Brand Fortress HQ: Amazon FBA Success Strategies

062: Tactic Tuesdays: The Power of Face to Face Marketing

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Ever wondered how face-to-face marketing can catapult your brand beyond the constraints of online sales platforms? Join us as we unravel the strategic shift from Amazon’s ad-heavy sales model to the dynamic realm of trade shows. With insights from our guests, Mike and Matt, we'll guide you through their transformative experience at a major trade show, targeting pool professionals and builders. Discover how an interactive booth experience, like the "Pool Olympics," can captivate audiences and create lasting brand impressions.

In our discussion, we move through the lessons learned from engaging directly with industry pros. From the critical choice of booth location on a main aisle to creative promotional strategies using QR codes, we’ll share the nuances of effective trade show tactics. Uncover the importance of product durability and attractive warranties that can take attendees by surprise and ensure your brand stands out. Learn why distinct QR codes are key to better tracking and how they can inform your future marketing decisions.

Finally, we tackle the financial intricacies of trade show participation. Explore how a customizable backlit booth sourced from an overseas manufacturer can provide both flexibility and cost efficiency. We also discuss innovative ways to gather contact details using tools like Popple and how to maintain engagement through product giveaways. Whether you’re venturing into trade shows for the first time or seeking to refine your strategy, this episode provides actionable insights to maximize your brand's presence and market penetration.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome everyone to the Brand Fortress HQ Tactics Tuesday. This is our podcast episode where we talk about different tactics for building brands on Amazon and beyond. Today we have a really interesting episode that I'm excited to bring to you guys about the power of face-to-face marketing. We think a lot selling on Amazon and e-commerce about ads on Amazon and ads on other platforms and TikTok and social media, but there's a lot of power in just being able to talk to people face-to-face, to interact directly with people around your brand. And today Mike and Matt are going to share a pretty unique experience that they had of being at a trade show that was within their target market, what that looked like, what they learned from it.

Speaker 1:

We've talked a little bit on previous episodes what that setup to the trade show looked like, which I think is also very important. So I encourage listeners to go back and listen to those, because there's a lot of work and planning that went into that trade show before you guys even started. But with that, I guess Mike, I'll turn it over to you on. Maybe start with just at a high level, or if you can kind of recap what got you interested in the trade show and at a high level. You know what was some of the prep that you did to be successful at the trade show Sure.

Speaker 2:

So the first thing was is that the decision to do the trade show was very much prompted by the, I guess the idea that we needed to move into other territory outside of Amazon in order to not only. We've been in a position where a large portion of our sales on Amazon are now all ad-based, which obviously is very expensive these days, since ad costs on Amazon are way more than they used to be. So from my perspective, the only way that we really kind of turn that trend around a little bit on Amazon and begin to move toward a higher percentage of sales coming from organic, which obviously is from ranking then is to get more brand exposure off platform so that our brand becomes something that people are actually searching for on Amazon because they heard about us someplace else. We all know the more that your brand is being searched on Amazon in reference to or in combination with the key phrases and terms and products that you sell, the more likely you start moving up in the rankings on Amazon just by virtue of the fact that Amazon expects you're going to get more conversions out of that because people are looking for you, so there's a lot of value there. Also, amazon pays attention to how Google is ranking you and things of that nature. So there's a lot of off-platform stuff that can affect the Amazon algorithm in terms of ranking. So the other thing was is that we know that our market on Amazon is mostly residential users. We do sell to some commercial users on Amazon, but mostly it's going to be residential.

Speaker 2:

We recognized not too long ago that it made a lot of sense for us to move into the commercial market with our products. Now, for anybody who doesn't know, who hasn't maybe listened to previous episodes, we sell a super high quality like premium grade pool cleaning tools, so poles and nets and brushes, things like that. Essentially they are pro grade, but we have sold to primarily the residential market ever since we started about 10 years ago. What became obvious was if we're going to sell a pro grade unit, why don't we start selling it to the actual pros that would also use it Because they're going to buy in bulk? There's a lot of things about our warranty that makes sense for a commercial market, because instead of unlimited free replacement, it's unlimited 50% off replacement and so we actually make money on those replacements. So it's kind of like a consumable.

Speaker 2:

And at that point it became clear okay, if we're going to move into the pro market, then how do we get there? Like, what are the ways that we get our brand in front of those individuals that are the buyers for these companies, whether they're pool cleaning pros, whether they're pool builders or developers, things of that nature? And it just became obvious the trade show made a lot of sense for us to, for us to dip our toe in, and really not even dip our toe in, but, like, if we're going to do it, then let's go big at it, right? So we went to one of the biggest trade shows in the U? S for pool professionals and pool builders and kind of that's. That was the road to, you know, getting in there and making that decision.

Speaker 1:

Okay, yeah, and I think that that you know, a key takeaway there that I have is is that, yes, expanding off Amazon, but also looking at how can you take that same product into a little bit different customer segments, which I think is really important there. So I know, you know, and we talked again about a little bit about it on a different episode but one of the things that you were implementing in order to, you know, go beyond just hey, here's a booth, here's some information. Investing in this, you really have to have something that's more interactive, that's going to catch people's attention, and that type of stuff. And you had, you know, a booth set up around the pool, olympics, and some activities and that type of stuff. Can you give us a quick overview of what those activities were and how you got people engaged at the, at your booth, sure, so yeah it, we.

Speaker 2:

I've never done a trade show. I've been to some, but I've never done one myself, so it wasn't something that I had a lot of experience in, but it became. I just thought it made perfect sense that a lot of the booths that I have seen at trade shows in the past were simply we're here, products. You know, we've got a little video running and I'm sitting at my booth waiting for somebody to stop by my booth and then I'll tell them about my product if they happen to show up right. And so for a lot of you know, businesses that do trade shows, I feel like they don't get a lot of traffic to their booth because they don't really do anything that would encourage people to show up there, and so I wanted to do something different. I wanted to do something not only that I thought would draw people to the booth, but also that we could get video of and get pictures of, and get up on social media and utilize that in other ways. So we decided that we wanted to have some sort of a competition at the booth. We thought that that would drum up more activity. People would show up at the booth, people would see people at the booth, and so that would draw others to the booth, and then the question was okay, well, what does that look like? What are we going to do? So for us, the thing that made the most sense was creating this competition, which was based around our actual products, so that we could get our products into the hands of the users that we felt like we wanted to sell to, so that they could feel this you know, the durability of the units, our warranty. One of the things that's really useful for a pool pro with regards to our warranty is that not only is it unlimited 50% off replacement which nobody else in the category is even offering a warranty to commercial users, much less, you know, at a discounted rate. You know of that nature but also that the units that we sell are very modular. So instead of when their pool rake dies and they need a new one, with everybody else, they got to go out and basically pay the standard wholesale rate for that product and to replace it because there's no warranty. With us, not only is it 50% off, but instead of replacing the entire rake, they can replace the handle or the rim or the net, you know. So it's much less expensive, but part of that that we needed to really drive home in terms of the message was not only is it inexpensive, but it's easy to do. It's easy to actually replace the handle or replace the net or something, because time is money for these guys, right.

Speaker 2:

So what we did was part of the competition was a disassembly and reassembly station. So we had a table set up, we had three of our products. We had our brush, our net and a shortened version of our pool pole sitting on this front table, and the idea behind the competition was you disassemble, completely disassemble the unit and completely reassemble the unit and we'll time you, and whoever gets the best time on any given day will win that item. So if you were the best on the pool net, you win a pool net. If you were best in a pool pool, you win a pool pool. We also had a couple of strength stations, which was inclined pushups and inverted rows for individuals that maybe are a little bit more fitness oriented and thought maybe they could, you know, break out a bunch of push-ups. And the idea behind that was we had it set up so that our pool poles were the stands, so the stands for the push-up, you know section, and the inverted rows were our pool pole. The idea was it was stressing the locking mechanism on our pool pool, so every time somebody did another push-up, they were stressing that locking mechanism, so we were able to show the durability of the unit.

Speaker 2:

Honestly, we had a lot of interest. We had a lot of people show up at the booth and actually compete in the competition. We had people come back numerous times to improve their times. We saw a lot of people who would see people at the booth and that would draw them to the booth like, hey, what's going on here? But, honestly, the biggest benefit to it was once people got it in their hands and they were able to see so we had.

Speaker 2:

We literally thought so I did a disassembly and reassembly of all of our tools and it looked like okay, yeah, pretty much everybody should be able to do this in three minutes. You know, if they've never seen the product, they've never done it before. Like, three minutes is a good time, right, I didn't want to make it too much shorter than that because I wanted them to be successful, right? Like the idea was hey, this is easy, so I wanted them to succeed, but we didn't want to, you know, make it too, you know, too long either. So three minutes was it.

Speaker 2:

We found that we had a bunch of people who managed to fully disassemble and reassemble all of the units in as little as like 20 seconds. Wow, and and on one I think the minimum was like 45 seconds versus what I thought like two to three minutes. Right. But the nice thing about that was then we could tell people when they came up to the booth and they're and we're talking about the product, we can say look, we had a 15 year old kid who fully disassembled and reassembled this net in like 30 seconds.

Speaker 2:

So if you need to do this out in the field and you got to swap out a handle, you can re. You could put every piece on this unit, like fully disassemble it and reassemble it in 45 seconds. So if you've got to just do a handle, imagine how quickly you could be back on the job If you just keep handles, you know, keep the individual parts in the truck, so that then you're just back to work, right. So it was really a very experiential way for us to show them how easy it is to replace those parts. And then also, obviously, what is the cost to do so, like hey, it's 50% off on the net or a handle or whatever that is. So it actually worked out really well and we had a lot of people who are very interested in it and it taught us a lot, because we got to have a lot of conversations with pool pros and so we learned a great deal from having those conversations with people.

Speaker 3:

Okay, it people. It was such a brilliant. I mean everything was so well orchestrated. I mean I was part of the conversations that we all had before the trade show happened, months before the trade show happened, and then I had the opportunity to be at the trade show and watch it all unfold. And I mean all of the things that Mike said that I think that were in his head as potential benefits of doing this Pull Olympics. But I got to see it firsthand. And what happened to this kid? This 15-year-old kid came back.

Speaker 3:

I mean he probably all in all spent six hours at our booth over the course of a couple of days because he was so competitive and this is a predominantly male industry and I think that males are predominantly more competitive than females are and I mean people would go and get their friends and bring hey, let's see if you can do more pushups than me. Or hey, let's see if you can put this together. We had an uncle and a nephew that were razzing each other but, like Mike said, every time we had some guys there that were competing against each other, we'd have 10 more people that would come up to see what was going on because of the ruckus and one of the things that we didn't do that I think was a little bit of a miss is they most booths or most trade shows have that scanning tool where you can scan someone's their lanyard and then get their contact information. We didn't do that but like there are so many people that came up to watch that I had conversations with that didn't necessarily want to compete, that were interested in what we had to say but didn't stop for very long, if I, if we had some sort of a tool or we could have scanned, we could have got a bunch more people on the list. So I think it could have been a little bit more successful in that regard. But I mean, the whole thing went just to plan and I think it went even better to plan based on how competitive, how much of a competitive nature, the competition was and then how many people came as a result of not only the competitive part of it but also just to see what the ruckus was. It was brilliant and I was honored to be a part of it and we learned so many lessons for the next trade show. And that was I was honored to be a part of it and, like I, we learned so many lessons for the next trade show and that was the other thing is that we it was successful enough to where trade shows are going to become part of part of getting in front of those pool pros.

Speaker 3:

And one more thing I want to add. You know I'm still kind of fairly new to the pro-tough family and being able to have those conversations with the pool pros. I think all of this starts with having a better product or having a good product, because that, you know, being able to have that conversation with the pool pro and show him and have him be able to handle the tools that are more durable very easily identifiable as more durable than the tools that they're using but then having conversations with them about the warranty, like I can't, I can't count. I lost count of the number of pool pros that looked at me after I told them about 50, that 50% off unlimited replacement warranty, and they asked me what the catch was. Like Mike said, there's nobody in the industry that does that.

Speaker 3:

The pool, the tools are better. In general, we offer a warranty. Like it's literally a no brainer. And that's what I learned by being face to face with these pool professionals and I don't think that we would have learned that in the same way if we were just having phone calls or emails with those pool professionals. So, yeah, it was, it was, it was great.

Speaker 1:

Well, and Matt, you talked a little bit about lessons learned and I'd love to hear from both of you guys, you know, based on this experience, you know, what are maybe a couple you know what are maybe a couple.

Speaker 2:

You know two to three of those lessons learned that are on your guys's list for next time. So I'll say that one of the lessons that we learned that I think is going to be really critical is location. We were I don't even want to say lucky enough. Honestly, this is a God thing as far as I'm concerned, because we were in. We were placed in a booth because we were late to the game, you know, getting ourselves registered for the trade show. We were in a booth that was way back off in a corner and our original plan because we knew that was going to be problematic, our original plan was that we would have people at least one person at all times, walking the trade show with essentially a billboard on their back, you know, like with with a t-shirt or polo advertising the competition and the unlimited 50% off replacement warranty and whatnot, and the booth number just to get people back there and a QR code that they could scan, which would give them the map and would direct them to where we were exactly. We ended up not really having to do that because, I don't know, a month before the trade show, I happened to jump in to check on something I don't even remember what it was it was something related to the map of the trade show and recognized there was an opening for a booth and it wasn't even technically an opening, it was held by somebody, but it was getting pretty close and so I asked Pam and just said, hey, would you investigate this? You know, like, because this would be a really good place placing for us. Turned out they weren't going to come, so we got their boot and we ended up on a main aisle, so we got a lot of traffic just rolling by our booth. But here's the thing we learned that that location and I mean everybody knows location, location, location, right, like it's important. It's not as if we didn't already know that going in. But what we did discover was if your booth is interesting, like if there's something going on there that draws people's eyes and draws their attention, and you have good location, you will get people coming into the booth without having to walk out into the aisle and drag people in. They will just show up, naturally. So one of the things that we will absolutely do going forward is make sure that we are on some sort of a main aisle that we know we're going to be able to get traffic, you know, just naturally walking by our booth. So as long as we're interesting enough that we'll get people coming in. So that was one thing.

Speaker 2:

Another thing is we had QR codes everywhere and the QR codes mainly were they took them to a landing page. On that landing page they could register for the competition and a few other things. There was information about the company and I think that was really valuable. We had people scanning. We had a little in fact I've got one in my pocket because we have some extra ones. We did these little mint tins which basically became our business card. So anytime somebody was at the booth and we wanted to send them away with something, we would just give them this. There's like a hundred little mini mints in this thing. It's super tiny, easy to pop in your pocket, but there's a QR code on it that they can scan and would take them to the landing page. And of course, we can change that If you do that. By the way, if you use QR codes, make sure that you're set up in a way that you can change where they go after the trade show, so that during the trade show it can go to a trade show specific landing page. After the trade show, you can send them to the homepage or send them wherever it is that you want them to go.

Speaker 2:

But we had QR codes everywhere for people to scan. And one of the things that we didn't do and I would highly recommend is, if you're going to do that, because we put them on coffee cups. So we had coffee at the booth. We had QR codes on the coffee cup so that as you're walking around, you know it was advertising, the pool, olympics and our booth number and you could. You know, if you want to tell somebody about it, you could just hand them the cup and they could scan the QR code, give them directions back to our booth. But we did. We use the same QR code on everything because it all went to the same place. Yep, bad idea, because now we don't know which which items got the most scans.

Speaker 1:

You know like where people actually come from the coffee cups, or they come from the mince, or do they come?

Speaker 2:

from the future trade show, everything will have its own QR code so we can track that. But it was very effective. We had a lot of scans on those QR codes and so it did work quite well. So that would definitely be a takeaway. That, I think, was a valuable one. There's plenty of other ones, but, matt, I don't know if you want to jump in there and talk about some of the other stuff.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean I think the other one that we put a lot of work into that I think was important. Now it does add a considerable cost but I think and I did see examples of people that didn't do this Our booth was really cool, like it was backlit, it was big, I think having a good booth. I did go walk the floor a couple of times and I literally saw a Chinese manufacturer that had a folding table that didn't even have a tablecloth. It said exhibitor. On the back, like that was their label, was just exhibitor.

Speaker 3:

And to be honest, I'm not a pool professional, so like I don't even know what they were selling, I have no idea what was on the table. So like I think, investing in I think Mike's going to talk a little bit about overall budget, of what it costed, of the trade show in general, and I think the booth was probably a big part of that but I think it was super important and I think it legitimized the business as a whole. I think you know appearance and I mean first impressions are important and I think investing in having you know something like that, you know a real nice booth, that kind of sets people's mind at ease when they're coming up to you. But I think that is super important. So that was one of the things I learned, to be able to pass on to other people is you really have to invest in what that first impression looks like? I think that was another big thing that I learned as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, on the topic of the booth, first of all, I was really pleased with how the booth came out. But one of the things that when we were initially looking at it but one of the things that when we were initially looking at it, so we wanted a really good design we had a 10 by 20, basically two 10 by 10 slots. So we had a 10 by 20 booth and we needed that because one side was the show side and one side was the competition side and we needed that kind of division there. We decided fairly early on that we wanted it to be backlit. I thought that that was going to add a lot and if we had the right design, that that would help. And I will say, when we assembled this, it looked good even before we plugged it in, let's say. But once you backlit it it really drew your attention. So I would highly recommend a backlit booth.

Speaker 2:

But here's the thing we started looking at companies in the US that could do that for us and the cost was going to be about 15 grand for the booth and I was like first trade show, don't know how this is going to go. No way I'm investing that kind of money in a booth. What are our alternatives? So what we did, we went overseas. We went to Alibaba and look for who makes these things, because I knew the guys in the U? S weren't making them Like they were buying them from somebody.

Speaker 2:

So we went to a manufacturer overseas that makes these booths. We managed to buy the exact same booth for $3,000. And now we paid two grand to ship it into the U US because we needed it really fast. So we had to ship it by air. But we spent five grand total for a $15,000 booth and if we hadn't needed it so quickly and we could have sent it over with one of our product shipments or something in a container, you know, we probably would have gotten away for 3,500 bucks you know for for the whole thing. So I would you know, if you want to go with a backlit booth, definitely look overseas to to a good manufacturer in China, because the one that we used was actually terrific.

Speaker 1:

How did you do the design for the booth Like? Was that done from somebody separate from who you ordered it from? Or was that the like? Who did the design for it for?

Speaker 2:

you guys, they would have done it for us. We just I wasn't entirely confident, you know, in their design team. You know, maybe they would have done a great job, I don't know, but we actually had a designer that did it. Matt had somebody that he'd already worked with, and so we brought him in and he did the design. Took a little bit of work, but it came out really good.

Speaker 2:

Another recommendation that I would make this is something that we decided to do as we were walking through the process of design was we designed the booth so that it's configurable.

Speaker 2:

So the way that it comes is it basically comes in 10-foot lengths, like there's a 10-foot wall, another 10-foot back wall, and then we've got a 10-foot side wall and then you just kind of put them together and it comes with a fabric that you put on each side.

Speaker 2:

So what we did was because my thought when we started working through it was well, if we go to other trade shows, I don't know if the configuration of our booth is going to be the same. What if we decide we want to put the competition on this side because we're in position, or maybe we only get a 10 by 10 space? We can't afford, you know we can't do the 20 by 20. So we actually made the design so that everything was basically reversible and configurable, so we could set it up any way we wanted and it would still work. So that's one thing I would recommend with the design is make sure you design it with that in mind that if you're in a space where you want to shift the position of things, you can actually do that, so you don't have to repurchase new, you know graphics for the for the booth, okay.

Speaker 1:

And then you know since we're on budget, I mean you know if you're comfortable sharing kind of ballpark, by the time you paid for a booth and you know what it costs to be in the trade show and you know getting out there and all that type of stuff. If you're comfortable sharing kind of ballpark, all in, where did you end up?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, I'm plenty comfortable with that. We haven't done the full total yet, we're still putting those numbers together. But if we talk about some of the major expenses getting the booth space so we did two 10 by 10 booths Each 10 by 10, I think, was like 3 800. So we were in the area of 7, 7 500 bucks for the booth space itself, they will absolutely nickel and dime you on every single little thing that you need. So, like coffee, you know, for two days was like 700. You know like it was. It was just you and you.

Speaker 2:

If you've never done a trade show, when you you get those numbers back you're going to think that it's a joke. You're literally going to think it's a joke. It's not a joke, it's for real. You know, electricity, getting electricity to your booth was like I don't know. We paid another $300, $400 just to have electricity, you know. So there's all sorts of stuff like that, that the overall cost for the booth, for some of the additional items that we needed for the booth. You know the booth space, you know all of that it probably costs us. You know about. Well, let's see, we had five and some 12. I would say you're probably looking at like 15 grand for the, the booth itself, leasing the space for the booth and all of the incidentals and stuff at the trade show for the booth. You're probably in that 15 grand range. And again, that assumes that you went overseas to get your booth done, because that was a big savings for us.

Speaker 2:

Now, beyond that, we had travel expenses. We brought in six people, so we had airfare for six people. We had an Airbnb that we rented, you know, near the venue, for a week, essentially because we needed some prep days so that we could get things figured out. We wanted to have some decompression days afterward so the team could just kind of enjoy being together. And you know, if you're a remote team, that was actually a big benefit to us as well was just having this remote team come together and personally get a chance to actually interact and get to know each other better. So that was actually a significant value to us. It's hard to calculate that, but I would consider that a very big value of having done it. But I mean, you're probably, if you're bringing people from in the US from in the US versus overseas you know that'll lessen your transportation costs. But they weren't insignificant, you know. I would say a couple of grand total, you know, maybe, well, once you account for the Airbnb, probably a few grand for that. We had to rent, you know, vehicles. We needed two vehicles, so you've got rental costs there, no-transcript, and literally that's probably, you know, five grand. You know, in terms of the total, man, hours and things like that. So it wasn't cheap by any means, you know. Was it cheap However so I would say that rough estimates would suggest that the next trade show that we do will be no more than a third of the total expense that we put into this one, and maybe as much as a quarter because there will be so much less time invested, because we already know what we're doing.

Speaker 2:

We figured it out, we've got the template. You know, like there's a few things we want to change, but ultimately it went well. So there's not a lot of expense there. You know we already have the booth. You know we kind of understand the trade show game a little bit. So, in terms of minimizing our expenses there and things like that, so you know, in that sense the first trade show is going to cost you a fortune. Additional trade shows will be much less expensive than the first one. Once you kind of figure out what you're doing and you have a lot of those items. But remember, you have to transport them so and you have to store them in between trade show events. So bear in mind that that's also another expense that you're going to have to consider is how do we store it, how much is that going to cost, and how much is it going to cost to get it from here to the next trade show? You know, all of that's going to come into play.

Speaker 1:

So just kind of looking at those as like startup costs. Like when you do that first one, hey, you know there's going to be significant amount of like anything that new that you do, whether it's a new product or you know a new marketing channel. There's going to be startup costs and kind of that learning curve that you just have to plan for in advance.

Speaker 3:

Right, yeah, for now, the one thing that I think, first of all, the title of this podcast episode is the Power of Face-to-Face Marketing. We haven't really talked a lot about how this trade show, what the benefits of that were, but I think if you were to ask Mike and I will after I get done with the question what the ROI was, first of all, I think that the ROI is a little bit difficult to calculate because I don't think it's going to be a lot of, it's not going to be immediate, but from my standpoint, the like I said before having conversations with pool pros, which isn't something that I've had the opportunity to do up until now One thing like I've, I've done lots of research into the competitors on Amazon in this particular category, and our price point is a lot higher than most of the cheap Chinese competitors that are selling the same products. What I learned at the show is that the pool professional tools, which not a lot of them, are even sold on Amazon, at least not by the brand. Our prices are in line with a lot of those brands. So it's not the same apples to apples comparison in terms of price point, and that was an important lesson for me. But then also hearing people that use our tools and hearing their stories about how it saved them time. It saved them money. It gave me.

Speaker 3:

The one of my big tasks for the brand in the upcoming year is penetrating that pull pro market. And because I was able to have those face-to-face conversations with the people that actually use the tools. I, for me, it's not even a question of how is that? You know, it's not something that we've done before, it's not been an effort of the brand before, but you know how is that going to look, how are we going to have those conversations? How are those conversations going to be received? Because of those conversations that I had face to face with these pool professionals, I.

Speaker 3:

Now, for me, it's just a question of how fast can we get in front of every pool professional in the United States? Because what I learned is that our tools are a no brainer for most of those pool professionals. They're better quality than the tools they're using. Now there's a 50% off lifetime warranty replacement, like it is literally a no brainer and it doesn't. You don't have to go that far out to calculate what the return on investment of using the tools are. So for me, the knowledge of our tools are better than what they're using and it's going to save them money in the first couple of months, like, I am so confident that when I start picking up the phone to call these pool professionals, there's no way they're going to be able to tell me no, because I know what the benefit is going to be to them. So that really was the biggest benefit for me to having those face-to-face conversations, and I don't. It's going to be hard to calculate the ROI of what the show was because, like, I think it's exponential in my opinion.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think that that's probably the most valuable piece that came out of this is that, as an entire team, every single individual at the booth discovered exactly what Matt just said, and that is we knew what we thought about how our product would fit into the pro market, because it's not like we haven't sold to any pros. We have like 2000 pros on our email list. You know that buy our products and more than that who aren't on our email list. So it's not like we haven't sold to them but we haven't talked to them a lot, like it was kind of like the residential market is who we sell to. The pool pros just happen to show up Like they just filter in. The pool pros just happen to show up Like they just filter in.

Speaker 2:

We don't really, you know, and to our detriment, quite frankly, like that I didn't recognize that opportunity a lot sooner and was essentially forced into recognizing that opportunity. By the way, things are going on Amazon because of, you know, chinese sellers and stuff. That's. That's on me because, honestly, I should have figured that out a long time ago, but ago. But as we started thinking about it, it became fairly clear to me that it makes sense that this is how our products and our warranty would be received by that market. But that's way different than actually standing in front of dozens and dozens and dozens of pool pros, all of whom look at you like you're an alien when you tell them what they're getting and what the cost is, and when you finally get to the point of them understanding there is no catch, this is what it is. You know, the light bulb goes off and they're like how many can I buy? You know, like that, that was the response. You know, it was just that way. And so when you see that in real time, right in front of you, that's the opportunity I think that you really gain is.

Speaker 2:

Okay, yeah, we made, we made sales at the trade show. There are sales that came in after the trade show. There are some volume orders-face opportunity to see in their eyes what they thought of our product and our warranty and our company and recognizing oh yeah, we just have to get in front of them, we will sell to them. It's just a matter of how, and now it doesn't matter, like it can be trade shows, google ads, whatever Like it doesn't matter the venue or the medium, we just have to get our name in front of them. Trade shows will be one of those mechanisms that we use. But now we know, just get in front of them and it'll work.

Speaker 1:

Well, I'm curious because you said with you talked about the QR code and kind of the Pool Olympics and that type of stuff and collecting some of that information. What was your thought going into it and what did that implementation look like? You know, once you collect that information, to follow up with those folks after the trade show to stay top of mind, because I mean, you know, we all know that ads work. However, ads also require money, whereas you know having somebody on an email list, especially once you've had that face to face interaction, gives you essentially the capability to interact with them for essentially free.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So, first of all, everybody who registered for the competition, of course, ended up on our list. They received some information specific to pool pros and yada, yada. I would say, in terms of what I had in my head versus what actually happened, there was a little bit of a discrepancy there in the sense of I had it set as you could register to compete or you could register to vote, and the register to vote was what do you think the top score or the best score is going to be for this event, for this event, for the whole event, you know, whatever, and if you are correct in that, then you'll win the same thing as the person who actually competed. Right, I thought that we would get a lot more response out of that. The truth is, we got virtually no response out of that. So for me, I was looking at that as an opportunity to build a much larger list as a result of that, because I thought there would be way more people who would decide not to compete but, you know, might still want to win something. You know, and maybe that's how we presented it, maybe there's ways that we could make it more effective. But realistically, like when I look at the numbers. We had virtually nobody sign up for that and the majority of people signed up to compete, if they signed up for anything. So that was a lesson learned. We probably will do away with the voting and you know future events. But also it it it made it more obvious that we need the lanyard scan opportunity because we'll get a whole lot more people on the list that way, because there were a lot of people who showed up at our booth that we aren't going to have a good opportunity to follow up with later because we didn't get their information, because it wasn't as easy. You know, like there's just too many people. We found a tool that I think is actually going to work really well for that.

Speaker 2:

Here's another thing every trade show that you go to, they have that. Well, I shouldn't say every, I've only been to one, but the ones that we investigated they have that. You know like you pay 700 bucks, you know whatever it is. You know maybe it's less at some of them, but to get a scanning device or to be able to put an app on your phone so you can scan their badge and get their information, it's pretty pricey, of course, especially if you're going to do that at every trade show. Also, what I found out is it's glitchy. Like a lot of these trade shows, the devices don't work properly all the time. You know, if you download the app, the app doesn't always work properly. It doesn't scan business cards, it only scans their badge. So if they don't have the badge handy or they lost it now all of a sudden, you've got no way to track that.

Speaker 2:

So we actually found a service called Popple P-O-P-L that will scan business cards. It will scan badges of almost any type at any trade show. I tested it. Cards it will scan badges of almost any type at any trade show. I tested it.

Speaker 2:

I pulled up sample badges on Google just from other trade shows and whatever.

Speaker 2:

Every single one of them it scanned and it uses AI on the background to go out onto the internet and find as much contact information about that person as it can. So it takes all the information from the badge, puts it in there, then it goes and gets their phone number, their LinkedIn, their email address, throws that in there as well. You can tag them, you can add notes, you can automate it so that it connects to Zapier or any of these other kind of tools, so you can automate this process of following up and all these things. I would highly recommend that because the cost is going to be less like for an entire year for our entire team to have this on their phone and be able to do all of that than for one trade show to pay, you know, for the service to be able to scan those codes. I highly recommend it. Get those, get those people on your list. Make sure you have an automated flow so that you know it's processing. That would be a really important and valuable tool.

Speaker 1:

So, and one thing that comes to my mind and then we do need to wrap up here in the next couple of minutes is, with that process is, you know, if you, first of all I would encourage you know anybody who's listening out there is come up with something unique and interesting, like you guys did for the pool Olympics. However, if, for whatever reason, you can't, or in addition to that, one thing that we found incredibly useful at those trade shows and yes, I know that it's used a lot, but it's also used very effectively which is a product giveaway, you know, and make it a bundle that's your products, that's, you know, valuable enough to where people are going to want to register, and those types of things Cause, then what it also does for you is not only gives them a reason to sign up, but also to email them and say, hey, after the trade show, here's the winner. But it also gives you a bite at the apple to say hey, if they weren't the winner, you can give them a specific coupon code or additional add-on product or some sort of special promo, just for them to at least kind of prime the pump. And think about that first email which impacts your deliverability. I mean people want to open an email to figure out you know who won that giveaway from, whatever, and so you know that can be a really powerful thing either to do on its own or in addition to.

Speaker 1:

You know, again, I think having something unique, like what you guys did, that really ties into the brand is ideal, but if you, you know, for whatever reason you don't have that you want to look for something in addition to. I think we've seen, we've used that strategy before very successfully. The last couple of minutes here that I want to kind of wrap up with is you know, not everybody out there is going to have that budget in order to spend, you know, 20 plus grand on going to a trade show. You know, what kind of maybe some quick ideas or recommendations do you guys have for those folks that maybe don't have that budget but want to do some face-to-face marketing?

Speaker 3:

The first thing that I would say is that you don't necessarily have to be an exhibitor at the trade show. There's no matter what category you sell products in. I can pretty much guarantee that there's some sort of a trade show. That is's no matter what category you sell products in. I can pretty much guarantee that there's some sort of a trade show that is relevant to the people that are buying those types of products, and even just going and being one of the attendees of a trade show is valuable.

Speaker 3:

There were a couple of service providers that approached us that were very, very unique in the way that they. I mean, there was one Amazon agency that had a whole presentation that they handed us that was very specific to our brand, and so she didn't pay to be at the show, but she made a big impression. There's also an SEO agency that we're probably going to end up working with because of it. So you don't necessarily have to be an exhibitor and spend, you know, $15,000 on a booth, just going there and being present and learning Like there were. You know, like I would have gotten value just by sitting on some of the sessions that some of the pool professionals were sitting at. So, like. You don't have to be an exhibitor, even just going find a trade show that is relevant to the people that are buying your products and just go as a as an attendee.

Speaker 2:

I also think, too, just the idea. And, of course, if you're an Amazon seller, hopefully you know that these exist, although, to be honest, for a lot of years I didn't know. But you know, like the Amazon conferences, you know, like one of the things that happens at these Amazon conferences is all of these additional side events that happen, these networking events that occur that are put on by all sorts of other you know, individuals, organizations, businesses, whatever. That is an opportunity for you to connect with these Amazon sellers. Well, the same thing happens at all these other trade shows. So, like there's, there's networking events that are happening at these trade shows before, after, during, you know, whatever. Participate in those networking events that give you an opportunity to connect with those individuals. You know, and again, they don't cost anything People. They're not charging you generally to walk in the door to these networking events. Maybe they charge a little bit, but it's not much and it's well worth being in there.

Speaker 2:

I would also say one of the things that you should probably step back and consider is is there a way for your product to be relevant to a commercial buyer who would buy it, potentially in bulk quantities, if there's any creative way that you can come up with that is reasonable. That makes your product a viable option for these commercial buyers. Consider the potential for a single order that might be as much as a thousand individuals. And how can you connect with those bulk buyers Right? There are plenty of events that you could attend where you're going to meet up with people who will buy onesies and twosies Right, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you can instead attend an event where you can hobnob with people who might buy a hundred or a thousand, 10,000 units that's a much more your ROI on that is likely to be much better. If you actually are talking to these people and networking with these people and connecting with them, just one contact might easily pay for that and cut your trip, even if you had to pay for airfare and the whole nine yards.

Speaker 1:

Well, and I think I'll build off of that before we wrap here, which is I know we talked a lot about trade shows, but really this is about face-to-face marketing, and so, whether it's when you work with those bigger buyers, helping support them by demoing your product in their store we did a lot of sampling and demos for a coffee brand that I used to have in grocery stores, and so that was a much more cost-effective way to get a lot of that same face-to-face feedback. So there's other ways to do it besides trade shows. Trade shows are great, but there's other budget-friendly options. So I would just encourage listeners to think about how you can test out some face-to-face marketing, because I think, even if you're well-connected with your customers, you've been doing it for a while. I guarantee that you'll learn something from doing some face-to-face marketing with your customers in that process. So I would just, yeah, encourage all our listeners to do that and want to thank everybody for listening and we'll be back next time for another Tactics Tuesday.

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Jon Stojan

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Matt Atkins

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Mike Kaufman

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