Trade shows for coaches.

As much as we would like to believe that the power of Internet-based social networking will fill our schedules with paying clients, old-fashioned, face-to-face social networking should still be a major part of your marketing program.

Since the success of your practices are fundamentally based on the success of our client relationships, it makes sense to interact directly whenever you can with potential customers. Seeing and talking to you will give the prospect a real sense of your style, interest, and professional manner. That’s where trade shows fit in.

Given the large number of trade shows available throughout the year, how do you know which ones to attend?

Before allowing some other experts in trade show marketing chime in, let me lay down CNE’s tradeshow marketing rule #1: The attendees at the prospective show need to closely match your target market profile. For example, if you do life coaching and your target market consists primarily of stay-at-home moms with a home business, don’t waste your money going to trade shows designed to meet high-end business executives. Of course, if they are your target market, by all means go.

In 25 years of marketing I can say with some certainty that most of the waste in marketing budgets goes for marketing programs that reach the wrong people. So, do your homework, define that target market, and then choose the trade shows you want to consider.

In a very helpful post, Trade show Marketing — Getting Ready for the Big Event, author Patty Stripes offers advice about several essential topics. Some examples:

Demographics of previous trade shows: Did the last show done by the trade show provider have a decent show of visitors? Is the trade show provider boasting about the numbers on its marketing material or hiding it in some obscure corner for the number crunchers? Did the trade show provider have a professional organization draw up the demographics of the visitors? Do the demographics fit your requirement? Answers to these queries should help you decide if you should use this trade show as a sales and marketing vehicle for your company.

What is the total number of booths and what is the occupancy rate a few weeks before the show? The thumb rule is that a trade show can have about 5 to 10 percent of empty stands about 2 weeks before the event which eventually gets filled in my last minute confirmations or by sponsors. If the numbers are higher that this, you should check the official reason given by the exhibitors to ensure that you don’t end up participating in a show which has too many empty stands.

Is the trade show provider offering a ‘desperate’ discount and doing unusual number of follow ups? If you get an offer for a trade show booth which is just too good to believe then it is probably too good to believe. ‘Desperate’ discounts are offered by event planners as a last ditch attempt to sell all booths as you should only participate is such trade shows if you have unique reason to do so.

Want to know the Common Exhibit Marketing Mistakes: Ten Tips on How to Avoid Them? You can find all ten in an article on Marketing Today, written by Trade Show Coach, Susan Friedmann, CSP. Giving visitors an incentive to come to your booth and having “giveaways” that work are two common sense pieces of advice.

Trade-Show-Advisor.com bills itself as a one-stop trade show resource and knowledge base. Indeed, I found plenty of sound advice for someone considering a trade show. For example, under Trade Show Promotions they suggest the following –

Personalized contact with your target audience prior to the event. This includes pre-selling attendees through phone calls, personalized invitations, direct mail, email, or meaningful giveaways to introduce your products and encourage conference registrants to visit your booth.

Marketing activities during the event to attract conference attendees to your exhibit booth. This includes live entertainment, hands-on activities, audio-visual programs, unique trade show booth attractions such as a cash cube money machine or high-tech interactive game, tradeshow giveaways (make them as distinctive as possible), and food – if permitted. Of course, a well-trained, professional, and welcoming trade show staff is essential to your success.

Follow-up initiatives after the show with each individual who visited your booth to help turn leads into sales. Send a personalized handwritten note, along with a customized company information packet or other appropriate material, within a week following the trade show event.

You can also find a very thorough guide to all things trade show in this lengthy PDF file, Trade Show Marketing Manual. Take a look!

Happy marketing at your next trade show! And don’t forget to bring plenty of candy (to keep your blood sugar up!).

Got stress? Good news: May is National Mental Health Month.

I was doing research for CNE when I ran into a story about Carey Powell, a Gilbert, Arizona based Certified Life Coach and owner of Fearless Soul Life Coaching. While reading Carey’s story, I learned that May is National Mental Health Month.

The timing is perfect for those of us, like Carey, who have clients and friends who are tangled in stress and need help finding a way out.

In Carey’s case, after 15 years in the corporate world she found herself depressed, overweight and burnt out. Life coaching turned her life around. Today her passion is helping others live a healthy, balanced life through her work as a professional life coach.

One of her major tasks as a life coach is helping clients deal with stress. It’s more than a coincidence that one way to remove our own stress is to do work that helps other people reduce their stress.

According to Carey, signs of stress include:

• Feeling angry, irritable or easily frustrated;
• Change in eating habits;
• Trouble sleeping;
• Problems with memory;
• Having trouble functioning in your job and/or personal life.

Carey suggests that exercise, even in small amounts, can do a great deal to help reduce stress. “Of course, I also recommend seeking the assistance of a life coach. A great coach can help you restore balance in your life by teaching you new techniques and helping you develop the skills to make positive changes.”

Life coaches who are interested in learning stress reduction techniques can consult with other life coaches who specialize in that area, take stress reduction classes, or read some of the classics in the field, including The Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook, now in its fifth edition.

You can learn more about Carey’s practice at Fearless Soul Life Coaching.

Want to read more about stress and National Mental Health Month? Visit the Mental Health America web site.

Life coaching for college students?

Two life coaches recently discussed the idea that coaching may be helpful to college students who are struggling to make important, long-term decisions.

Ken Cochrum, in his blog On Leading Well, says that today’s college students are overwhelmed with choices, data, and information. “As a result their filters are high – most won’t even answer their cell phone if caller-id doesn’t show someone they know.”

We tend to assume that by having more choices we can make better decisions. Ken suggests that too many choices can lead to “paralysis by analysis,” and cites the book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, as offering evidence to the contrary.

Says Ken:

Each of us needs a few friends to help us sift through the mountains of information we’re inundated with each day and convert that into knowledge leading to wisdom. Wisdom is simply knowledge applied well. Wisdom, like a good coach, offers teaching, reproof, correction, and training in good living.

In Artful Life Coaching, Life Coach Tessa agrees with Ken’s premise:

Very wise analysis here of why people – especially college students – are seeking the guidance and support of life coaches! I really wish that I had had the benefit of a mentor/coach back in my undergraduate days, or should I say undergraduate haze! (I’m laughing! … I say haze because of the sheer confusion,I felt at that time with regards to my life direction!)

What is most intriguing about both Ken’s and Tessa’s comments is the shift they suggest in how college students approach problems. For those of us who do remember being undergraduates, we assumed we were on our own and had to figure things out for ourselves — not always with the best results. At least when I was that age, parents were the resource of last resort (unless it concerned money). Most of our “life coaching” came from college friends, who were likely as baffled as we were.

More students today seem ready to seek help when they need it. If that means hiring a life coach, I suspect they will readily do so once they learn what life coaching is and how it can help them. The coaching industry in general and life coaches in particular have both a marketing and an educational challenge in front of them.

The only question is: who will pay for it?