You invest substantial time and money to send your team to a trade show. But, if you’re not generating a buzz and driving people to your booth, your money is as good as flushed down the toilet.

We know, we know -- increasing trade show booth traffic and engaging with prospects prior to the show is easier said than done.

That’s why we put together this guide of sample emails to send prior to the show to help your team make the most out of the show.

(Editor's Note: The following is a guest post by Deb Calvert, founder of People First Productivity Solutions, on the "why" and the "how" of driving employee engagement.)

Employee engagement matters in the workplace. In order to encourage and promote engagement, you need to have the right leadership.

Hey Sales & Marketing Professionals!

We all know that a referral is one of the easiest sales to make, because we have a strong recommendation from someone the prospect trusts, giving us implied trust. But for some reason as sales and marketing professionals, our focus is always NET NEW business.

Luckily, there’s a way to turn more of our prospects and customers into promoters with the Delight Stage of your Online Marketing Plan.

In this video, we’ll take a look at your online marketing plan’s impact on producing delight for prospects, and talk about 4 key components that will ensure your customers tell their friends all about you.

Finally manufacturers, the spotlight is on you.

October 5th is Manufacturing Day in the United States. The intention of the day is to celebrate modern manufacturers and inspire the next generation of manufacturers. As the founders of the day put it:

“MFG Day is designed to amplify the voice of individual manufacturers and coordinate a collective chorus of manufacturers with common concerns and challenges.”  

What are these challenges that manufacturers will address?

• Skilled labor shortage they face
• Connect with future generations
• Take charge of the public image of manufacturing
• Ensure the ongoing prosperity of the whole industry

Pretty cool, right? Here’s how to participate.

Hey Sales and Marketing Professionals!

We all want more leads through our website, but ultimately, we want those leads to be customers.

According to HubSpot, lead nurturing can produce 50% more sales-ready leads, at 33% lower cost! That sounds to me like a winning strategy!

In this video, we’ll layout how lead nurturing fits into your online marketing plan, and even show some examples.

Where does a manufacturing lead come from? Like the age-old question a prepubescent kid asks his parent -- “Where do babies come from?” -- the question of how to get online leads as a modern manufacturer can be … uncomfortable.

Why? It seems daunting to grow from best-kept secret in the middle of nowhere to an industrial lead generation machine. And the truth is that many manufacturers and other B2B companies have websites that simply don’t give themselves a chance when it comes to generating leads. Or, if they do, they lack the email and social media marketing to supplement it.

Hey Sales & Marketing Professionals!

I bet you’d like more website traffic, but I bet you’d LOVE more leads from your website.

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that an effective online marketing plan should focus on both.

In this post, I’m going to pick up where we left off after the Attract stage of your online marketing plan, and show you how to CONVERT more of your website visitors into leads, how the tactics work, what tools you’ll need, and a recommended schedule of events in your plan.

Hey Sales and Marketing Professionals! What does your ideal buyer's buying process look like?

Well, if you think that it starts when they land on your website and submit an RFQ, you have to watch this video. Today, we're talking about the buyer's journey in Part 4 of your Online Marketing Plan for Manufacturers.

Let’s face it, most manufacturing Facebook business pages are easy to ignore, and it’s not hard to see why. They’re bland. They look like other industry pages. They don’t offer a lot of unique value to prospective customers.

Hey Sales and Marketing Professionals! This is part 3 of our online marketing plan for manufacturers (Parts 1, 2).

Today we're going to dive into Building a Buyer Persona. We're going to put together a plan to understand our best buyer, and apply it to all of our marketing.