Ecommerce Shopping Cart - Search Engine Marketing Software

Four Simple Ways to Cut Your Trade Show Marketing Budget in Half

Many times when a trade show is planned for there isn't someone who watches the budget and tracks where the money goes. But, if you do want to know where your trade show marketing dollar goes and want to do better, this article is for you.

You should track each expense and when you show is over hold a quick review to discover how much you spent. You might be surprised at how things add up.

Here are four simple ways to make your trade show marketing budget count. If you can reduce your show spending a losing show might suddenly be worthwhile.

1. Track your deadlines and discounts.

Look at your show agreement and see where you get discounts for making early commitments. A better way to look at this is the premium you pay for not being well planned. You'll see a deadline and a price before the date and an increased price after the date. You'll see yet a higher premium for getting a service on the day of the show.

Keep good records of the discount deadlines and don't' miss any. That will ensure you minimize your surcharges.

Keep special track of your shipping costs and ensure you have time to ship ground and still make your setup deadline.

Good planning will really be worth your while and can save you easily 25%

2. Review your booth size.

As your company grows its trade show strategy you may be tempted to move up to a larger booth. You may even be tempted to take the show discount (see point number 1) and take a bigger space next year. Event managers will encourage you to do this but beware!

Take a look at your show results. Then consider what happens if you had two times more space. Would you get twice the traffic to the booth? Would there two times as many qualified prospects than if you had a 10 x 10 space? If the bigger booth doesn't deliver a bigger result, you could skip the expense and focus on the marketing program instead.

3. Be ruthless on your giveaway budget.

Show giveaways can really eat up a show budget is short order. Often you will be focused on the item selection and not the role the item plays in your sales process.

Consider the difference in cost between a thousand items you give freely to people passing by your booth and the cost of an item given to your top one hundred prospects.

By focusing in on giving quality to your prospects your will remove the risk of overspending on your giveaway budget.

Make it pay.

4. Skip the expensive brochure or handout.

One common error is to simply bring along a large quantity of your current color brochure stock. There will be no loss of people willing to take a $4.00 brochure from your hand as they walk by.

You see, they are being polite. What happens if you meet a thousand polite people?

Keep your corporate brochure at home and work with a small product brochure or a custom postcard with a show special and a reason for them to keep it after the show. (Custom access to a website or a product discount works pretty well)

You'll spend less and get better results.

Bonus tip. Review your shows.

If you attend more than one show in a year, list your shows, (with your results) and look really hard at the lowest performer.

It's possible that the show may not be as relevant but you stay in regardless. If you are not getting the results from the show, you can let it go. You're not giving anything up.

Spend your time to replace this show with another, more targeted, higher performing show or just use this trade show marketing money on another marketing project.

None of these concepts are revolutionary or will change the face of trade show marketing. You will however do better by demanding a better accounting of your trade show dollar.

Mitch Tarr is a Vancouver BC based trade show consultant who helps companies focus on getting more leads and better sales from trade show marketing programs.

Go to http://www.marketing-for-small-business.com to sign up for a FREE newsletter with two proven strategies each month.

Shopping Cart Uses Top Google Keywords to Maximize Revenue
Ecommerce shopping cart hosting uses search engine marketing software to sell products online. Use top paying Google keywords and PPC campaigns to maximize revenue and boost your income stream. Get a merchant account for credit card processing and make money on the internet with merchandise sales.

MORE ARTICLES:

Shopping Cart Software - Making Internet Shopping Easier
People are increasingly turning to the Internet when they want to earn extra income or even begin earning a primary income from home. So many different jobs and sources of revenue on the Internet have evolved over the years that making money on the Internet has become quite easy. If you think about it, it's obvious why. The Internet can reach more customers than a physical store location can.

Internet Marketing - How to Make your Online Advertising Business Produce Money on Internet Marketing
The success or failure of your Internet marketing business depends largely on the Internet users. If they are interested on the products and services that you are offering for sale, definitely you can expect hundreds to thousands of dollars in revenues from your online business. On the other hand, if they are just too lazy to hear what you want to say and what you are offering, better shut down your personal computer unit and find some other ways of earning money.

Xonca Ecommerce Shopping Cart Software Released
Ecommerce software company Arquan releases search engine friendly Xonca shopping cart software for web designers and SEO professionals.

Top eCommerce Software Blogger Linda Bustos Wins Search Engine Marketing Scholarship
Elastic Path Software Blog "Get Elastic" educates webmasters on analytics, search marketing and eCommerce best practices.

Apply For A Credit Card Merchant Account Online
Who should? Why, you should, of course, if you want to grow your business and maximize sales volume! In this day and age, more and more business functions are moving into cyberspace, which means that business owners must be ready to travel to this relatively unknown domain if they want to maintain strong customer ties and stay a step or two ahead of the competition. Dont worry if youre not Web savvy; most online processes that are geared to the general consumer are not hard to perform. In fact, most are downright easy.

4 Reasons Why You Must Try PPC Search Engine Internet Marketing
PPC (or Pay Per Click for those not in the know) search engine internet marketing is a form of internet advertising model that uses the power of the search engine, the flexibility and connectivity of advertising networks and a whole host of content based people pulling websites to generate audience volume

Pinnacle Cart Releases the Next Generation of Their Successful Shopping Cart Software  Pinnacle Cart 360
Pinnacle Cart announces the release of their latest ecommerce software solution, Pinnacle Cart 360. Designed from a marketing perspective, this tremendously successful shopping cart application is designed to increase website sales, average sales amount and organic traffic.

Merchant Account Insider Secrets - Accept Credit Cards Online
The process of learning how to accept payments on the Internet is similar to the course of figuring out how to launch a business. What at first seems puzzling and intimidating may be viewed as straightforward and easy to understand if one has the right guide or manual.

Arquan Announces Ecommerce Shopping Cart Software For Web Designers and SEO Professionals
Arquan announces Xonca 3.0 ecommerce shopping cart software for web designers and SEO professionals who need complete design control, power, simplicity, and search engine friendly features. Xonca is also very easy to operate for the end user.

Online Credit Card Processing - How to Accept Credit Cards - Ecommerce 101
Back in 1998 (through 2000 or so), I worked for a small company (called PaymentNet / then Signio) that handled online transactions. Verisign later purchased this company, and the product team I led integrated the "client" - the portion that took the credit card information and sent it to our servers for processing.

Advertising Your Work From Home Internet Business With PPC Search Engines
If you want to make money online with a work from home business then you are going to need lots of good targeted traffic to your web site and or affiliate links. One way to get good targeted traffic is to pay for it.

Credit Card Processing - 7 Things You Need to Know Before Opening an Online Merchant Account
When considering opening an online merchant account to accept credit card orders, there are a lot of things you need to keep in mind. The best thing to do is learn all about credit card processing before you open your online merchant account so you can handle everything from the beginning rather than having to go back and make many changes.

Accept Credit Cards Online Without a Merchant Account
There are two major ways to accept credit cards on your website. The first and most expensive is to have your own merchant account.

Website Marketing Firm Brick Marketing Launches Local Search Engine Marketing Product at Brick Marketing Local
Brick Marketing, a respected full-service website marketing firm known for its success in increasing the sales of clients through online marketing, has launched a new local search engine marketing product. The new local online marketing package gives brick and mortar businesses the opportunity to achieve higher exposure in a wide range of local search engines.