Fun at the Marketo booth

For a marketer, Dreamforce has a fantastic expo floor. Not only do you get to see the latest tools to better integrate marketing and sales, you get to observe the lead generation process in action for a huge number of companies. As you walk the exhibit floor this week between sessions and keynotes you can quickly see where all the excitement is, and that's what makes the difference between an average performance for an exhibitor versus one that can't wait for the next event because of all the deals that closed from the previous one.

1. Poor Booth Design

The problem with most booths is that they look good. In a row of 30 booths that all look good, you now look like another blade of grass in the yard. The marketing mistake here is that your goal is not for it to look good, but look remarkable. There are best practices to think about, but again, if everyone on the block is doing the same thing, you are stuck. So think about what makes a booth remarkable. Be brighter, funnier, simpler, maybe even crummier, but don't just look good.

2. No Beta Breakers

A simplified way to look at human attention is to divide it into two states. In the Alpha state, a person's mind is engaged for the task in front of them, they are talking to someone, reading a book, writing a blog post, anything that requires their full attention. The Beta state is when you are not completely engaged, ex. walking around, driving a car, doing something that is habit, etc. As attendees walk down the aisle, they are not completely engaged and it's your job to break them out of the Beta state to capture their attention.

The other problem is that most exhibitors realize they need to attract attention, but fall back on the two oldest and most tired options - greeters and giveaways. Both of these tactics work, they drive the attendee out of the Beta state, but attendees are wise to the con. By nature of walking the floor they are expecting greeters to try an engage them so they don't run away, but they go from Beta to "wary that they are going to be sold." Often greeters are selected by attractiveness rather than their ability to tell a story. At it's core, this is a deception. It will break the Beta state but it doesn't mean the attendee is interested in anything beyond a primal urge. If the greeter is tied into your story, you have created successful engagement.

If you're giving things away you may be creating a game for attendees of "How little do I need to do to walk away with the prize?" Don't perpetuate the cycle of plastic junk that is unrelated to your story and making a journey from factory to landfill.

3. No Customer Experience In Mind

Not putting the customer first is the root cause of all these problems. Exhibitors that fail go to shows thinking, "We want to tell the world about us, we want to get leads." The winners think, "When someone comes to our booth we want them to be intrigued enough to learn more about what we do." The big idea I took away from Tuesday's keynote is that Marketing Cloud is remarkable because it's the next generation platform for mapping the customer journey. Being able to map out as many experiences as possible for your customer is how you will provide superior service in the future, and for many leads, that experience starts on the Expo floor.

Not attending Dreamforce? No problem - watch it live at salesforce.com/live. After Dreamforce, check out this helpful marketing ebook for marketers like John Wall, at this link.

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