It's All About the Message

Let's say you've just spent the last 18 months developing an awesome new cleantech technology. You have packaged this technology into a new product and are ready to start earning revenues. How do you communicate the value and benefits of your new product to the market?

The key to meeting your business goals is to formulate a compelling, high-impact marketing message that will hook and engage your target market. Your company’s messaging platform needs to demonstrate that your product or service uniquely addresses the specific "pain points" of your target market.

Let's assume you've done your homework and built the right message for your product. For instance: "Inexpensive, biodegradable bottles that you can throw away without harming the environment." The next step is to take this message and create a set of marketing materials that convey this message as its dominant theme.

Perhaps easier said than done, this is the essence of what a marketing copywriter does. (BTW – an experienced marketing writer can also formulate the message itself and create an internal positioning statement to share within the company.) All of your marketing materials – from the product tagline to website content, PRs, brochures, white papers and everything in between – should be built around this message.

The key message can be highlighted in different ways to take advantage of the respective medium. Here are a few examples:

• Website - feature a graphic banner illustrating the disposable nature of your batteries
• Press Release - the headline of your PR would highlight the message (e.g., "Acme's Biodegradable Bottles Make it Easy and Inexpensive to Protect the Environment")
• Trade shows – Signs, rollups and posters presenting the message in bullet forma
• Brochure – Emphasize the message in the title and subtitles of the product brochure

Be sure to drill your message home wherever you can. It's OK to be repetitive across different media. Most potential customers are going to skim – not read – and you want to be sure to catch their eye. Remember – repetition is good when it comes to marketing – think about TV commercials. Getting the message right and communicating it in the most effective and consistent way across multiple media is the key to consistent marketing that drives results.

Using Creativity to Maximize Your Trade Show ROI

Those of us who work in or with corporate marcom departments know that the first six months of each year are trade show season. Whether it be Mobile World Congress, CeBIT, InfoSecurity or any other of the dozens "must exhibit" events, companies will spend huge amounts of energy and budget on these important industry showcases. Naturally, if you’re going to allocate the resources, you will definitely want to maximize your ROI in terms of sales leads and PR exposure.

Without discounting the role of the marcom writer in this effort (this is a copywriting blog after all), the writer’s contribution here is marginal when it comes to the actual success or failure of the show. Concept and design are the keys to success – your booth has got to stand out from the hundreds of others. Unless you're a Microsoft, budget limitations mean you can't be bigger or louder than the giants, so you've got to be smarter and more creative.

Here's a great example from an Internet security company I worked for a number of years ago. We sold security appliances and our standard modus operandi for major trade shows was to set up a booth with a few demo stations (each one demoing a different appliance), a plasma screen with the latest product video, and an attractive back wall with images of our appliances and posters listing the benefits for our enterprise and SMB customers. Naturally, we also had stands bursting at the seams with our latest collaterals.

While this was all done very professionally, in terms of concept it was no different from our competitors who had much larger budgets – i.e., they had larger booths, more advantageous hall locations, and better giveaways. Suffice it to say we never really came away with the traffic, leads and PR value that we had hoped for.

Then, one year we decided to be different. Instead of the product-oriented, "hard sell" approach, we turned our booth into an "Internet threats museum" which provided a graphic timeline, examples and descriptions of the different types of security threats discovered in the 12 months since the last trade show. Demo stations showing how the various threats actually work were manned by our security researchers, rather than salespersons. At the end of the "tour" each visitor received a white paper with in-depth explanations of the year's major security trends, rather than a product brochure. The feedback we received was tremendous, with customers and prospects applauding us for actually providing them with educational value, and then asking us (drum roll, please) how we solve these types of challenges.

So, when you start thinking about your next big trade show, don't be afraid to be different. Give your potential customers an experience they will remember and value. They will reward you with results.

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