How to Use Trade Shows for Publicity

Issue #1269 Oct. 23, 2018
Publisher: Joan Stewart

“Tips, Tricks and Tools for Free Publicity”

In This Issue

How to Use Trade Shows for Publicity
A Small Biz Guide to Facebook Chatbots
Carve a Pumpkin for Publicity
Hound Video of the Week

This Week in the Hound House:

When it comes to baseball, I’m a fair weather fan. No World Series for me this week since the Milwaukee Brewers won’t be in it. Instead, I’ll be making and canning Spiced Pears, an easy recipe compared to applesauce which requires hours of peeling, coring, chopping and cooking.

1. How to Use Trade Shows for Publicity

A few weeks ago I shared tips on how to use trade associations for publicity and promotion.

This week, I want to tell about several ways tradeshows offer opportunities galore for publicity.

Regardless of whether you’re buying booth space, here are five things you can do to promote yourself before, during or after the show:

–Contact the show organizers and find out if they need speakers. Sometimes a show offers a keynoter. Other times, the show will use a small area in a corner of the arena for a demonstration or presentation by a speaker. Even if you aren’t paid, speaking at a trade show will boost your credibility.

–Ask the show organizer if you can have a copy of the list of media outlets that have applied for press credentials. If you know which journalists will be there, you can contact them ahead of time and see if they’d be interested in meeting you for coffee.

–Start following them on social media and sharing their content.

–If you can’t get a list of journalists, find out if a bigger trade show has a press room where reporters are writing and filing their stories. You can hang out outside the room. Stop reporters who come and go and introduce yourself.

–Concentrate on building the relationship with journalists and others you meet. You can pitch a few story ideas to them afterward, as part of your follow-up.

To do: Timothy Patterson, aka The TradeshowGuy, interviewed me on this topic last week. I shared dozens more tips in this week’s episode of his Monday Morning Coffee podcast. Notice how he offers both video and audio.

#TradeShows #TradeShowPR

2. A Small Biz Guide to Facebook Chatbots

(Illustration by NeoMam Studios for Headway Capital)

Facebook Messenger is a quick, easy way to communicate with your customers directly.

More than 1.3 billion people use Facebook Messenger where there are 300,000 active chatbots. Here are five ways to use Facebook chatbots in your marketing:

Answer common customer questions.
Help customers with their product research.
Provide support during the purchase process. Explain things like payment options and how to make changes to your shopping cart.
Send urgent alerts through Facebook Messenger, more effective than an email that might not be read in time.
Provide personalized offers. Almost half of customers say they have made an impulse purchase after receiving personalized offers.

To do: Read eight tips for creating the perfect chatbot on the excellent infographic titled “A Small Business Guide to Facebook Chatbots,” created by Headway Capital. When it opens, click on the infographic to make it bigger.

#Chatbots #Facebook

3. Carve a Pumpkin for TV Publicity

Former TV producer Shawne Duperon says one of the best ways to get your company on TV this time of year is to have a pumpkin carving contest. Tell employees to carve the call letters of one local TV station on their pumpkins. The more creative, the better.

Call the same station you’ve chosen and let them know what you’re doing. You might even ask if one of their on-air personalities can judge it. If they can’t send a judge, they might be able to at least send a camera crew and a reporter.

Consider taking several of the best pumpkins to the station to make their job easy.

To do: Buy the electronic transcript of an hour-long interview with Shawne and learn how to identify the all-knowing, all-powerful “Queen Bee” inside every TV newsroom. This is the person who decides what gets covered and what doesn’t. She also explains how to sound cool by talking the language of the newsroom, the formula for the perfect story idea, and the best time of day to call. Publicity Hound Tom Graber used her tips and got three media hits in only two days, including an in-studio interview on a TV station in Milwaukee. Learn how you can do it too. Order the transcript How to Get on the Local TV News Tomorrow.

#TVPublicity #GetonTV

4. Hound Video of the Week

When you see all the things this Jack Russell does around the house to keep it tidy and clean, you’ll want one. But only after you stop laughing. I roared when I got to the 1:15 mark.

[Tweet “#PublicityTips — How to Use Trade Shows for Publicity #TradeShowPR”]