2 Jul
12 Apr
The Trade Show Experience Part 2: “What are these booths doing in the way of my lunch?”
In Part 1 of this discussion, I explained my perspective on the difference between retail shows and industry specific trade shows. I want to offer one person’s opinion on why various people attend the shows.
Let’s take the Association for Fundraising Professionals. Every year they throw an annual conference where thousands of people get together with one main thread in common – philanthropy. Hospitals, Schools, Museums, Human Services agencies, camps, religious organizations and more are represented. The people come to listen to hundreds of conference sessions and can follow specific “tracks” in development, technology, social media and more.
Here’s what you don’t know: in order to maintain reasonable costs for the attendees, the conference people put together what they call a “Marketplace” – an exhibit floor containing hundreds of vendors from database management, to web site design, to donor recognition gifts. The vendors pay hefty sums to show their wares to the thousands of attendees that pass by. Without the exhibitors, the costs of the conference would skyrocket!
From the attendees perspective they are given a chance to see a new city, engage like-minded people in thought-provoking discussions about relevant issues, network, listen to some speeches from well-known people on philanthropic topics, and eat out for a few days.
From the exhibitors’ perspective, we’re standing between you and the guest speakers, your sessions, and your lunch.
Trust me. We don’t want to waste your time and more than we want to collect useless leads in a fishbowl for an iPod Shuffle. You have a need. We can fill it. This is the only forum where we can say that to thousands of you at a time. Face to face.
We understand that we aren’t the perfect solution for everyone (as much as our sales people would hate me for saying that). But we know we can offer you peace of mind for your donor recognition gifts, fundraising programs, and merchandise for your stores, both brick and mortar and virtual.
We believe it is these gatherings, these trade shows, which offer us the best bang for our buck. Are we right? Or are we a nuisance? Is this something on your tick list of “to-do’s” when attending a conference, or a necessary evil on the way to the snacks?
I can think of no other forum where there is a congregation of so many people who truly want to come away from their travels having learned something, met a new person in their professional network, and having found an answer for a problem plaguing their development team all in one short span of days.
What do you think? Tell me why YOU go to these conferences? Help me spend my marketing money wisely!
19 Mar
Weekly Wrap Up March 19, 2010 – must see blogs and web sites
Five Online Fundraising Tips to Raise More Money
Getting Personal with Your Copy
A Donor List is More Than Past Giving
5 Tips for Creating Non-Profit Online Communities
Satisfied Sponsors: Under Promise & Over Deliver
Why You Need a Strategy for Social Media
Business Giving vs Individual Giving
Take 12 Minutes to Learn How to Grow Your Nonprofit’s Email List
5 Mar
Weekly Wrap Up March 5, 2010 – must see blogs and web sites
5 Levels of Effective Communication in the Social Media Age
25 Tips for Better Fundraising Copy
PR is Only Dying If It Isn’t Evolving
Top 3 Excuses for Not Marketing a Small Business
Online Communications Planning for Nonprofits
Integrating Your Website, Email Newsletter and Social Media Sites
9 Website Upgrades That Visitors Love
3 Mar
ChemArt decorative collectibles shuffles management team
Multi-segmented designer and manufacturer ChemArt announced that effective immediately, it has implemented a necessary organizational executive shift, according to the company.
Bill Thomas will assume the position of president of the Lincoln, R.I.-based company. David Beaupre will take on the role of executive vice president; Kurt Hague will expand his role as VP of operations and general counsel; and Deb Parkinson will manage all the marketing activities as VP of marketing and development.
Parkinson will be responsible for supporting ChemArt and its sales strategies with market-driven strategies including campaigns and programs that foster growth and market penetration.
Under the new structure she and her team will also focus on business and market development to position ChemArt for the future.
ChemArt has served as the premiere designer and manufacturer of photo-chemically etched decorative ornaments and collectibles in the United States. ChemArt also provides products for the giftware industry and fundraising ventures, and is pushing its way into the retail licensing segment as well.
Parkinson told DailyVista that the new organizational structure at ChemArt is not necessarily a change, but rather an evolution of responsibility.
“I’ve been with ChemArt a little under five years, and came here when they took over a retail initiative. Prior to that, they’d just been a behind-the-scenes manufacturer for a lot of people,” she said. “The result is that I oversaw both marketing and sales, and because of a change of leadership, we now have a new president who will focus on sales, which gives me an opportunity to focus on marketing as well as development.”
Because of Parkinson’s interest in market research and development, she will now be able to focus more of her efforts on that and tweak the strategy to reach the new markets that are out there, and figure out the best way to approach them.
“I think that our branding efforts to this point have been to distinguish ourselves,” she said. “We were behind-the-scenes, and now we have the opportunity to build the brand under a name of ChemArt – short for Chemical Art because of the process we use – and we were able to put in place the classical branding strategies with positioning, including the marketing communications that come with it.”
As ChemArt further penetrates the retail segment with licensing partners like the Baldwin brand, an extension of Black & Decker, the company is also working with The White House Historical Segment, which has granted ChemArt permission to sell their products in the retail division as well.
“The retail has its own little umbrella because we now sell custom products to retailers, Baldwin and White House and regional appeal products, and a semi-custom product to retailers under the ChemArt name,” Parkinson said. “It’s quite complex. We touch a lot of people in many different ways and the real story we have resonates and it doesn’t matter how it resonates, whether it’s with the donor, the member, the volunteer or the consumer that walks into a retail establishment… we really do have a very unique proposition.”
ChemArt uses traditional print media as well as some electronic forms of reaching out to customers. The company has been building a permission-based opportunity for newsletters and is also entering into Webinars that use one of ChemArt’s clients to speak to the other clientele in that same platform.
“We’re trying to engage them, which brings us back to the idea of social media – how that becomes one more arrow in our quiver, and other elements of how else we can reach the customer, whether it’s through ecommerce or international marketing,” Parkinson said.
While there are many other initiatives in the pipeline, our source said that ChemArt is definitely focused on social media, and is working diligently trying to determine whether or not it will make an impact and ultimately lead to a sale closure.
“We’re very new at social media,” Parkinson said. “We have a blog, and we’re on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but we’re still feeling our way through that. It’s baby steps for us.”
With three segments of business – industrial, decorative and retail – ChemArt targets a wide variety of consumers, ranging from engineers to fundraising and higher education to religious institutions and the government.
“The decorative portion of the business is dedicated to custom products for philanthropy and fundraising… creating awareness and working with donors and making sure that the membership is recognized in some way,” Parkinson said. “So that’s the primary product and market that we actually serve and tagged onto that is retail opportunity, so we’ve kind of created an umbrella company so that we serve a significant number of constituents, most B-to-B, and we’re looking at avenues of B-to-C, but again, that comes under development part of what I’ll be doing.”
ChemArt has contracted specialists for its Web site, but hasn’t ventured into partnering with any additional firms for other services. The company has a unique relationship with the surrounding Rhode Island colleges and as such, ChemArt’s college internship program is an ambitious one, where students are expected to assist with research and development and to contribute their expertise to aid the company’s success.
“We’re not averse to it, but because we’re a small business, we’ve used our resources differently, but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t speak to someone who felt they had a very strong background in a particular focus that we had,” Parkinson said. “So if we had an initiative for ecommerce, for example, certainly we need to understand not only front end, but the back end of it, and I’m sure there are hundreds of thousands of people who say they are experts in how to set that up and work not only B-to-B, but also B-to-C.”
© 2010 DailyVista
