Summary:

Theaters across the NAB Show floor offer a great opportunity to share your expertise on a particular topic or technology — and they can be a valuable tool for lead generation too.

Cindy Zuelsdorf of Kokoro Marketing explains how to fold SMS marketing into your live presentation to learn more about your audience, capture more leads, and offer greater value to attendees. Read her recent blog post, titled “Essential Steps to SMS Marketing,” to find out how to leverage SMS marketing during your next live speaking engagement.

Essential Steps to SMS Marketing

If you’ve ever presented at a trade show or another speaking engagement, you know how much work it can be to get everything ready! Your outline, diagrams, photos, and more — doing it right takes time.

And that’s why I find it so painful to see a friend, colleague, or customer give a great presentation and then walk away without any lead in hand. No new connections, no feedback, no way to follow up! It doesn’t have to be that way.

When you’re presenting, you’re in front of an audience with the opportunity to share your message. You’ve put in the time and effort to offer information of value. Don’t stop there! It’s the perfect time to ask your audience to engage. They’ve already chosen to attend your presentation. Now make it easy for them to continue the conversation with you. That’s where SMS marketing can be a super useful tool.

During a recent presentation on marketing automation, I put one of my favorite SMS marketing tools to work. I just took a minute out of my presentation to offer a free resource, available to anyone who texted a specific keyword to me. “Pull out your phone quick and text me to get your free download of my Marketing Master Plan.” It’s that simple! All you need is a piece of content — a diagram, case study, white paper, guide, checklist, etc. — that helps to educate the reader.

Provide your phone number and a keyword that wouldn’t be used in any other text message. (You’ll be using it to trigger an automated response delivering a download link.) Everyone wins! People in the audience get information they can use, and you get the details you need to follow up and see if you can offer any other useful information or services. (I always like to build an open-ended question into the automated sequence to help keep the conversation going.)

One great thing about this SMS marketing tool is that it works so well in so many different situations — for both live events and recorded events. Whether you’re doing a podcast, webinar, or other speaking engagement, just drop in your keyword mention. You can use the same keyword every time, pick a keyword related to the speaking event, or choose different keywords if you are offering multiple downloads. (Use this technique to segment your audiences by interest area!)

Next Steps:

Ask yourself, “What do my potential customers want or need?” And what kind of content do you have already that might satisfy that need? You may be surprised what you find when you start digging or asking around. Even a simple guide or checklist can be a valuable resource that will benefit members of your audience.

Carry on the conversation! SMS isn’t the only way to connect with your trade show audience. Once you’ve started the conversation, offer them opportunities to connect on other platforms. Maybe they prefer social media, email communications, or a good old phone call. Reaching out to customers 3 different ways is key these days. Some options include:

Email
LinkedIn
Facebook
WhatsApp
Facebook messenger/chatbot
Evaluation or consult
Zoom/GoToMeeting
YouTube
Phone call
Online meeting
Webinar
Demo
Facebook Live
What did I miss? (LMK!)

Is your NAB Amplify listing and booth listing filled out and are you using your guest pass code? When someone uses your code, you get their contact info and can start a conversation with them. So easy!

Using SMS marketing is a simple way to get the most out of your next speaking engagement. Don’t let your hard work go to waste. You’ve set up the perfect situation, and all you need to do is take an extra minute to offer bonus content and invite engagement. If you’d like to talk tactics further, feel free to get in touch! I love helping businesses get the most out of every opportunity — and trade show presentations are a no-brainer!

NAB Show Webinar – Lead Follow-up After the Show

Trade Shows: Single Most Important Way to Win. Cindy Z with special guest Jefferson Davis.

7 Marketing Basics Course – Learn the tactics and systems we use with clients every day. [Including Trade Show Promo, Meeting/Demo Campaign, and Trade Show Follow-up]

What people are saying about Kokoro

Team Kokoro actively feeds my obsession with results! They know their craft inside and out, and Cindy’s extensive knowledge of InfusionSoft and digital marketing is truly impressive. Her professionalism shines through in everything she does!

Carolyn Archambault Director, Marketing & Communications at Embrionix

Even though I’d meet prospects at trade shows and have a great conversation, things would go cold after an email or two because I simply didn’t have time to follow up and nurture that relationship. If I didn’t hear back from them, I was onto the next thing. Since we started working with Kokoro, we’ve definitely become more engaged with our customers. Now we’ve got a lot going on, but I don’t have to physically do all the work. And our marketing work is turning into leads and sales. That’s the biggest impact for us.

Jill Sorgi Director of Sales and Marketing, Challenger Communications

Cindy is terrific to work with - professional, enthusiastic and highly motivated to thrill her clients. My favorite part about working with Cindy is she has a consistent passion for understanding customer problems and solutions from their point of view - and seeks to write and talk about them in the language they use. This a sign of a skilled marketer.

Alan Repech Data-driven Marketer in Media and Entertainment and Pro A/V

I was on our stand at our biggest exhibition of the year and a colleague asked me, “Does the work that Kokoro do for you actually do anything, do you measure it?” I pointed to a demo happening right next to us and said, “That guy is here because of the email promotion we did. He replied to the email and set up the appointment. In fact, the 10 appointments we have this morning are a result of our work with Kokoro.”

Saifudin Mohd. Sani Regional Manager at Techtel

The crew at Kokoro Marketing was great to work with. Cindy and her team helped us out by providing some of the content creation and writing for our video marketing campaigns that my team and I didn't have time to do. They did the video editing, blog post, wrote several email marketing pieces, created the social media post templates for us to us, the video description, video transcript, and gave it to use in an easy to use format for us to then push it out in our marketing. Thank you!

Heidi Steffen Chief Revenue Officer at TitanTV, Inc; Marketing Manager at The Linn County Fair; Vice Chair of ATBA

In a word, Cindy is “amazing.” She’s a marketing expert who understands complex technical concepts like an engineer and is able to explain them through her marketing. In the past I have struggled finding marketing professionals who understand the broadcast television markets and technology. Cindy gets it. She is able to explain and speak to customer pain and present solutions through marketing. She’s an expert at marketing automation (especially but not limited to InfusionSoft), email marketing, online lead generation, Facebook ads, social media marketing, LinkedIn marketing, graphic design, webinar marketing, white paper or ebook marketing, content marketing and so much more. She stays up to date with the latest marketing trends and automation tools. Cindy is a valued member of the VidOvation marketing team. She is a true pleasure to work with and I highly recommend her.

Jim Jachetta, MS EE CTO, VidOvation

People remember people who treat them well, and Cindy understands this. She makes every client feel special, no matter how large or small, and she helps her clients do the same for their prospects and customers. After all, a small customer today might just wind up being your next big customer!

Jessica Colyer Director of Business Development and Customer Care, D2D Technologies

Cindy is such an incredible marketer, but also one of the most amazing business owners skilled at sales and the sales process. Cindy knows how to maintain control of the conversation while really making her prospective clients comfortable to ensure they get their needs met. Cindy is great at helping prospective clients see areas of opportunity they may not see themselves that are in their business by asking great specific questions. If Iwas a business owner seeking a head of sales position, I would do everything i could to poach Cindy away from her own business because she is amazing in growing businesses!

Kristina Rueling Regional Partner Manager at Keap

All of this is a whole lot of awesomeness! Thank you for taking the time to read, watch, and understand Vizrt’s key messaging in our content, and spice it up to the next level. The copy within each email is exactly what I was hoping to see, and only wish I had the time to write.

Melanie Crandall Freding AMECS Demand Generation Manager

We’ve been working together for 1 year and have developed all kinds of simple, efficient, cost-effective marketing emails for DekTec. Cindy understands that the key to success is providing simple, meaningful information about products, technology and market to our customer base. She advises us on what works and what doesn’t, helps us develop the content and handles all the work to make it happen successfully. Results in terms of visibility and sales are obvious. Cindy and her team have the right approach to modern marketing in today’s over-communicated-with-no-real-substance world. I would recommend Kokoro and Cindy in a heartbeat.

Stephanie Billat General Manager, DekTec America Inc.

Emotion Systems is a small company, but marketing automation allows us to punch well above our class. Without significantly increasing our overhead, we’ve been able to turn a successful organization into a much more successful organization.

MC Patel Founder & CEO, Emotion Systems

Cindy helped me launch my new consulting business last year. She has a keen sense of the market and was quickly able to connect with my customers, launch a web portal, and helped me become relevant in LinkedIn. She is also very agile and able to pivot a marketing plan when the need arises. She is a joy to work with.

Chris Homer

I am new to Cindy’s service on LinkedIn, it is refreshing to see immediate results from a marketing campaign. I have a fairly narrow target market and the results after 2 weeks have been amazing. Cindy and Fallon have been great to work with and really know how to get results. If you are using LinkedIn as a marketing platform, you need to see what they can do. Their follow-up and follow-through are the best. They deliver!

Jay Maynard Meemic Insurance Company

The pre-NAB campaign we did with Kokoro worked on multiple levels in that it gave us visibility and exposure, highlighted what we're about, and gave them that little bit of an appetizer, if you will, to come see us at the show and find out more and get the full course. A majority of people came to the booth saying they wanted to see more or know more about what I was highlighting in the campaign.

Joe LoGrasso Managing Director, 2110 Solutions

When it comes to sales and marketing, most professionals know one or the other well, or possess mediocre skills in both. At Kokoro Marketing, Cindy and her team have an unfair advantage of knowing and implementing both sales and marketing techniques and best practices with precision and drive. The excellence with which the team works ensures all partners are well serviced and receive special attention to their brand’s voice and goals. When you want to drive engagement, convert leads into clients, and ensure continued development of clients into brand evangelists, Kokoro is who I recommend. Their industry knowledge, passion for marketing and sales, and desire to help brands achieve the best results is like none other!

Shell Vera Voice Discovery Coach and Writer

I have been working in Graphic Design & Marketing Communications for over 35 yrs. and I hate to admit it but I had not kept up with current trends, especially Social Media. I think Cindy Zuelsdorf and her company Kokoro Marketing offers its customers the latest insights into the most effective marketing tools & strategies for today's world especially with regards to how the business marketplace has changed since the pandemic. Cindy's experience in social media, webinars and automated marketing is second to none. She's among the best you will find to boost your business. Make sure to read her new book, " 7 Marketing Basics". I have known her for over 5 years and she has always been a pleasure to work with and always eager to share her business knowledge. I would highly recommend Cindy for any marketing needs that your business might require.

Gary Whitten Freelance Graphic Designer / Product Photographer / Retoucher in Albuquerque

Kokoro is very professional and organized running webinars. So we don’t need to worry about anything with the webinar set up. They organize it, direct it, and then run the webinar. And even after, they gave me all the scores and quantitative information about how many people were there, their names, and how to follow up, plus they follow up with eblasts, so it’s very sequential and continuous. It’s been a very tangible, visible reaction from customers and very positive.

Satoshi Kanemura President and COO, FOR-A America