Satellite 2010: How to use social media to support sales at a trade show

My colleague Marc Hausman and I set up a blog (What's New at Satellite 2010) to support and cover the time we spent at the Satellite 2010 trade show. As you can guess, this show, held every year in DC, is the premier trade show for the satellite and space community. Since 1995, we (Strategic Communications Group) have been working with leading satellite companies to develop and execute PR, communications and now social media marketing campaigns. Our client roster over the years has included firms like:

• SES Americom
• Datapath
• Microspace Communications Corp.
• Knight Sky
• Thrane & Thrane
• Tachyon Networks
• Integral Systems
• Helius
• Stratos
• IDB Mobile Communications
• Worldspace

For those of you that read this blog, you know that what differentiates Strategic is its sales-oriented approach to social media engagement, and proven ability to leverage all of its industry connections and market relationships to identify sales, partnership, employee recruitment and financial/M&A opportunities for its clients.

Inviting trade show participants to be interviewed on the blog (http://whatsnewatsatellite2010.com) served not only as a non-salesy, value-add icebreaker with established relationships but allowed us to approach new contacts positioned as industry thought leaders. We pulled in some industry related content via RSS feeds and promoted the site via our satellite related twitter feed, @SpaceTwits, as well as targeted LinkedIn groups. Add in leads generated from inbound comments, and the site turned out to be a low cost, high return trade show sales support success story.

Here are some of the posts we wrote:

See you next year at Satellite 2011 (don’t get lost!)

When Satellite Goes Mainstream

Spending Time with MPEG-4’s Champion

News Coverage of Satellite 2010

Hughes’ Bardo Sees Growth in Broadband, Reliability

Govt Sat Service Buying Remains Disjointed

Great Opening Panel at Satellite 2010

Quiet Press Room Betrays Exhibit Hall Buzz

Satellite 2010 and Social Media

Top Trends to Look for at Satellite 2010

New Location for Satellite 2010 This Year (No, not Las Vegas)

Now That’s Global Connectivity

Local Press Coverage of Satellite 2010

What do you think of the site? Does your company execute tactical social media programs like this to support sales? Do you think they are worth the effort?

Why would anyone go to a trade show?

Why would anyone go to a trade show? Back in the day, trade show attendance was a must in order to learn industry specific information, connect with prospects, clients and influencers, and raise awareness of your company. In short, all things you can do, for free, over social networks and the Internet.

Yet, even when we've seen an industry roiled by free Internet alternatives (record companies, newspapers, TV networks), there still remains a nub of value in these media. I still listen to music, read news and watch TV shows. I don't, as a matter of course, attend trade shows, unless there is a compelling reason to do so.

During Q1 and Q2, I've decided to attend three shows, mainly because each reaches an audience I'm targeting in my marketing and sales roles- RSA Conference (security), Satellite 2010 (satellite) and FOSE/GOVSEC (government/security). There are plenty of others that gave consideration to (CTIA Wireless, Interop, HIMSS) but, given limited time and money, they didn't make the cut.

What are your plans for trade shows this year? Are you spending more or less time and money on a trade show program? What could trade shows do that would make it worthwhile for you to invest more?

FOSE- Day One

Well, FOSE got off to a bang with a keynote speech by Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired. Chris is famous for the idea of the Long Tail, and has a written a book on the same topic. No surprise, but he was strongly in favor of government embracing social media, cloud computing and all the rest of the shiny new tools of the new paradigm. It was a full crowd and I saw many, many people typing away on their laptops. Given the number of #FOSE hashtags on Twitter today, there is plenty of interest from techie types in the idea that the government may be the last paying customer on earth.

I strongly recommend attending the keynotes of any conference but FOSE has a strong lineup this year. Tomorrow morning there will be a speech by Ann Livermore of the Technology Solutions Group at HP and Thursday morning there is Louis Freeh, the Former Director of the FBI.

Moving to my favorite place on earth, the trade show floor, I reveled in the pure capitalist splendor of several hundred technology companies, professional services outfits and systems integrators proudly displaying their latest shiny booths, giving their pitches and handing out schwag to the milling hordes of government workers. The common knock on FOSE is that there aren't that many actual, y'know, decision makers there, and that it's main value is awareness and networking. This is especially true for companies that offer services at a pricepoint that require the buy-in of a CIO, agency head, or (god forbid) Congress.

Still, given the overall economy, I felt better seeing all those hard working people greeting, talking, networking, twittering, selling, buying, researching, listening, talking, laughing, shaking hands and hopefully closing some business...better than cowering under the desk waiting for the world to end!

Sneak preview of Day Two tomorrow- I do video interviews with execs from Lenovo, Kodak, KORE Telematics and Spectra Logic for the Straight to the Point interview series.

The Week Ahead...FOSE/GOVSEC

Well, I've done it...I changed the layout of my blog for the first time in two years. Exciting, huh? I'm now using the TicTac Blue template that Google has so generously provided me for free. For those who haven't been paying attention, I previously used the Minima template, also from Google- although I had customized it to have three columns, something that took me a week, if I remember correctly. Zzzzzzzz.

LOL, setting aside the first paragraph, this is going to be an exciting week! I'm going to be spending a great deal of time at the FOSE/GOVSEC show down at the Washington Convention Center. I'll be meeting with prospects, new and old, catching up with contacts I haven't spoken with in months and conducting some video interviews of senior level marketers who's expertise is how to sell technology and services to the federal, state and local government.

The impact of the new Obama administration is becoming clearer as the months go by.

• An increased emphasis on openness, transparency and communication with citizens is having mixed results.
• The cloud computing trend seems to be on everyone's lips as a solution to the ever present problem of silo smashing and data interoperability, but then the cybersecurity czar, Rod Beckstrom, resigns after a month on the job, because the NSA won't let him manage their data.
• Massive amounts of money are going to be spent on healthcare reform, healthcare IT, green technology and broadband access
• Massive amounts of money are going to be spent on just about everything except the Iraq war and insurance companies.

It certainly will be interesting to see how all this gets paid for: higher taxes (slower growth) or a debased currency (high inflation). Perhaps both. Not to worry- those are problems for another day, right?

I'm looking forward to speaking with the professionals at FOSE who interact with their government customers everyday. Their insight will be enlightening. This is what I want to know:

1. How is this year going to be different than previous years given the effect of economy and the new priorities of new administration?

2. What are government customers telling them about where procurement dollars are flowing? More, less? DOD/intel versus civilian?

3. What are they doing different this year in terms of sales and marketing strategy or tactics? More trade shows? Less? More sales staff? Less? More Lead generation? social media?

Is there anything else you'd like me to ask? Drop me a comment and I'll get the answers you're looking for...

Whew...what a busy week

I've been down at the Washington Convention Center for the past few days checking out what's new in the satellite technology world. I've been a regular at the Satellite trade show for four years now. What a change!

Back in 2004, the show was basically empty. I made jokes ab0ut tumbleweeds in the aisles. There were maybe 60 companies exhibiting. Morale there was poor, mainly due to the aftereffects of the tech crash and associated satellite industry tumble 2001-2002. The industry was surviving on the first bursts of demand from the military after 9/11. It was the runup to the invasion of Iraq that pulled the satellite industry out of the dulldrums. The government was demanding huge amounts of bandwidth from the satellite industry as its own satellites did not have enough capacity.

The past few years however, the Satellite show has grown tremendously and the industry is vigorous and strong. There are well over 250 exhibitors at the show this year. Demand is being driven by military spending, the rise of digital signage and digital cinema, broadband satellite applications, mobile satellite services (MSS) especially what the military likes to call comms-on-the-move, that is the ability to have broadband IP voice and data access at all times in a moving car, truck, Humvee or tank. Lastly, there is lots of talk about merging the satellite access with terrestrial cellular and Wimax networks into what called a hybrid network.

All in all its a very exciting time in the satellite industry.