our customers and potential customers attend on our list.

Dr. Joe Webb has repeatedly told printers to attend or exhibit at ad:tech for the past couple of years. In his latest video commentary, Dr. Joe, says, "if we want to be understood as being part of the communications business, we have to go where the communicators go and that is a show like ad:tech."

ad:tech dubs itself as the "#1 event for interactive marketing." And a "conference dedicated to connecting all sides of today's brand marketing landscape." This is the show to see the technologies that complete with, and complement print in marketing campaigns.

Frank Romano tells us we need to look at all industry trade shows. Romano says a good place to start our the trade show directories that are put out each year. A Google search for "Trade Show Directory" brings up a number of sites with show information. TradeShow Week magazine also has an online directory of trade shows.

Romano also points out that print buying events are seeing a renaissance - like the Boston Print Buyers Conference & Expo.

Barb Pellow says we need to attend vertically oriented trade shows such as the America Bankers Association Marketing Conference or the American Society for Training and Development Conference. The key is to have a target market strategy and focus on the trade shows for that industry.

Gail Nickel-Kailing points out that a lot of the things we print end up in the mail. Conferences like MAILCOM or the Direct Marketing Association Annual Conference are the places where people that mail things go.

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Adam Dewitz is CTO at WhatTheyThink. He has detailed knowledge of: Printing and Publishing Technology, Web-enabled Print Production, Software Development, Web Development, Information Systems, and has served in production and technology roles in printing companies.

Discussion

By Print Goddess 1 on Dec 12, 2007

Print buyers are hungry for knowledge that vendors can supply. Print buyers' job scopes are changing so that even the most offset-saavy of us need to learn about inkjet, web to print, FSC, PDFs and workflow technology. Print byuers and sellers all work in providing service and education to our clients to assist them in choices for communication to their various audience.

One only has to look at the broad range of attendees at the past month's Print Buyers' Conference in Westford, MA to see the full range of experience levels and geography represented. Seminars were filled to "standing room only" status, exhibit halls were bustling with vendors and attendees making connections, attendees were finding commonality discussing all sorts of esperiences unique to the print buying field.

What the print seller has to be careful of is to not try to approach attendees post-conference with a blanket mailing. This cookie cutter approach is easily discerned by the attendee and not helpful. Print sellers should take time to learn about the buyer's business, and formulate a package of information that will create interest on the part of the buyer to speak with the seller. Please, don't cold call buyers on a Friday afternoon.... You may have nothing to do, but buyers are usually scrambling to get those last minute jobs into the pipeline.

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