The AV Marketer

Even in the digital age, there is value in meeting customers, clients, and prospects in person, and trade shows offer excellent opportunities. Even with more digital marketing tools available than ever, 30 percent of companies reported plans to increase their trade show marketing budget last year. The only way to get a return on that investment, though, is to have a solid plan going into your trade shows, including a digital marketing plan that will give you all the bang your buck has to offer. Here are three marketing strategies to get the most out of your trade show budget and experience.

In the workplace of just a generation ago, the Rolodex was about as advanced as client management got. For some people, old habits die hard (my mom still swears by her Rolodex, and it is embarrassing). For the rest of us, there are plenty of digital tools and automated workstreams to help you track and cash in on big opportunities.

I’ve been a remote worker for over three years now, ever since I joined the wonderful team at Pivot. What exactly does that mean? The Cambridge Dictionary defines remote working as a “situation in which an employee works mainly from home and communicates with the company by email and telephone.”

But for me, the definition goes much further than that. Sure, I work from my house. But I’ve also worked in coffee shops, libraries, airports, hotel rooms, in houses of friends and family, and in multiple countries. My definition of a remote worker is someone who gets their tasks and projects done regardless of where they are located.

Pivot has embraced being a digital workplace and I am proud to be a part of a company that isn’t afraid of change.

But just embracing change doesn’t mean you are doing it well. So how can you not only work remotely but be a successful remote worker? Here are my top four tips.

While you may not be a sci-fi aficionado, you may be familiar with movies and TV shows that feature characters using voice commands as part of everyday life. Thanks to Siri, Alexa, and Cortana, using voice commands in your home is quite common and now it is showing up in the workplace. Fun fact: in 2018 there were 50 million Alexa and Google Home devices in the U.S. alone.

One of the companies that is bringing voice commands to the workplace is Amazon with their Alexa for Business solution. Most people know of Alexa from the TV commercials or because they have implemented it in their homes.

Alexa for Business is following the trend of consumer technology following you to work. Remember when Blackberry phones were the phone most commonly used for work, so everyone laughed at the idea of implementing iPhones in the workplace? Similar to iPhone’s launch in 2007, Alexa for Business wants to be a part of your workplace, yet some people are skeptical and resistant.

You may be asking yourself what Alexa for Business can do in the workplace. Think of Alexa for Business as being your own personal assistant. Think about the tasks that you do daily that you can now verbally ask Alexa to help you with:

You’ve started reading an article about 3 ways to increase your ROI when a notification pops up about another article—"10 Ways to Gain 100,000 Followers.” You’ve been thinking about your follower count, so you save the first article, just like you’ve saved dozens of others you plan to get to one day.

As you get ready to start your company’s business blog, know that you are not alone. Fifty-four percent of companies want to grow traffic to their website over the next 12 months, according to HubSpot’s State of Inbound 2018 report, and blogging is a great way to do that. 

Some people consider social media as something they do on weekends. Others use social media daily, but only for personal reasons. And there are others who use social media daily for both personal and business reasons. Which category do you fall into? 

A few years ago I went to see a concert at an outdoor venue. The opening act had a terrible sound system and we had to strain to hear anything. (Though when we finally did hear them we decided maybe missing out on the sound wasn’t such a bad thing.) When the main act came on stage, their equipment was much better. Their amplifiers and loudspeakers provided the right level of volume without distorting the sound. We felt like we were on the front row even though our tickets were for the lawn. 

One morning you get to work and notice you've gotten a lot more notifications than usual. And they're still coming in. They’re coming in emails and in alerts from social media—which is your responsibility since your employer thought it would be an easy side task.

You panic. You have not been trained for this and have not even considered the possibility. You don’t have a day-to-day strategy let alone a crisis management plan.

Despite increased marketing opportunities on social media, email still outperforms social media when it comes to nurturing sales leads and converting them into paying customers. According to one study email is up to six times more effective than social media. But not just any old email will do. To get the most out of your emails, think beyond just open rates and consider how your marketing emails can engage your customer and create dollars-and-cents results. Here are a few ideas to get you started.