BRAND SECRETS AND STRATEGIES

PODCAST #165

Hello and thank you for joining us today. This is the Brand Secrets and Strategies Podcast #165

Welcome to the Brand Secrets and Strategies podcast where the focus is on empowering brands and raising the bar.

I’m your host Dan Lohman. This weekly show is dedicated to getting your brand on the shelf and keeping it there.

Get ready to learn actionable insights and strategic solutions to grow your brand and save you valuable time and money.

LETS ROLL UP OUR SLEEVES AND GET STARTED!

It's that time again to be thinking about Expo West. What are your strategies to be successful? How do you capture the attention of various retailers and bloggers and other people that are going to help your brand stand out? How do you differentiate yourself in a crowded category? That's what we're going to be talking about today.

As always, I want to thank you for listening. This show is about you and it's for you. In appreciation for your time and for listening, I want to remind you that there's a free downloadable guide for you. At the end of every podcast episode. I always include one, easy to download, quick to digest strategy that you can inside up and make your own. One that you can use to grow sustainable sales with and compete more effectively with. And don't forget to go back and listen to prior episodes where I'll be solving some of your most pressing bottlenecks. Strategies that I'll be talking with leading CEOs and thought leaders in our industry, strategies that are validated and the strategies that they use to grow their business.

You're going to want to check them out. If you like the show, subscribe, share with a friend and leave a review. On these shorter episodes. There's a YouTube component where I may share visuals about what I'm talking about, so you'll want to check out the YouTube videos as well. If you want more of this brand-building content, be sure to subscribe and smash the light bell so you'd be the first to get new business building insights as soon as they become available.

Welcome. Today I want to talk about Expo West. This is one of the greatest opportunities that you have to introduce your brand to new retailers, new fans, new bloggers, other people in the industry. The point is this, this is your opportunity to showcase your brand and you need to be ready. The reason I wanted to put this show together is that a lot of brands aren't.

I've been going to trade shows for many, many years, throughout most of my career. It amazes me how many brands aren't ready to take advantage of each and every selling opportunity, and that's what this is about. Trade shows were originally designed to be able to help you sell your brand or get your brand onto a retailer shelf. With that in mind, I'm going to break this conversation into two different parts. One for the brands and then two for the retailers. From the brand perspective, this is your opportunity to showcase your brand. Remember, your brand has your name on it. This is where you need to make sure that everyone on your sales team communicates in lockstep with the same passion, enthusiasm as you, the founder. This is where you need to make sure that everything looks perfect and that you're ready to present your brand and put it in the best light.

This is where you need to make sure you have all the sales collateral, business cards, everything ready to be able to hand to consumers and potential buyers, potential retailers. What I mean by this is this. A lot of times I'll go to a booth and I'll ask for a way to follow up with a brand. And a lot of times they'll tell me, "Well, I don't have any more business cards, I already ran out." I get that on the first day of the expo. This is something you don't want to do. Remember, you never get a second chance at a first impression. If I want to learn more about your brand as a blogger, as a retailer, as a potential consumer, you need to do everything in your power to help me connect with your brand, to help me get to know everything I can about your brand so I can celebrate it with my friends and family after I take it home.

The next thing that brands don't do very well is they don't follow up. What I mean by that is a lot of times the brands don't have a way to keep track of who's been to their booth. Now, I know that some of the brands have the opportunity to scan the app and say, "This brand showed up at my booth, et cetera." Or this person, that's not enough. You need to get their business card from the person that visits your booth. You need to make sure that you have their contact information. Write notes about what did you discuss, what was important to them, what are the key questions that they asked you? These are things that you can use in your marketing collateral down the road or more importantly, these are the key points you need to address when you get back in touch with him.

Keep all that information, keep careful notes. Make sure everyone on your team knows how to do this and make sure that you become an expert in capturing any information that anyone asks you. Make sure that everyone on your team goes out of the way to capture this information and share it with your team after the Expo's over. And then have a strategy to follow up. Don't wait a month or two or three months, et cetera. I know I'm guilty of that. I've done that in the past. You don't want to do this, huge mistake. Remember people getting back from Expo are going to remember you only for a short amount of time. You need to remain top of mind with them. My point is this, you've got to get back in front of them as soon as possible. And one of the best ways to do that, to jar their memory and remind them of the conversation they had with you is to share something relevant about their conversation, the conversation that they had with you while they were in front of your booth.

Now, once you capture this information, the next thing you need to be thinking about is a strategy to follow up with them after you follow up with them the first time. Remember, a lot of people when they come back from Expo, their mailboxes are going to be completely full and they may miss your email because they may not recognize the email address. So when you reach out right away, make sure you've got a strategy to follow up with them in a week or two after that. The reason this is so critically important is that a lot of times, a lot of people overlook those emails, not knowing where they come from. Or perhaps they may be so overwhelmed by all the emails in their inbox. Don't allow this opportunity to slip by you. Spend a lot of money to exhibit your product at Expo West. This is your opportunity to capitalize on that investment, to be able to maximize each and every opportunity to hopefully get your product on more store shelves and into the hands of more shoppers.

One of the other things that you should be thinking about is how do you build a community beyond traditional retail, beyond your Expo booth? This is a strategy I recommend to all brands. As you're capturing that information, put those people on your email list, have a newsletter or something where you're teaching people a little bit more about your brand or that unique value proposition that your brand addresses. Use this as an opportunity to educate people. Use this as an opportunity to invite them to become part of your loyal community. As you develop your community and build awareness around your brand, these relationships are going to help you. Remember, a retailer might not put your product on the shelf today, but if you've got that relationship with them, then down the road they might be reaching out to you. Statistically, most people say that it takes seven times to get in front of someone before they make a buying decision.

Leverage each and every opportunity to remind the retailer what's unique about your product. More importantly, what's unique about the customer that buys your product in their store. And when your customer's in their store, what are some of the other products that your customers choose? Why did they choose those products, et cetera? You never want to bad mouth your competition, but you do want to make sure that you always highlight why your product's better than other products out there. Again, a tremendous opportunity for you to go beyond any of the sales collateral, the samples, anything that you share in your booth. One of the things I recommend is that you find a way to be disruptive. To show more energy or have more energy in your booth than other brands. It's boring to walk by a booth and see the people sitting back in their chairs having a personal conversation amongst themselves, ignoring the people in front of you.

Remember you spent a lot of money, and a lot of time to get there. This is your opportunity to engage people. Be standing out in front of your booth, stop people as they go by. Ask them relevant questions. Ask them questions that they're going to want to stop and think about that are going to drive them towards your booth, that is going to want to encourage them to ask more questions about your brand and why your brand is unique.

Now, from the retailer perspective, before you think about going to Expo, walk your store, take a good hard look at all the different brands on your shelves and be thinking about where the gaps are. Take a look at your sales data. Where are the categories that are up or down or what are the categories that need help? Think about the consumers that shop those categories specifically, and then think about the brands that might address them.

So as you're putting together your list, your goals or your objectives for the trade show. Think about the customers that you're trying to drive in your stores. And then as you're walking those booths, think about their brands that might help you drive those customers, drive more of those customers in your store. Think about those brands that are going to give you a significant competitive advantage in your market. Remember the three things every retailer is after, more traffic in their stores, a reasonable profit in the category, and a significant competitive advantage. Think about answering or addressing those three points as you walk the show floor. As you're talking to brand leaders, think about creative ways that a brand might be able to partner with another brand or partner with you to help drive traffic in their store. One of the questions you need to be thinking about is what is this brand's social media presence?

What is their presence beyond traditional retail? If you can tap into that audience and then drive that audience in your store, that's a win-win for both you and the brand. And the best part about this is this is where you develop a partnership where you're able to collaborate, on different promotional strategies that are going to be a win-win for both you and the brand. That is going to give you a significant competitive advantage. Think about it. Most of your retail competitors are simply going to be walking the show floor, taking a few samples, maybe grabbing a business card, grabbing some collateral. That's about the extent of it. This is your opportunity to go above and beyond. This is your opportunity to get to know those brands that you think you can develop a strategic relationship with. This is the unique opportunity that you have to develop a strategic relationship with their brands at the trade show.

This is your opportunity to get to know more about the founder, so as you're promoting your product, instead of just saying, "Hey, I've got a great product for sale." In your weekly flyer and online, or however you do it. Now you can talk a little bit about the brand, the origin of the brand, why that brand exists, what unique problem that brand solves, what their solution is, and if you can leverage that in your marketing strategy and your marketing collateral and as you're working with your customers, that's going to help differentiate you from your competition. Remember, every retailer is fighting for the same customer. Anything that you can do to stand out in your crowded market and help those customers understand why your brand is better. Think about this. Customers today have unlimited choices as to where they shop, as to what products they buy, and where they spend their hard-earned money.

Anything that you can do to help that customer view you as being the optimum choice to come in again and again to get the products that they need. That's a win for you. At the end of the day, this is what every retailer is striving for and anything that you can do to leverage your relationship that you have with the brands that you talk to at Expo, that's going to give you a significant competitive advantage in your market. And better yet. This is going to give you a relationship with that brand so as that brand grows and gets bigger and starts to thrive, you can then say, "I was the first retailer to bring that brand to market." Or perhaps that brand because of their special relationship with you might give you first crack at a new item in the market. You can then be first to market with that item and again, it gives you a competitive advantage.

Something your competitors are overlooking or not doing. This is especially important when you're competing against big retailers. Remember, big retailers can adopt new products very quickly. If you can adopt a new product and get it on your shelf right away, that's going to be a huge win for you. For example, if you can put an innovative plant-based product on your store shelf within a matter of a couple of weeks, it may take months for the big retailer to be able to get that product in distribution. This is your opportunity to capture those sales and stand out in the crowded market. This is your opportunity to defend against mass leverage. This is something that I highly recommend every retailer be thinking about. I hope you found this valuable. The question of today is what strategies are you going to use or leverage at Expo West? What strategies are you going to use to help get your products on more store shells and in the hands of more shoppers?

Leave your comment below and if you've got additional questions, things you want me to answer in this podcast or the YouTube channel, please let me know. Today's free downloadable guide for you is my new item essential checklist. This is something that you need when you go to Expo. The reason this is important are these are the key things you need to be thinking about both as a brand and as a retailer. These are the things that you need to be doing to differentiate your brand and your store from your competition. I'll be certain to put a link to it in the podcast show notes and on the podcast webpage, and you can get there by going to brandsecretsandstrategies.com/session165 thank you for listening and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.

Thanks again for joining us today. Make sure to stop over at brandsecretsandstrategies.com for the show notes along with more great brand building articles and resources. Check out my free course Turnkey Sales Story Strategies, your roadmap to success. You can find that on my website or at TurnkeySalesStoryStrategies.com/growsales. Please subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends and colleagues.

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Until next time, this is Dan Lohman with Brand Secrets and Strategies where the focus is on empowering brands and raising the bar.