What We Learned at ShowPro 2017 – Marketing Madness
By Alex Batty, MHI Marketing Communications Coordinator |@mhi_alex
Last week we had ShowPro for ProMat 2017 and Space Draw for MODEX 2018. The MHI marketing team went down to help with ShowPro, and as a bonus, we got to take in a bunch of the great content on marketing. We got to go to Atlanta (the furthest south I’ve ever been), eat some tasty food (#LobsterTacos), but most importantly we learned some really cool stuff at ShowPro.
Now the day was packed, so there’s no way I could actually talk about all the stuff I learned. These are just the highlights. Top-level stuff. I took so many notes y’all.
Strategic Plan
Just like many businesses create a strategic plan to guide their business actions throughout the year, marketing needs a strategic plan as well. Rather than playing catch-up all the time and reacting to events as they happen, a strategic plan with large touchstone pieces can help keep messaging on target and create a cohesive scheme. As specialty pieces are requested by different departments, they are accommodated, but are simply reworked and retargeted parts of the touchstone pieces, rather than creating brand new, and potentially divergent, pieces of material. All content produces supports the strategic plan.
Create Purposeful Content
Sometimes we get so caught up creating and marketing content that we forget to check the purpose. How many times are we posting things or pushing things just because that’s the way we’ve always done it?
When looking at a piece of content (or even a whole line of content) ask yourself, “If we stopped, would anyone notice?” If the answer is no, or only the CEO, you might need to either rework the content, or just stop producing it entirely and focus on the content that drives the company.
When you are creating new content, it’s a good idea to tell a story. People don’t buy a product, they buy an experience. One strategy is to start by filling in these blanks:
When _________ I want to ________ so I can _______.
If you focus on the problem the customer needs to solve rather than the product you are pushing, the customer has that much more potential to find a connection to the product.
ShowPro was full of so much good stuff in preparation for ProMat 2017. ProMat 2017 will include over 850 exhibits from leading solution providers covering 350,000 square feet and two show floors. ProMat exhibits will represent all segments of the material handling and logistics industry, from traditional, manual equipment to computerized, automated systems and software.
Complete information on ProMat including complimentary show and educational session registration can be found online at ProMatShow.com.
