Attendance Boosters

How to guarantee your brochures work harder for you

By Robert F. James

Attendance brochures always come out on top in surveys asking visitors how they learn about trade shows. The reason is simple: direct mail is the marketing medium of choice among show managers. And yet, although hundreds of millions of attendance brochures flood the mailstream every year, only a smattering exemplify what really works in this powerful and peerless medium.

Here's a roundup of proven tips to help you master the art of creating better attendance brochures -- brochures that are capable of pulling more people away from their otherwise fulfilling lives and onto your show floor for a few days.

STRATEGY
1. Know your audience.
It's the fundamental rule of marketing communications: Understand who attends your event and why. Dig for a deeper knowledge than that afforded by attendees' stock answers to survey questions -- "We go to your show to keep up with the industry." Talk with your attendees. Read what they read. Attend other gatherings that they attend. And sponsor focus groups regularly. Whether you view them as your direct customers or your customers' (exhibitors') customers, you should be able to confidently put yourself in the attendees' shoes if you ever hope to win them over.

2. Segment your audience.
Once you understand what motivates your audience as a whole, look for the critical differences among various segments. It's this basic marketing intelligence that makes "targeting" possible. No audience is monolithic. One set of benefits will appeal to one segment, but you can rest assured that a different set of benefits will appeal to another segment. The key to successful direct marketing is targeting the right set of benefits (the "offer") to the right prospects (the "list") with the right package (the "brochure").

To know what's "right," you need a firm handle on each significant subgroup -- a demographic profile of each segment -- and you need to think through the practical ways to reach each segment with a brochure that compellingly communicates the relevant benefits. Two critical factors affect segmentation: addressability (can you accurately mail the right piece to the prospect?) and size (is the segment large enough to merit a tailored approach?). Don't waste time and energy profiling segments that can't be reached because the available mailing lists don't pinpoint them, or because they're too small to cost-justify a targeting effort in the first place.

3. Budget realistically.
Calculate in advance the actual resources required to get the job done -- the marketing investment needed to meet your attendance goals. Don't handicap your marketing program by budgeting for it unrealistically. And don't expect direct-marketing miracles -- that your handsome, four-color piece will "knock their socks off," or that attendees will fall into your lap because "the location's great."

Experience shows that the response rates achieved by trade-show direct marketers aren't dramatically higher than those achieved by other business-to-business direct marketers -- 10 percent is exceptional. Experience also shows that professional trade show attendees cost show managers anywhere from $10 to $60 each to acquire. So figure out the historical trend in your show's acquisition costs and set clear, numerical attendance goals for your next show. Then use this information to budget accordingly.

COPY
4. Tell them how they'll profit.
Face it: Most prospects are extremely busy and sales-resistant. Your brochure has precious few seconds -- six at the outside -- to catch and hold their interest. In fact, eight out of 10 people will probably never look at more than the cover of your brochure. So be sure to grab them by the eyeballs with a headlined promise that's virtually guaranteed to get them to turn the page: Attend our show and you will immediately make more money.

Precisely how you should word this promise, of course, will depend on who your prospects are, how imaginative you want to be and how credibly you can back up such a claim. But have no doubt that profit is the promise you should make. When it comes to answering his or her most basic question -- Why should I care about your trade show? -- the bottom line is the bottom line. (The exceptions to this rule are medical professionals, who are concerned with enhancing lives, not ledger sheets.)

5. Justify every word.
Today's business executives receive as many as 200 pieces of unsolicited mail every week, so respect your prospect's time. Avoid publishing "eyewash" -- long, overblown copy that uses a lot of words to say little of real substance. Instead, stick to the key benefits of your show and keep the ideas tightly focused. Your reader has a narrow attention span. Refrain from using the "everything-and-the-kitchen-sink" approach, unless you're promoting a kitchen and bath show. State your points telegraphically.

6. Make an offer they can't refuse. Special offers put the "direct" in direct mail. They provide the incentive prospects need to act now, not a few days or weeks from now. Among direct mail advertisers, a good special offer is acknowledged to be the single strongest factor in boosting response rates because it adds urgency and exclusivity to a mailing. Special offers take a variety of forms, including early-bird discounts, group discounts, rebates, gifts, special privileges and prize promotions (contests and sweepstakes).

When you design a special offer, it pays to be creative; but the key to coming up with the "right" special offer lies in its value to your audience (not in its expediency to your organization). So, if your show is so large that attendees find it impossible, in the limited time available, to visit all the exhibitors they need to see, they might appreciate receiving a free pre-show planner. On the other hand, if your show is small and attendees have "time to kill" after visiting exhibitors, they might better appreciate the chance to win free tickets to a local attraction.

ART
7. Bounce your message off the page.
Too many direct marketers think graphic design is just making brochures pretty. But good graphic design adds real power to your selling message by accomplishing two vitally important goals: arresting readers' attention and communicating clearly. Prospective attendees need to be startled, amused and entertained. The graphic treatment for your brochure should favor bold, colorful and interruptive concepts and elements, not "neat and tidy" layouts. The selling message should remain "in your face" from the moment you pick the piece up to the moment you set it down. And the reader should be able to say, after breezing through the brochure, that she clearly understands what the show is about and -- most importantly -- why she needs to preregister and attend.

8. Remember, it's a visual medium.
Fifty years of advertising research has shown that the brochure is a highly visual medium. People spend a lot more time looking at artwork and photos than they do reading the copy -- particularly when the artwork and photos "bleed" off the edges of the page. People also "glance" a lot more than they read, so they can generalize from fragments of information without going to all the trouble of reading every word. As a result, they like to have a lot of visual "entry points" into each page -- headlines, subheadlines, captions, callouts, "violators," icons, bulleted lists, graphs, charts, sidebars and highlight boxes. There is also a definite flow to the way people process the pages of a brochure: Eight out of 10 readers scan a page in a sideways U, moving from top right to bottom right. Make sure the design and layout of your brochure take into account these ingrained habits.

PRODUCTION
9. Don't shortchange the help.
To ensure your promotional dollars are used effectively, give everyone involved in the creation and delivery of your brochure -- the marketing manager, copywriter, art director, designer, proofreader, production manager, separator, printer, bindery, mailhouse and the U.S. Postal Service -- the one luxury they need most: time. More bad brochures are produced, and more good money wasted, as a result of rushing than from any other single cause.

It's not at all unreasonable for a typical attendance brochure to take a calendar month to write and design, another to print, and another to mail and be received by attendees. To be fully realistic, to that three-month lead time you should add an extra two weeks to allow for the inevitable setbacks that occur -- copy revisions and rewrites, layout changes, the absence of key reviewers, the correction of typos and so forth. Of course, experienced marketing communications professionals can anticipate most of the snafus and eliminate them, but even the most seasoned professionals need adequate time to perform effectively.

More eye-opening tips, straight from the mouths of direct-marketing gurusBUILD ON A CENTRAL THEME
"You should never try to get everything into one promotion. Now, that doesn't mean you should leave out every benefit or selling point but one. It only means that you should build your whole promotion around one central idea. Everything else should just reinforce or embellish that idea, not compete with it for attention."
-- Morty Schiller, Schiller Direct Response

MAKE THE TRUTH FASCINATING
"Avoid superlatives, generalities and platitudes. Be specific and factual. Be enthusiastic, friendly and memorable. Don't be a bore. Tell the truth. But make the truth fascinating."
-- David Ogilvy, Founder, Ogilvy & Mather

JUSTIFY THE TIME
"Show the reader how an investment of one to three days will pay off immediately. Address the objection specifically. Acknowledge the importance of the attendee's time. Show how you have 'jam packed' and 'chock fulled' the program so that not a moment of precious time will be wasted."
-- Anver Suleiman, The Marketing Federation Inc.

MAKE IT PERSONAL
"Employ the singular 'you' -- direct mail's magic word -- at every opportunity. ...Effective direct mail is written to be read by one person at a time, not a mob."
-- Ed McLean, Consultant

KEEP IT RELEVANT
"The key technique for getting business-to-business mailings opened and read by your prospects is relevance -- that is, talking about the prospect's problems, fears, needs, wants and concerns. This is far more important than being creative, glitzy or offbeat."
-- Robert Bly, Consultant

BE INTERESTING QUICKLY
"People glance at -- more often than read -- what you present them. They take a quick look and decide what to do -- so your mail must be interesting quickly."
-- "Rocket" Ray Jutkins, Rockingham*Jutkins Marketing

LET THE PHOTOS TELL THE STORY
"The best brochure is a photo story. Answer the 'who, what, when, where and why' questions about your product or service and employ up-to-date, clear and lively photos to illustrate them."
-- Joan Harris, Consultant

KEEP IT SIMPLE
"Combining discounts for certain groups, with reduced rates for 'five or more,' with early registration discounts and a registration deadline makes taking action confusing. Confusion increases the likelihood of inaction. So, keep it simple."
-- Paul Franklin, Learning Resource Network