The secret of success

Hello everyone. Now I don't mind telling you that this week I am doing my best to fight off a nasty cold. Realistically, all I am actually doing is hoping really hard that I don't start to feel worse, because all of the vitamin C in the world won't do you any good when your unwell 18 month old soon keeps sneezing in your face whilst simultaneously refusing to eat his breakfast.

None the less, hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go, and this week I took myself along to the ECommerce Expo at Earls Court. It's a modest little show where people can still hear themselves think whilst being cornered by pretty girls in shoelace skirts asking them if they'd like to win a competition. My thoughts on pretty girls at trade shows can be seen in an older blog post, so feel free to look it up.

Incidentally - I managed to win the competition before I even left the show! Three months free web hosting! Seriously - did anyone who entered NOT win the prize. There is no prize - they're offering 3 months free as an introduction so long as you sign up for a minimal 24 month contract (probably - I really didn't bother to go and find out). Come on people, if there is a prize to be won then let someone win it without any small print, OK?

Now at one point I stopped at a stand that were giving away a particularly popular piece of merchandise. Now I won't say who they were or what the gift was, because I don't want to embarrass them, but something interesting happened.

"TELL US MORE PAUL!" you say. Alright then, I will. The person working on the stand said that the giveaway in question was proving unbelievably successful - they simply could not get rid of them quickly enough. Now I was delighted - mainly because it was me who sold them the merchandise in the first place, but it dawned on me that this person's enthusiasm may well have been misplaced.

Think about it. He said that the giveaway was proving successful. But what exactly does that mean? Surely if you have a nice and unusual gift that people can help themselves to for free, then that's exactly what they will do. They'll grab it, ask you what it does, then put it in their bag and move on. That's not really success is it? Anyone with less than a minute's sales training can give away quality merchandise for free.

So what other means does this company have to measure that success? Well if they're smart, they'll ask all of the new inbound enquiries over the next 6 months where they heard of the company. Sure, that could work, but then sometimes sales people will forget to ask and on more than one occasion, the person calling won't remember the answer anyway, and will default to "finding them on the Internet".

Well how about this? Do you remember the competition idea that wound me up? Of course you do, I mean it's not like you stopped reading this blog half way through and then picked it up several days later. Here was a company disguising a special offer as a prize, and on the other side, a company giving away a form of prize but with no special offer. Do you see where I'm going with this? OK, let me help you along.

How about a promotion where anyone who presents their giveaway gets a special offer? It can be something incredibly easy like printing a reference code on the gift, so when people use it, you'll know EXACTLY where that lead came from. Or you can make it more fun, like giving away a cuddly toy and asking people to mail in photos of them and the toy together. There really is a lot of room for new ideas here.

This has to be good news for the marketing people - it's an opportunity to show a tangible link between the merchandise you use at trade shows and the amount of additional enquiries that come in to the company. Ultimately, we're talking about more sales, and that's the most important measure of success that there is.

We can help you do this - it's not rocket science, but it is incredible to me how many people seem to pass up on a very inexpensive opportunity. If you're going to use promotional merchandise, make sure you're using it properly.