Thoughts on Navigating an All-Virtual IBSx and KBIS Virtual

With the pivot from IBS and KBIS to IBSx and KBIS Virtual, respectively, we’ve been getting a lot of questions from marketing leaders from around the home building industry. The questions range from:

• Should I participate in the virtual show?
• If I participate, where should I invest my (diminishing) marketing dollars?
• How do I make the most of the new platform?
• Can I still achieve the same goals that I had when the show was in-person?

These are all great questions that every building materials marketer should ask themselves. So where do you start to answering them? We suggest the following approach.

Do I participate?

Like any major marketing initiative, we suggest marketers take a step back and look at their brand’s overall marketing plan. In that document, take a look at the key strategies and tactics that were laid out in the plan and ask the following questions:

“Is participating in IBSx or KBIS Virtual on strategy? Why?”

We’ve seen too many marketers fail to take a step back and ask these two, very fundamental, questions. Answering them enables you to begin to justify why you need to participate in the show Additionally, this enables you to defend this decision to key stakeholders (e.g. your boss, finance, senior management), by linking this decision back to the brand’s annual marketing plan. By doing this, you start to justify your decision, to a potentially skeptical audience, by linking this new tactic (i.e. the virtual show) back to plans that the organization already agreed to.

How do I approach the virtual show to maximize its impact on my business?

Once you’ve justified the need to participate in IBSx or KBIS Virtual, the next thing marketers need to address centers around the how to approach the show. To effectively “win” the show, we advise our clients to start with defining the show’s objectives for the brand — what are you looking to accomplish? Is it lead generation, is it driving brand awareness of a new product, is it maximizing meetings for sales?

With the objectives outlined, pressure test them against your brand’s strategy — does the show’s objective help you deliver against one of your brand’s strategies? This serves as a good “sanity check” to ensure the nuts and bolts of how you approach the show will ultimately ladder up to the delivery of what you’ve sought to achieve in the first place.

With your show objectives in hand, we suggest marketers look at the three phases of any trade show, which are:

• Pre-Show
• During the Show
• Post-Show

Each phase has a unique role to play in the virtual show experience and must be planned for to ensure you maximize the impact of your brand’s participation in the event. Here’s an overview of the things you should look at for each:

Pre-Show -

• Goals — Drive awareness of your brand’s participation + Drive traffic to “booth”
• Potential Tactics — Email drip campaigns, media (digital, social, traditional), and show-specific landing pages

During the Show -

• Goals — Drive engagement with the brand
• Potential Tactics — Brand hype videos, product launch videos, virtual collateral, chat rooms, virtual events + educational webinars at the “booth’, virtual “homes” (to showcase your brand’s product and allow for interaction, education, and immersion), social media, and participation in ‘off show’ events (e.g. The New American Home, The Nationals, Show Village, etc)

Post-Show -

• Goals — Convert “booth traffic” into leads for sales
• Potential Tactics — Email drip campaigns, road shows (i.e. taking the virtual show experience “on the road” to key customers + dealers), webinars, and media (to leverage content from the show)

By defining the goals for each phase of the show experience and then outlining the potential tactics for each, you start to understand the potential “levers” that can be pulled. Additionally, you can also begin to map out tactics against available budget. This enables you to allocate marketing funds that enable you to maximize your brand’s presence at the show, while still being cognizant of budget constraints. This also allows you to easily show how investments in specific tactics within IBSx or KBIS Virtual help deliver against the overall objectives for participating in this event.

We recommend pulling this information together into a playbook that outlines the objectives you plan to achieve at IBSx or KBIS Virtual, the plan you will execute across all three phases of the show, and the investment required to execute the plan.

Want to learn more? Need any help?

This approach sounds like it’s a lot of work. It is a lot of work, but there’s still a lot of time to get a playbook developed and executed so your brand’s presence at IBSx or KBIS Virtual is top-notch.

If you want to learn more or need any help with developing your brand’s IBSx or KBIS Virtual playbook, creating ideas for each phase of your brand’s show experience, or with executing any element of your playbook, please let us know.

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David Bernardino is the Chief Client Officer and Head of Research & Planning of Atlanta-based Ammunition, a member of the global agency network Worldwide Partners, and an independent full service agency building brands that build the world.

Ammunition partners with brands to drive business with leading-edge digital strategy, personalized CRM, break-through creative, and everything in between. For more information, please visit www.ammunition.agency

David can be reached at david@ammunition.agency