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“Boat Show Week 2017” in Miami Beach illustrates the value of Inbound Marketing

In mid-February I attended “Boat Show Week” in Miami Beach. There are actually two separate boat shows, with the venues split between Yachts Miami Beach and the Progressive Miami International Boat Show. This was my 20th year attending, and during that time I’ve worked with a number of marine dealers, manufacturers and service providers. The Florida boat show circuit is a critical component of the marketing effort for these companies. It was great to see this year that a sense of excitement and momentum has returned to the marketplace, after a few years of struggle against the headwinds. Both venues are always enjoyable, but this time I picked up on a newfound optimism that the economic tide is turning for the marine market.

You can’t miss the great looking new yachts showcased along the piers from manufacturers such as Hatteras, Intrepid and Tiara. That said, so much of the depth of the show unfolds in the indoor exhibit halls where you find all the latest in marine electronics, engines, generators, safety products, and services.

It was such a great opportunity for all of them to both show and tell an interested crowd of potential buyers and enthusiasts about their products. Seeing all of this made me realize: These boat shows have so many characteristics of a quality Inbound marketing campaign.

They both:

Attract potential buyers that are interested in the products for sale.
Provide an opportunity to connect directly with individuals.
Enable the sales team to spend more quality time communicating with people, rather than hunting down leads.
Target people at varying stages of the buyer’s journey.

All websites are islands, and many of them are deserted.

The most common thing I heard when talking with companies at the show, especially with marine dealers, is that they don’t think their websites are living up to their potential. They simply aren’t getting buyer-ready leads. For many, shows like this are the cornerstones of their marketing and their websites are relegated to only a minor, supporting role.

Over my years of implementing marketing strategies, I’ve learned that all websites are islands, and many of them are deserted. If you have a remote island and you want to attract visitors, you have to focus on actually attracting them. You may have the most beautiful island, with the best snorkeling and sunbathing in a thousand miles, but if nobody knows about it, nobody visits.

The first question to ask yourself when you are trying to attract people to your island is:

“How do I get the word out?”

In 2017, inbound marketing is the best answer to this question. We have a white paper about this that goes into depth about how inbound marketing provides the year-round lead generation that so many of these companies are looking for.
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How to survive the radical changes in marketing and thrive in 2018

Synergy on display at the 2017 Unified Wine & Grape Symposium

I had the pleasure of attending the 2017 Unified Wine & Grape Symposium at Sacramento in late January. The trade show exhibitors numbered around 700 booths representing companies and organizations of all kinds within the wine and grape industry.

While spending two days walking the trade show floor I was struck with the incredible synergy within the industry, once you step back and look at the totality of it. An immense amount of specialization exists amongst the participating companies. There are so many companies involved in the journey to make wine, all the way from the the rootstock to the bottle that sits on the table at the restaurant. Each step of the process is critical and needs to be handled with precision and care to create the experience the wine aficionado craves. For example, there are companies devoted to supplying the valves and control systems that fill the bottles that are branded and designed with an evocative label, then capped, corked or sealed with a stopper.

All of this diversity of action and ingenuity comes together to create a tight-knit whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. I saw an industry that works well together to create something that, at the end of the day, is magical.

The importance of specialization and teamwork

I’ve always been someone that believes that individual specialization is critical in producing the best output. Throughout my many years in creating marketing solutions for companies, I’ve sought to find the people and partners that have an individual mastery of key marketing components, yet can come together as a team to produce projects and campaigns that take on a life of their own.

This trade show reinforced in me how very important this balance of specialization and teamwork is, and how important it is that it remains a cornerstone of how we work at Harvest91.

Download our free eBook:
How to survive the radical changes in marketing and thrive in 2018

The World of Drones at the American Farm Bureau Federation Convention

In early January, I went to the IDEAg Trade Show in Phoenix at the American Farm Bureau Federation Annual Convention. It was an excellent opportunity to experience a broad slice of American agriculture. There were a lot of great products and important ideas on display.

This show was notable in that there was a strong presence by industry leading organizations, such as The Cattlemen’s Beef Board. Of these, in particular I was impressed with the great work that the Grain Handling Safety Coalition is doing to spread awareness of the dangers of grain bins.

The thing that struck me the most about this show, however, was how deep an impact new technologies are making upon the ancient task of coaxing quality food from the soil. The most prominent of all of these advancements, were the drones.

Drones help you make good decisions with precise information

The Hamilton County Farm Bureau from Ohio was at the event highlighting their importance to agriculture in advocating for sensible drone policies. There is a great summary of the impact of drones at the Ohio Farm Bureau website.

There were also companies that manufacture drones such as the rapidly growing Precision Hawk, as well as companies that provided drone-based services such as Cooper Aerial.

Drones are changing the way business is done in many areas. Amazon, for example, is experimenting with them to develop a faster way to deliver merchandise.

For agriculture, drones provide the grower with a powerful tool to use in precision farming. Reliable, timely information about their farms is critical to the success of a grower. Drones enable the grower to make frequent flyovers that gather critical data using onboard imaging sensors that feed data to software that can map the current state of a farm and evaluate key factors. The right information, at the right time, enables them to take the critical actions needed to maximize yield and meet reporting requirements.

Precision Marketing with “Code Drones”

This all hits home to me, because here at Harvest91, we’ve been using our version of “drones” to provide precise marketing information for quite some time. Of course, our drones don’t have propellers. Our drones are snippets of programming code that are embedded silently into your website and have the ability to measure the entire flow of your online lead generation process.

Information gathered by our “code drones” provide insight into the key performance factors that are critical to optimizing the ability of your website to generate new leads. They let you know how your website is performing and what parts of it are ripe opportunities for improvement. They empower us with critical information to help steer your online marketing efforts so that your precious marketing budget is used in ways that lead towards greater revenues and profits.

Download our free eBook:
How to survive the radical changes in marketing and thrive in 2018