I’ve always used exhibitions as a core part of my marketing strategy. At my first exhibition I picked up 100 leads and converted 70 of them into paying clients over the course of the year. When I tell this story people are always astounded – they don’t often find they have such a profitable experience! So I’d like to share with you, in a nutshell, how I did it, and how you can do the same.

1. Be clear about why you’re going. Set yourself realistic goals and make sure your marketing collateral and stand design is set up to help you achieve them.
2. Understand why the visitors are going to the exhibition. What do they expect of you? How can you fulfil their needs (most people get it wrong by pushing what they want to sell at visitors – try coming at it from a different angle!)
3. Create a stand with wow factor. A couple of posters you printed out at home won’t cut it. Be creative, set the scene and allow a little time for wow factor. Think styling! You can see an example of a stand we designed for Photographer Matt Pereira on our blog.
4. If you want to sell products on the day, run a compelling offer (10% off won’t cut it!). Think big discounts, gifts with purchase or bundle offers that compel people to buy now.
5. Selling a service? Think about what you want people to do next – book an appointment perhaps? Create a small “taster” session so that people can try you out without too much commitment. Most of the 70 people that bought from me spent �49 on some business cards. It was a low-value order that enabled people to try us out without having to think too hard. What could you do?
6. Bring your product or service to life. Offer tastings, trials or demonstrations.
7. Run a relevant (not bottle of champagne) competition to gain targeted leads.
8. Try and get a speaker slot if that’s your bag – you’ll boost your exposure and demonstrate your expertise.
9. Be creative with the giveaways. Do people really want another pen? Try and think of something creative that reinforces your brand message. We give away seeds because we help people grow their businesses!
10. Schedule in time before the exhibition for the follow up. Make sure you’ve blocked out at least a couple of days to follow up on all your leads – if you don’t, your competitors will!
11. Have a robust communication plan and be persistent. I converted 70% of my leads because I kept in touch, I called every single one of them and I made sure I kept them on my postal and email distribution lists.
12. Review the event and think about what you could do differently next time.

Getting this right is hard work, but it’s absolutely worth it. If you’ve got an exhibition coming up why not join me on 18th March for a morning of exhibition planning! I’ll walk you through each step to ensure you get the most out of the opportunity. Workshop: How to use exhibitions to grow your business.

This post was taken from my Marvellous Marketing Tips newsletter. If you’d like to be added to the list simply email the studio studio@flourishstudios.co.uk and ask to sign up (just until we get a more sophisticated mechanism in place!).

We have just found out that Flourish have been awarded Best Prestige Design in printing.com’s Annual Design Awards. The competition which pulls together top talent from more than 300 design agencies has been running for six years now, and Flourish (and Guildford printing.com) have won no less than four awards in that time.

We’re delighted that the Wedding Community’s brochure has won because it’s a piece that we planned, copywrote, designed and printed. We also created the branding for the company, which only launched back in October, so to have picked up an award so soon is a huge accolade!

Huge pat on the back to all the team that worked on this, especially designers Chloe and Rob.

More than 85 businesses registered in Flourish’s Win a Logo competition at the Best of Richmond’s Networking Expo last week. There could only be one winner, and that winner was Keeler Estate Agency.

Managing Director Nicola said

“We just wanted to say how chuffed we are to hear that we have won the prize of a Premium Corporate Identity ‘overhaul’. I am really excited to see what you and your team come up with for Keeler & Co!”

Watch this space! We’re meeting with Nicola this week and are looking forward to finding out more about her plans for her business and the image she’d like to project. We’ll be posting the progress over the coming weeks…

Caroline, the Flourish Studio Manager and I had a fabulously productive Friday afternoon brainstorming session with super-stylish social photographer Matt Pereira. Alongside large slices of homemade mocha cake, Matt’s trademark heart cookies and plenty of cups of tea we managed to make a lot of progress on the Matt Pereira Baby and Family brands.

There’s a lot of love for the work we’ve been doing on Matt’s Wedding photography brand but as resident photographer on Baby Surrey magazine it was time to pick up the pace with the family and baby brands (as well as working out just how they all fit together).

Step one was to define exactly what impression we wanted to create with each brand. We selected three keywords for each (baby: innocent, natural, uninhibited; family: fun, connection, energy) which guided us throughout the session.

We then got to work cutting. We’d all brought in inspirational books, magazines, paper and fabric swatches and ribbons. We also had our Pantone books in the office for colour planning. At this point we weren’t editing too heavily: just cutting images, objects and words that represented each brand best.

Step Three was the debate. Editing out choices down into a cohesive look and feel. Thankfully it didn’t get too heated! You can see the full cut on the left – baby to the foreground, family at the back. We pretty much took every image and discussed how it fitted with the brand keywords. Those that fitted got to stay, those that didn’t were binned.

What the finished result gave us was a really clear picture of how we’d like the finished collateral to look and feel. It’s not a template for design, more a spark for creativity and inspiration.

And here’s the finished baby board, complete with colour swatches. The colours most certainly took the longest as once we’ve found the right summer colours we then needed to make sure that they all worked together. I think Matt was a little surprised at quite how long we spend perfecting a particular hue of purple!

Our final step, once we’d completed each mood board, was to come up with a wish list of collateral, finishes, textures and ideas to promote each brand. Of course not all will be implemented straight away, but at least we have some clear direction for the year ahead.

And here’s the finished family mood board (complete with a family you right recognise bottom left!).

I know Caroline and I found the session invaluable in short-cutting and enriching the process of building a visual identity for Matt’s baby and family brands. Of course there’s a lot more work to do: we now need to start artworking the logos, brochure and websites. But importantly, both the Creative Directors and client are in agreement about the overall direction of the brand, and we both have an incredibly clear understanding of where we want to take the image.

I was talking to a potential client today who (not for the first time this week – I’ve had many similar conversations with other business owners) is tearing her hair out because she’s had a new website designed that she knows isn’t quite hitting the mark, but she can’t quite put her finger on why.

After a brief conversation we identified the issues: insipid stock photography, clunky use of fonts and a less than inspiring layout.

“To be fair to the designer” she said “I wasn’t really quite sure what I was looking for, so I probably haven’t given him a very good brief”

“That’s not your job!” I wanted to scream!

This poor, poor lady was beating herself up because she’d failed to choose the right stock photos, failed to tell her designer exactly what she wanted; and as a result, the design produced was less than impressive.

Your job as a client is to give your designer the answers to the questions he asks you. I sincerely believe it’s not your job to tell him what you want and where and just get him to “construct” your vision. If you do that you’ll get back, at best, what you wanted. You probably won’t get what your business needs.

So what do you really need?

When I meet with a client on any project we don’t discuss colours, fonts or layouts. I ask the client about her objectives, her business and her clients. We talk about her goals for this piece of marketing literature and we get to grips with the messages she wants to communicate. We might also talk about her brand identity (if she has one) and we’ll certainly talk about the impression she wants the piece to create.

At no point do I expect the client to tell me how she wants the piece of design to look. And I actively discourage any client from creating a mockup!

What’s the point? You work with a creative, insightful and intuitive designer to add value to your business. You shouldn’t be expected to provide a steer on the design – that’s what you’re paying us for! Sure you need to give a decent brief – but it’s down to the designer (or Account Manager in my company) to ask insightful questions and draw the right information out of you!

You know what results your business needs. And if you can relay that information to a graphic designer you trust, they will be able to provide you with the collateral you need to achieve that result.

Now I appreciate that this level of design doesn’t come cheap. But it’s worth investing in for peace of mind, the value it’ll add to your business and the fact that you can get on with doing what you do best and leave the design to the experts.

So next time you brief a designer, listen carefully to the questions they ask you. Do they reassure you that they really understand you? Really care about the result you’re looking for this piece? Or are they just trying to please you by giving you what you want?

On Tuesday night I had the pleasure of judging “Best Exhibition Stand” at the Best of Richmond’s Networking Expo. Nick Taimitahara and his team had put a huge amount of effort into ensuring that his exhibitors made the most of the opportunity. Not only did Nick employ an expert to run a seminar on how to exhibit (ahem… yes, that was me) he also bought each and every exhibitor a copy of my book and broke the tasks down into weekly, manageable chunks to give everyone the best possible opportunity.

So as you can expect, the standard was incredibly high. Every exhibitor had gone to a huge effort to ensure they presented their very best self to the 850 visitors that attended the expo at Twickenham Stadium.

Judging was really hard as there were several stands worthy of a mention. My two runners up were Strictly Marketing for their impactful stand (guys, if you have any photos email them to me and I’ll post them up here) and Barefaced Marketing for her sheer effort (she baked 250 cupcakes and made a branded cushion!). But there could only be one winner, and that was deservedly the Marble Hill pub.

As soon as I saw Oliver and his team wheeling in a full size olive tree (I kid you not!) I knew we were in for a treat! Oliver had recreated not just the styling, but also the atmosphere of his pub and there was a real buzz surrounding his stand. I’m sure the mini pies and the passionfruit and vanilla cocktails had a lot to do with that too, but the staff on the stand really engaged with the visitors – which is exactly what you’d expect from a pub, but not usually what you’d get!

The photos of the stand really don’t show it off to it’s full potential – blame the camera (I mistakenly left mine at home…). But the chairs, bar, wallpaper and (now empty) wine rack really created an atmosphere.

Congrats to Oliver John, Mike and Mike for a tremendous effort! Mr H and I will be popping in to see the “real” bar very soon…

As a brand champion and fan of fonts first, and web designer second, I’ve always been frustrated about the lack of (reliable) font choice when it comes to designing websites. After all, just how much fun can you really have with Arial, Verdana, Times and Trebuchet? (I’m already sounding like I need to get out more…).

So you can probably imagine just how excited I was when I got this email from Font Shop announcing the arrival of 30 (yes, 30!) web safe fonts. And I’m sure that it won’t be completely reliable, won’t work across all browsers, and will most likely just give the likes of most of us a headache. But surely it’s an exciting step in the right direction?

A jubilant Kim and David of the Wedding Community returned from the National Wedding Show last weekend and as we have helped them plan their stand, design their website and create their brand identity, how could I resist sharing the story with you?

The Wedding Community is a social networking site for engaged couples and their friends and family. The marketing plan for the Wedding Community has two streams: to gain more members, and to gain more advertisers. The National Wedding Show was mostly about gaining more members, which will, in turn, enable the company to boost their advertising revenue. The exhibition was also about raising awareness in the community and building a brand presence.

Judging by Kim’s comments, the show achieved all three – in spades!

“We had an amazing show with over 800 people entering our competition. We will let you know the outcome of the show but looks like a great success.”

We planned a simple but impactful stand based around the Wedding Community’s branding. Bespoke “wallpaper”, homely furniture and a branded plinth added to the professional and anything-but-average look, without costing a fortune. Many of the items the Wedding Community can (and will) use again, which keeps costs to a minimum.

The whole stand was themed around the strapline plan, inspire, connect and had a number of initiatives planned to help communicate that message. We made full use of the Wedding Community’s expert advisors with five minute expert talks (the plan and inspire bit!) throughout the day. This drew a crowd and brought the concept of the experts to life.

Yarwood-White, one of the Wedding Community’s experts had also given a prize of £250 worth of bridal jewellery, which certainly helped the Wedding Community gain their 800 competition entries. These entries have enabled the Wedding Community to build a targeted list of brides and grooms to be. Naturally they are being very careful about how they use the data, but it has been a great way of building a list, boosting brand awareness and building relationships with potential members and advertisers.

Imagine if you could create a brand so iconic that it would not only provide an attractive, engaging and compelling identity for your brand; but would also become a design icon it it’s own right. And perhaps seventy, eighty years down the line, you’d be selling products bearing that very design as a revenue stream.

I’m a huge fan of the retro Penguin books identity: and it seems like I’m not the only one. The Penguin brand has recently taken on a life of it’s own with mugs, posters, stationery and tea towels to name just a few. Stores such as Bloomsbury (one of my favourites) and Art Meets Matter are chokka with more Penguin books merchandise than you can shake a stick at.

It seems that there’s no stopping the iconic brand, and whatever Wikipedia might say about the publisher’s fortunes the merchandise is only growing in popularity. So what can we learn about the brand? Just why is it so irresistible to us?

Simple, clean, iconic design. The best designs are simple, not overly fussy, and engaging. Penguin ticks all these boxes with the icon that has just the right level of personality (without being overly cute or kitsch), a clear “3 band” design and a simple colour palette.

Logical use of colour. Penguin haven’t just thrown colours on the book covers depending on how they feel in the morning, they’ve separated each genre into a different colour for ease of use. Very simple, but effective at the same time.

Consistent (but not boring) brand identity. The simplicity of the brand identity: a palette of colours, the Gill Sans font, the 3 band layout means that all the books look like they’ve come from the same company. Could you put all of your literature together over a period of ten years and say the same thing?

Engaging colours. Intense, rich, Autumnal colours are both engaging and yet intellectual at the same time. Which seem to fit very well with Allen Lane’s aim of producing high quality paperbacks for the same price as a packet of cigarettes. According to the official story

“We believed in the existence in this country of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price, and staked everything on it.” Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books

The retro revival. Nostalgia is big right now. Think “Keep Calm and Carry On”, think the Ladybird books (oh the joy of finding Peter and Jane books all over again – I loved them!). Does it have something to do with us buttoning down the hatches in the recession and craving the safety-net of nostalgia? Who knows?

All I know is that I love the iconic brand that is Penguin books… Put me down for a couple of those deckchairs…

A huge thank you to the 80+ guests who braved torrential rain to support Flourish at our launch party at Loseley Park last night. After months of planning, designing, cutting, sticking, glueing and sourcing, I can’t believe that it’s all over!

We had a fantastic evening, including surprise entertainment from the Undercover Superstars (more on that later…), gorgeous Magenta cupcakes and plenty of blinis and bellinis to make the evening go with a swing!

Clients, my family and some of our biggest supporters were at the party which we held to celebrate the launch of our design and marketing company, Flourish, which we’re running alongside printing.com in Guildford. Flourish will build on the design, branding and marketing work that we’ve always done as a printing.com franchise; but the new name and brand identity allows us to communicate so much more powerfully the true message of what we do.

After just three weeks I can’t believe how many doors it’s opened for us (I feel a proper blog post on that subject coming very soon…).

Back to the party… Wow! Don’t you look lovely!

You may have noticed that we use a gilt frame illustration in our branding, and we thought it might be fun to invite guests to have their photos taken in the frame. They then hung them on a velvet “washing line” along with a message on one of our Flourish postcards. It was a fun icebreaker and has meant that we have a permanent installation for our meeting room now.

The flowers in my kitchen… and below, Rona turning them into something spectacular…

Rona, my multitalented PA created the most stunning flower arrangements. I had trekked up to Covent Garden Flower market on the Tuesday to buy flowers that were “on brand” and she put together the most perfectly vibrant, relaxed and generally gorgeous bouquets (including one for my mum and one for Caroline in my emotional speech!).

The entertainment

I never get nervous about public speaking, but there was something about a room full of my most inspirational clients, colleagues and family that meant that the pressure was on!

Suffice to say that there were plenty of tears and voice cracking moments as I talked about Chloe’s Count the Kicks Campaign (the Flourish Foundation charity of the month), and the support I’ve received from my mum and dad, Caroline and the team, and my lovely husband.

After that I was rudely upstaged by “Geoff Baintree”, success coach who insisted on singing me his rendition of Simply The Best and telling the audience about his business. Embarrassingly he’d been pushing his (free and badly designed) business cards on the guests all evening. A waitress had to ask him to leave, and the Chef got up to apologise… And to show us all how it was done. He burst into a rendition of “I feel good” – little did the guests know that all three were the Undercover Superstars! They gave a fantastic performance, and anyone who was under the mistaken impression that the night was a “networking event” soon got into the party spirit once the Undercover Superstars had performed!

Video courtesy of Karen Skidmore’s iPhone! Thanks Karen

The whole room was jigging, and Sarah from Open Door even managed to get up for a dance with Geoff!

The going home presents

Guests were handed goody bags packed with a signed copy of my book, rainbow chard seeds (because they’re beautiful and productive), Chocolate Alchemist organic chocolate and one of our fabulous Flourish folders.

I had also planned to make 80 cupcakes myself, as I like to think of myself as a bit of a domestic goddess, but thankfully I realised that this was one job too many. And thankfully the fabulous Tracy from Magenta Cakes stepped in to bake and ice the cupcakes which went down a storm. Keep an eye out for her newly branded website very soon…

Thank you so, so much for all your good wishes, encouraging words and general support. It really means a lot, and it was lovely to see so many of the inspirational people that have supported us on our journey there last night. There are far too many to mention, hopefully you know who you are.