Importance of Trade Shows in B2B Businesses

Trade shows are undoubtedly one of the best marketing tools in the modern marketing scenario. Unlike the huge business enterprises, Small and Medium enterprises (SME) can seldom spend huge amount of money on advertisements and other promotional tools. Brand promotion is one of the vital marketing tools that increase brand awareness among potential customers. Trade show is an ideal platform where it is possible to achieve maximum exposure and gain popularity. Through these shows it is easier to achieve maximum product visibility at an international level in a cost-effective manner which is most commonly done through online b2b business directories.

Role of Trade Shows in B2B Business

Today B2B marketers rely on trade shows to generate leads as it is the most effective and affordable marketing tools. Most of the companies participate in these shows to gain maximum visibility in the global arena. These companies set up booths and attract prospective clients or customers who are interested in their products and services.

These shows tend to attract people who have exhibited an interest in the products of a particular company. However, it is important to choose the right shows to showcase your products as target audiences are bound to change. Send free exhibit passes to your prospective clients or people who were interested in buying your products, so that they can visit your booths. Products can also be displayed for preview so as to generate leads. Customers or prospective clients can be provided with a small demo on various products if possible.

But it is pertinent to be completely updated on the products and services offered by the company so that it is easier to explain and demonstrate to your customers. Direct mails, phone calls, press releases and telemarketing are some of the best techniques to attract potential customers to your booth at trade shows.

These shows are a great opportunity to know more about the requirements of your potential customers. It is possible to conduct brief surveys as it helps the business to grow.

Trade shows are beneficial to B2B marketers only when they engage in follow up activities. For the success of trade shows, it is necessary to pass only qualified leads so that it can be molded to yield high revenue.

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Growth Statistics for Industries that Kept on Rolling in 2012

Just like every year, it is the time to evaluate the growth performance of different industries. 2012 witnessed some promising industries fulfilling the growth expectations. Technological advancements as well as human efforts continued to add new dimensions to the businesses in different sectors. Statistical evaluations of some of the top industries should present a better picture.

Big data industry maintained the steady growth rate of nearly 2% this year as well. The industry, as anticipated in the beginning of 2012, showed 6-7 times more growth than other technology-reliant sectors. The IT industry in the countries like India proved to be another winner of the year. Software export from the country in particular recorded the growth of about 11%, with substantial contribution from the growing SME sector.

Healthcare and wellness industry attained the mark of being a trillion dollar industry in 2012. The recent US Census Bureau’s report has announced the annual revenue of the industry at $1.668 trillion. The closely related elder care industry is another worth mentioning achiever for the year.

Cloud computing grew significantly over the year. Many credit the industry’s growth to the HIPAA act that instructed secure storage of health records. A number of surveys report that the industry will attain value between $120 billion and $140 billion in the next two years. With profit margins of the IT consulting industry increasing by more than 8% every year, it is another name that deserves mention in the list.

Environment consulting maintained the annual growth rate of about 40% and residential construction industry recorded growth by 18% in 2012. Mobile game developing industry is growing by nearly 400% every year and this year was not an exception. E-commerce industry grew by 10-11% from 2007 to 2012 and is certainly going to expand further.

Region wise industrial growth statistics are also notable in different categories. For example, the banking industry in Cambodia recorded 30% increase in the amount that the country’s banks lent to different sectors. The tourism industry in Calgary boasts of growth by 6.5%.

Other industries that made to the list include VoIP services, biotechnology, video gaming, warehousing, shipping and outsourcing industries.

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Effects of Economical Slowdown on Import-Export Business

Life and economy, both are like a symphony of up and down notes. So, if the economy can peak, it can bow down as well. In fact, the latter scenario is occurring more now days. And even when it doesn’t, the commercial market is always vulnerable to the threat of an economical slowdown. An economical slowdown is a phase where financial trends pertain to growing unemployment, unhealthy stock market, decrease in GDP, and drop in personal income & sales etc. As a decline in the GDP translates to economical slowdown, this period precedes recession.

As economy and the business sector, both have a major commercial angle hence the slowdown in the former would affect the latter for sure. The initial effect is the decline in the consumer spending because of the loss in income (it’s the spending that drives much of an economy). Any economy consists of imports and exports by parts. So, less spending translates to less demand; less demand eventually converts to less supply. Hence, the chain of import and export gets affected severely. This chain worsens during the post economic process – the recession.

The commercial entities getting affected by a slowdown would try cutting down some of the below tasks:

• No or less hiring of new employees
• No or less buying of new equipment and machinery
• Limiting or a complete restrain on research and development
• May be no new product rollouts

On the overall, expenditures are reduced in everything from marketing to production and so on.

Economical slowdowns affect the import and export business like a viscous cycle; one thing goes down, then another and the effect multiples. Due to slowdowns, companies’ stock price and dividends may decline; the investment in public companies gets decreased due to the ‘investment withdrawal’ phenomenon.

In addition, it has been observed that during and post slowdowns, marketing strategies get altered. And on such occasions, the import-export business planning is chaos, leading to more chaos. Lastly, not everything gets affected negatively as many manufacturers try to get even with the import-export loss by flooding the local market with goods and services laced with attractive discounts and products at throwaway prices.

B2B Business Resources: Business Directory | Products Catalog

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Paid and Free Online Business Promotion Tools – An Overview

Business and marketing are so closely related that these aspects often cross the line of interchangeability. Talent will defeat marketing any day,’ goes a famous saying. Very true!! But how about a situation where the best of products are coated with the best of promotional programs? The result would be absolutely fantabulous.

To give an idea, you might offer the best of products but what if the target audience isn’t aware of it? This story is synonymous to the era of 60s and 70s where the scope of publicity was fully welded with aspects of requirements. Times have changed and so are the market conditions and even the scope.

Times have changed, from the concept of world is a stage to internet is the stage. In terms of business, every aspect gets sprinkled with the internet syndrome; from marketing to R & D, from futuristic scope to social promotion, anything and everything has an internet aided aspect.

Talking about the scope of online business promotion methods, these techniques can be divided into 2 broader aspects, one being paid online business promotion methods and second being the free ones for which the marketing team needs to utilize their experience and skills.

Paid methods include surveys, contests, coupons, advertisements and SEO services while free methods include providing online tours, bookmarking and feedback forms etc.

SEO services include using HTML codes and advertisements via search engines and popular websites so that these can hit the right audience. There are many websites which provide paid and even free surveys; using them is like getting a fair idea of what your target audience is expecting and also about how well your product will excel. Contests are a nice way of attracting thousands of users and paying only a couple of them.

Paid methods, no doubt pierce more but free online business promotion if targeted properly can go a long way. An online tour is a way of picturizing products and aspects which matter, via a small series of a combination of pictures and information. Loading your website with online tours prior and post launching of products helps a lot.

Same way, offering to bookmark (website page) is like leaving an impression on the audience, now and even in the future (when the user stumbles upon the bookmark). Feedback forms are a nice way to check if the promotion is enough (more promotion is needed if the users provide feedback that they aren’t aware of some aspects) and this also helps to understand future forecasting.

Whoever said the world has grown smaller might have an intuition about the scope and ability of the internet. All in all, it can be definitely concluded that no online presence aka no online business promotion can be safely considered as: no presence.

B2B Business Resources:
Trade Leads | Business Directory | Product Catalog

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