February 17, 2010 (Mentor, OH) – The Rogers Company (www.therogersco.com) has expanded its presence in the Northeast by opening a sales office in Rochester, New York. Brenda Newman will be heading the East Avenue office. Newman brings over 17 years of experience to her new role having worked with a range of national and global clients from Fortune 500 companies to small startups and everything in between.

“We are very excited about this expansion,” said Jeffrey Blackwell, president of The Rogers Company. “Newman brings the expertise and dedication to customer service that we need to capitalize on opportunities as the economy begins to recover.”

Newman is enjoying the culture of The Rogers Company, which emphasizes building partnerships with its clients, employees and suppliers while fostering its goal of helping clients achieve the highest return on investment possible from trade shows. This philosophy is highlighted by the company’s recent launch of Return on Exhibiting, an approach that guarantees 100% lead follow-up post show.

“We ultimately want our clients to succeed in the short and long term,” said Newman. “Rogers’ partnership approach fits perfectly with my mantra of putting client service first.”

Newman is looking forward to working with clients in a wide range of markets, but sees opportunity in green technology such as wind and solar power.

“I have experience working with manufacturers and suppliers to the wind energy sector and I see growth opportunity in industries that supply green technologies,” said Newman. “I can also work with any company on making their exhibit displays more green. The design and build teams at Rogers are a terrific resource for finding green materials that fit budget and design requirements.”

About Rogers

For over 65 years, The Rogers Company has been an award winning designer and manufacturer of branded environments for trade show exhibits, corporate events, lobbies, show rooms and retail environments – essentially any place where communicating a brand is vital. In addition to its 3D marketing services, The Rogers Company is also a full service trade show and event implementation partner providing turnkey services and support for its corporate clients throughout the country.

With its complete design staff, skilled craftsman and construction facilities, Rogers can custom build a wide range of branded environments to suit any need. Through its strategic partner network, the company also provides a wide range of portable and modular display solutions, support and logistics for international trade shows and an extensive rental inventory of both custom and portable display products.

Additionally through its partner network, Rogers provide Eventelligence TM, a technology, infrastructure service for event registration, event mapping and way-finding systems, lead retrieval, lead tracking, fulfillment services and various RFID solutions for focused trade shows and events.

For more information on the Rogers Company, please visit www.therogersco.com or contact Brenda directly at brendanewman@rochester.rr.com, (585) 698-5229.

The following is first in a three-part series on Trade Show ROI.  The Rogers Company just launched an initiative on Trade Show ROI called Return on Exhibiting.

Determining trade show ROI is a long road paved with facts and stats, but like the old saying goes, every long journey starts with the first step, so when beginning the journey of determining trade show ROI, start with what you know.

Instead of beginning with so many unknowns, start with something you do know. Ostensibly you know your customers — they’re a wealth of knowledge about your trade shows and events and your overall marketing program. They can tell you what’s working and what’s not.

So it’s easy, right? If a customer says: “I met you at a trade show and liked what I saw. Three months later, I purchased your product.” then you can put them solidly in the trade show ROI column, right? Hold on! What about the brochure they received? What about the advertisement? What about the call from the salesman? Doesn’t all that count? Isn’t there a way to determine which of those things contributed most to the sale?

There’s no easy way to tell because at that point you’re trying to get inside your customer’s head. Asking them to determine which marketing tool had more influence would require some very sophisticated survey techniques that may not get you to the truth. So how do you get useful information from your customers?

1.) Start with a profile

Divide your customers into broad categories: Completely new customers who basically “walked in the front door”; returning regulars who seem very loyal to your brand and methodical clients who researched a long time before making a decision. These can be anything you want, but limit it to four or five categories. These profiles will help you organize information more easily as you identify what kinds of customers you have and why they bought from you.

2.) Look at Their Stories

Why did these customers buy from you? What influenced their decision? Where did they talk to you or first hear about you? This “customer narrative” gathers the facts about how and why you made a sale and continue to make sales.

Existing sales can also tell us what the gateways are to a sale and how they’re connected. So if a customer says that they were influenced by an advertisement, a trade show, and a sales call, try to put that together into a story. Which came first and what followed thereafter? What wouldn’t have happened without the other?

3.) Look at the Facts

It’s important to create some pertinent facts about your sales and marketing. How many companies that appear on your lead list, are actually already customers? How many customers came to your booth at a trade show? How many leads did you collect? How many of these leads were followed-up?

These hard facts help separate theory from reality. Many times people at all levels of business have pet theories about marketing activities. Make sure that, at the very least, you understand some of the things that are working. There will still be a lot of holes in your knowledge, but at least you’ll know what you know and what you need still need to learn.

4.) Determine What You’re Losing

There’s a story from WWII that is possibly fanciful, but could shed some light on this problem. Looking at returning bombers from missions over Europe, aircraft designers were trying to figure out which parts of the planes to add extra armor. They could see heavy damage in certain parts of the planes more than others, but finally decided to place armor exactly where the damage didn’t exist. Why?

The theory was that the planes damaged in those areas, simply didn’t return from their missions.

You have the same issue in determining ROI or the effectiveness of your trade show campaign. Your customers can tell you which tactic worked for them — but look for the piece that is consistently missing. Where are you not reaching customers? Why aren’t they finding you? If you’re getting customers A,B, and C, why not D,E, and F? Build on what’s working but also examine if some of things that aren’t effective for customers A, B, and C might work for the others. In the end focus on what works with each specific market or customer and leave everything else behind.

Finally, there’s no magic answer to ROI. But there is a process for determining what is working within your company and what is not. It may sound simple to do more of what’s working and less of what’s not — but that’s the essence of successful marketing. A trade show is no different. Your quest for ROI really is a quest for more leads and, ultimately, more sales. Instead of cutting based on lack of ROI or poorly defined ROI, use the tools above to determine where the shortfall is and concentrate on fixing it.

In this video, Christine Peterson, CMO from TripAdvisor, talks about marketing in tough times to consumers by highlighting value.  But what she’s really marketing in transparency.  Many of the new features that TripAdvisor offers just uncover the true price of a plane ticket and the true comparison of pricing on different items such as hotels and resort packages. 

This is a very smart approach that can apply to many businesses.  If customers are asking for lower costs without really comparing fairly, they’re losing and you’re losing.  If customers are given tools to see exactly what the costs are, then they will see where true value is.  This can ultimately be more appealing than the lowest price tag.

The problem is that we usually operate in an environment where low price is king and partnerships are just a reason to bring down prices past the point of profitability (See JB’s Space: What’s A True Partnership).  Laying the groundwork for customers to compare apples to apples, be transparent in business practices may be a better strategy in tough times than simply trying to offer the lowest price.

Marketing value can be tricky, but transparency can help you avoid a commodity spiral and build business based on true partnerships.

This article from Terry Stanfield, outlines the basics of creating relationship via the telephone. It’s an interesting aspect of sales and generating leads that’s often over looked. While email makes communication fast, it is also very impersonal. Face to face meetings are always best but fuel costs can make some think twice before crossing the country…or even crossing town.

The good old fashioned telephone however, is intimate, cheap and very personal. The focus of the article on creating relationship is key. Afterall, most of our experiences with unsolicited phone calls is negative. Like all sales, the rejection rate must be horrific, yet the investment in time does build relationships with prospects that could lead to a sale. Depending on your product that could be either a phone call away or a meeting set up during the call. Read the full story