Hardware

Part of the reason for the revamped designs has to do with the hardware used to assemble the stands. Many stands use a combination of traditional vertical segments with overarching curved struts or support beams. These beams frequently are integrated with lighting, which can add depth and unusual vibrancy to the rest of the stand. The stand becomes more of a storefront and less of a rigidly defined space. In many cases, the stand has no roof, but instead allows the visitor to gaze up into the heights of the exhibition hall. This prevents claustrophobia and makes each stand seem like a destination, and not merely a hold-over point stuffed with merchandise.

The integration of audio-visual components, such as television screens, holographic displays, and digital ticker-tape displays add another dimension to the stand. A casual observer will initially be drawn not only by the innovative look of the stand, but by the activity generated by the audio-visual components. These displays enable the stand owners to offer detailed explanations and promotional footage of their product without making visitors feel as if they are being “sold” to.

Digital Printing and Merchandise

The era of digital printing has also enabled exhibition stand owners to not only create beautiful full-size banners, but a wealth of trade specific literature and DVD’s. These materials would have once been extremely expensive to print and produce for only one show. Now, due to advanced printing techniques, full color glossy custom literature can be generated only a few days prior to the show, and handed out to visitors. Custom DVD’s that come equipped with detailed videos on each of the items being promoted at the show are also relatively inexpensive to burn and distribute.

Again, stand design plays an important part in how this literature and video is disseminated. Visitors do not want to feel as if they are being forced to accept items they have no interest in. However, they do enjoy being able to sample information at their leisure. By having a passive stand with numerous pockets filled with promotional literature, a visitor can casually browse the shelves and select items that they find appealing.

These materials are integrated with the design of stand to create an interactive experience. Unlike previous exhibition stand design, the visitor is not contained at a central checkpoint but rather encouraged to explore. No matter where the visitor goes, he will encounter materials that expound upon the product or service being sold. In this way, the stand manages to function as a highly effective marketing tool without making the visitors or sales people feel pressured or penned in.

Resource:
For more info about exhibition stands, please visit the Nimlok site.

What Is the Cloud?

The concept is simple, rather than spending money on expensive computer server hardware, installing it at the office and setting up the user systems companies can just “rent” a server. The rented server resides on the Internet on a secure connection and in a secure location. Back up and maintenance are handled for you by the provider and users can be up and running in a day. Most companies have resisted this seemingly perfect solution out of fear that critical company data will be compromised, or that network bandwidth will be inadequate to serve the users’ access needs. These have been legitimate concerns, but recent growth in the Internet has made bandwidth less costly for business.

As little as a few years ago broadband options were limited to a few dedicated T1 lines that cost several hundred dollars s month. Now, small businesses can contract for 10 times the bandwidth of a T1 line for less than 50 dollars a month. As for security, while there are still concerns and they are legitimate, data warehouse and server farm technology has advanced to the point that this is less of an issue. Guaranteed up-time and back-ups, as well as server fail-over mean that there is little chance that a company’s data will be lost or inaccessible.

One of the last barriers has been that companies have to spend the same money to put a desktop computer on an employee’s desk so why bother with the cloud? This too is fading because of thin client technology and tablet computing. The cloud is starting to make more sense. Amazon has worked hard to establish this reputation and its working. The cloud is simply moving the hardware out of the equation and making IT simpler, easier and less expensive.

Making the Cloud Pay

What can you do with the cloud? You can do everything that you can do without the cloud, and even some things that would have been too difficult to do before the cloud. Setting up a sophisticated web services infrastructure for you clients in the past was a daunting proposition. With Amazon Web Services, you can accomplish the same project in a matter of hours, without expensive software development consulting costs and no hardware costs. The speed and ease alone make these projects far more attractive to small businesses, not to mention the cost savings. Your company may need to incorporate a vast amount of sales data into the new service but the labor involved is a daunting prospect.

Amazon’s virtual labor services handle it on a piece rate, and the server-power needed can be leased for only as long as it’s needed. Even security can be moved to the cloud with front-ends for email and spam protection, proxy servers to secure web activities, and virtual private networking services handled by cloud servers. There is little that cannot be done on the cloud and much that should.

What is changing is that cloud computing is no longer the exclusive province of large businesses and large data storage. Remote backup and restore services are very popular and this is pure cloud. Many companies have proprietary database applications that have always cost to keep up. Moving these applications to a cloud app server means that the mission critical information is available 24 x 7, guaranteed. Remote workers and field personnel have assured access, even if the company’s Internet connection is down. As costs drop and Internet access becomes more ubiquitous the cloud will become the de-facto IT infrastructure for most businesses. Companies like HP and IBM are making small business focused cloud efforts now as well.

As part of their Executive Interview Series, the folks over at Marketing Automation Software Guide spoke with executives from the Annuitas Group and Manticore Technology about the marketing automation industry. In the Annuitas Group video, CEO Carlos Hidalgo discusses best practices for implementing a marketing automation strategy. Christopher Doran, VP of Marketing at Manticore Technology, talks about the importance of the vendor/client relationship. Each thought leader provides keen insight on how to achieve the greatest value from implementing a marketing automation system.

You can view the videos below:

Carlos Hidalgo, CEO, Annuitas Group

Click here to view the embedded video.

Christopher Doran, Vice President of Marketing, Manticore Technology

Click here to view the embedded video.

Photo courtesy of GoldRun

Welcome to the world of augmented reality. For the uninitiated, augmented reality (AR) represents a view of the real world around you which is enhanced and enriched by computer generated images or information. GoldRun is a mobile AR platform that allows you to spot, interact and engage with virtual goods and products placed in your real environment. For example, it allows you to try on the latest fashion offering from H&M, click a picture with it and instantly share it with your friends on Facebook.

GoldRun offers the unique opportunity for marketers to tailor dynamic promotional campaigns with the aim of capturing public attention and interest and thereby creating enough of a buzz and incentive to convince them to visit the nearest outlet. As a marketer, if your intention is to create an experience for your consumer and to get him or her to engage with your brand, then GoldRun is just the thing for you. Assume a guy has just clicked a pic of himself with his arm wrapped around a virtual image of your product. He’s just done something cool and is itching to let his friends know. What would he do? Go online and share it on Facebook of course! Suddenly, all of his friends see that he thinks your brand is cool.

You begin to realize the kind of potential this tool offers. You can design and execute a viral campaign which would help spread word about your brand like a forest on fire. You can organize scavenger hunts (or a Gold Run, as the name suggests) which would require customers to visit your shop, hunt for virtual goods using their mobile phones and earn themselves discounts and offers. You can now enhance the customer experience to engage them in ever more inventive ways. The sheer scale of possibilities which GoldRun unlocks is indeed mind-boggling.

This increased level of engagement can be easily leveraged to boost foot traffic at your store. By offering virtual goods, leaving a trail of virtual markers or by organizing a host of fun contests, marketers can now pique the consumer’s curiosity and draw them to their brick and mortar locations. GoldRun helps leverage the possibilities offered by Augmented Reality and thus opens the doors to innovative and effective below the line promotions. This helps convert the increased foot traffic into successful sales. Virtual merchandise can be used to capture and channel the customer’s interest towards particular brand offerings and provide them with opportunities to share the incentives with their friends.

With the explosion of smart phones and on-the-go connectivity, an augmented reality platform like GoldRun has the potential to revolutionize shopping and enhance customer experience and brand engagement like never before. By using the built in capabilities of GoldRun rather than building a one off app, the burden on the wallet is dramatically reduced and makes this form of promotion affordable and accessible to marketers. The possibilities are limitless and marketers today are keyed in to this opportunity. It just might be that extra push you have always needed to really boost your brand’s presence.

If you’d like to find out more about this business changing platform, visit the GoldRun website.

• You print a template from the site, complete the boxes in your own hand writing – or a different hand writing if you’re into calligraphy.
• Then position the template in front of your computer’s web cam.
• Visit the pilot website, to snap a picture and they will digitize the hand writing.

From there on, you can even edit your handwriting. That is pretty cool. And apparently you can send an email directly from that site to your friends in  your own hand writing… with a Pilot Pen strategically positioned in the email to advertise it of course.

It is not clear if you can download the fonts or not. It would be super awesome if it would. I could not get the template to print on two browsers for me because Adobe Flash plugin keeps crashing on me (very annoying). If you can print and test it out, let us know what your experience is.

Apart from the cool factor of this program – I found out by someone voluntarily sharing it, so it is viral in nature – I thought it was a pretty good example of a company using available technology to market their product in a non-in-your-face method. What’s even better, the product is quite low tech. Ok so the guys in the labs formulating ink may not agree with me about the low tech part but in consumer’s minds pens are low tech products. Which goes to show a little creativity + tech help can bring interesting campaigns.

I do not know how successful this campaign is for Pilot but considering I learned this from word of mouth and the person before me learned from word of mouth too. I imagine it must be doing OK if not quite well.

Always intrigued with new technology, I signed up for a trial and though I’d invite you to help me test it out. Will you?

In this test, you will receive 10 Days of Blogging Ideas via text (SMS) message. Complete the form below and your first idea should be sent out immediately. Oh yeah… please keep in mind that text message charges may apply depending on your plan and I have no idea if an international number will work or not. We shall see

I love it and have often wondered why more information publishers don’t offer mobile formats. And to be honest, I have been rather guilty of it myself. Maybe it was the demand and PDF’s are so easy to make. Maybe it was the conflicting multiple reading formats on different devices too. But now there is ePub. It is an open format that is the official standard of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF).

But what matters most to us marketers is, ePub is a widely supported format. For example, it can be read on the Kindle, iPad, Nook and Sony Reader. PDF’s can be too and I do not have any of those readers (yet) to be able to say how they read. But on the older devices, PDF’s are terrible to read whereas the ebook formats you can auto-scroll nicely. Besides, the iBooks app uses the ePub format.

So let’s say you already have an eBook and want to offer an ePub option, getting it done is very simple. You can use a free software like calibre. And it is not difficult either. You can use the existing PDF and simply use calibre to convert it. The whole process takes no more than 2 minutes (depending on the size of your book of course).

Best of all, calibre is available on Windows, Mac and Linux.

I am going to give ePub format it a whirl. I’ve converted the 180 Tools Free Tools You Can Use To Build Your Business report into ePub and offering it as a download option for those who sign up to our newsletter.

But let’s back up a little bit. What is a Geo-fence? You’ve probably heard or seen of products where a parent receives a notification if their child goes beyond a certain distance from a location. That’s Geo-fences in action. It is a virtual perimeter. With the right software and service, anytime someone or something is removed or enters this perimeter, you get a notification.

I think Chris did an excellent job outlining and explaining how this technology can be so valuable to a realtor. I encourage you to check it out. One thing that struck me is the many requests – where to find a solution who can do just that? My searches have come up empty – at least for a real estate industry. But I did find services that might be of interest and maybe with a little creativity can be adapted to any business.

• ShopAlerts by placecast. ShopAlerts seems to be the closest option to something that can be used for Realtors or any local business. Not knowing the ins and outs of the process and software I can’t say if it is the solution or not. Definitely looks promising.
• Foursquare. This is not a service like ShopAlerts. But it’s a sort of alert plus game all rolled into one. You tap into the Foursquare user base by listing your business and perhaps sweeten the pot by offering a goodie to them. Whenever a Foursquare user is around the vicinity of your business, they get an alert of the special you are running. As users visit or check-in to these places, they begin a ‘count’ and earn badges. That’s the game element. It’s all pretty interesting and I can certainly see how attractive this is.
• BlockChalk. This is is also user centered. Anyone can leave a message anywhere. For example, if you are a local coffee shop and really loving it, you can ‘chalk’ it – write a short message about it. Other users who are in the vicinity or enters the vicinity will get to see what you’ve written about that spot/area etc. There is no sign up and completely open.

For businesses like ours who are completely online without local presence, it may not always be clear how one can apply it. Yet, I think we need to start getting more local. Maybe Foursquare may not be the right one, I can see BlockChalk being an interesting springboard for offline workshops and stuff like that. If you’ve put this technology into action in your business, let us know and share your experiences below.

As for me, I love them because I get to play detective Internet Marketing forensics if you will. In this particular launch, I discovered what systems power the video and video players and the smart ways that simple, old Javascripts made the order process looked so super cool yet achieved the very important step of protecting the merchant by forcing users to agree to terms and conditions before ordering.

These are just a few things. The whole process and emails sent out are each worth of study. Yes, I do realize you won’t understand the full impact of what’s happening just by observation but observation has paid of well for me in all areas of life. Also, it is not my intention to copy their processes blindly. Merely to see what underlying technologies these guys use.

If you want to emulate the accept terms before the order button becomes active, here is the code.

Put this in your headers (between <head> and </head>), change out the Yahoo URL to your order URL

<script type="text/javascript" language="Javascript">
function agree_terms() {
  document.getElementById("Order").disabled=false;
}
function goOrder() {
  location.href='http://yahoo.com';
}
</script>

Put this checkbox next to your terms and agreements

<input onclick="agree_terms()" type="checkbox" name="chk" />

Put this where you want the order button to be

<button id="Order" disabled onclick="goOrder()">Click to order</button>

Of course, anyone who is web savvy can just override this and jump straight to the checkout page by viewing source, but the implication of having it there is important. Whether they actually click the button or not, the company has done its best to ensure people read and understand the terms. By ordering the product, the implication is, the customer has agreed to the terms. This is just my point of view as a developer. Not legal advise. Please check with your attorney.

Do you observe these launches with an open mind? What have you learned from them?

If your first instinct is to cringe, don’t feel bad, I did too.

Now, that doesn’t mean I feel there is anything damaging out there on me. I’ve been through several FBI checks (long story) so that’s not the kind of stuff you will find about me – ever. What made me queasy is the nagging thought of what an accumulation of this innocent information can be used for.

There are several tools and more popping up all over the Internet that can do this. Some call it social search, others call it people search. Spokeo is one of them and it’s kinda spooky. A quick import was all it took for me to find wish lists, favorite songs, pictures of family of people whom I barely know.

People search is nothing new. Back in 1998, I used the Internet to find out more about this guy I was talking to, to see if he’s the ‘real deal’. Side note, I ended up marrying him . But now, with the power of publishing in the masses’ hands, things change dramatically.

When you look at just your Twitter stream or your Facebook stream or your Flickr image. They don’t really say that much. But when you pool them into one spot, it says a ton about you. What dismayed me most is not the fact that you will find any ‘juicy’ bit of information about me. But, some sites are actually selling this information to businesses in order to ‘better understand’ their market.

This actually cuts me both ways. On one hand, I am the “Tech Based Marketer”. I am supposed to show and lead you to technology that can help you better market your business. So any tool that helps you along in that sense is, well, interesting. I would be so lying to you if I said it is not intrigriguing. It is. But on the other hand, I feel as businesses, we have a responsibility to our customers.

I don’t know, this is all very sticky because it could be compared to watching Twitter for trends or keywords which I absolutely do. On the other hand, that information is not in depth information about people. It’s collective data.

What say you?