How to Exhibit Your Brand and Convert It Into Revenue Returns?

Let me tell you, if you're going for a conference for the first time, if you're going to the conference regularly, a few tips to help you actually make the most out of these conferences, these exhibitions. Hello and good morning and welcome to another episode of the Askavi Arya Show. I'm doing this show after a very long time as I've been traveling a lot. The Arabian Travel Mart for all my travel and hospitality colleagues was unbelievable. There were thousands and thousands of travel and hospitality and technology providers from at least 50 countries around the world. People flew down from everywhere for two things for the morning networking, because you were able to meet the who's and who's of the travel industry, the technology industry. Everybody's open to having conversations about business partnerships. And the second and the most important was the famous Arabian Travel Mart, ATM after parties. The after parties went on till about 6, 7 in the morning. Everybody had a great time and a lot of people still managed to come and hustle their way through the next day and the next day and the next day. I saw by the third day, the seniors in most companies disappear. Either they feel that the first two days are the most important and the meetings have to happen during those two days, or for whatever reason, they get tired and the seniors fly back home, or they go to different cities or they go to Abu Dhabi for their Ferrari Land tour or wine tours to different parts of Europe or whatever. But the first two days, for an event like the ATM or the Satay or the WTM or the ITB Berlin or the events, or the hotel marketing conference in China, I've been for all of them. I've been doing this for the last seven, eight years. I've been for all conferences. I've walked these conferences. We've exhibited there. Let me tell you, if you're going for a conference for the first time, if you're going to the conference regularly, a few tips to help you actually make the most out of these conferences, these exhibitions. Number one, it's not a bad idea to walk these conferences. And if you are actually walking these conferences, it's a good idea to brand yourself or, you know, sometimes just wearing a suit and a tie, people don't know who you are. Everybody's wearing a suit and a tie. So I've always worn my brand colors, my brand jackets. But at the back we have the name of our Askavi Arya show. In front we have a huge logo and the entire team is walking the show like that. So people call out to you if they want to talk to you people realize that you are there, you get a lot of LinkedIn invite, you get a lot of people reaching out to you on Facebook. So you realize that a lot of people saw you and then you're able to make introduction going into different booths. An even better way of doing it is to have pre planned meetings. If you have atm, wtm, all of these are normally done by exhibition companies like Reed Exhibition and they're very, very, very organized and so they have calendar requests and you can actually have meetings predetermined. So if a person is not interested in your product or service, he may or may not give you a meeting. So a few months prior to actually entering the exhibition as a buyer, you might want to get those meetings set up. And once the meetings are set up, you know, in the next four, five days, I have 25, 30 meetings. I like to have at least 25, 30 new meetings so that I know that 30 new people got to know about the product or the service that I am selling and I am bringing to the table to the atm. And apart from that, if you are pushy like I am, I like to be a speaker at most events. I like to talk, as you can see through all of my videos, I like to talk, I like to get the word out there. I like to tell people about social media, about Internet marketing. This time I spoke at various forums and I spoke about Snapchat marketing. I am very, very bullish about Facebook Live which is going to be the second section of this show. Anyways, getting back to what I was talking to you about, how to make success of the exhibition, another point is that if you're actually taking part in taking a stall, if you're taking a booth, one thing is that you could actually share space. Some exhibition companies allow it, some don't, but I don't think there are any set rules. You can find synergies with travel companies, hospitality companies, tech companies and share the booth space. That has many advantages. One is that people who are coming to the booth, they realize that there are two companies who can work together. So it's easier for the customer. Instead of going to four companies, he's going to the tech company and the marketing company together. Like this time we collaborated with Quadlands, which is one of India's, one of actually Asia's finest travel technology companies. And what we do is the marketing side. So it was a great synergy. When the customers came in, they found a technology partner and they found a marketing partner under one roof. We shared the cost and everything works out Brilliantly. Once you feel that you're getting enough ROI from these exhibitions, you can actually start having your own booth. Take a corner booth, take it in front of a large technology giant where you know that's a good strategy. We followed it every time. Have it happening in front of people who have larger booths, who have, you know that they're going to have a lot of footfall. They've got hundreds of meetings planned with senior professionals. So you obviously have location, location, location, boats everywhere in real estate. And it works very well in the exhibition real estate world as well. If you are not exhibiting, if you're just walking, have yourself branded. And when you're going for these tech seminars, there are at least 150, 200 people in those small halls and there are a lot of speakers. Ask a lot of questions, stand up, introduce yourself, say, hi, my name is, I used to do this when I started my company and nobody knew me. I used to stand up and say, hi, my name is Abhijitary. I'm from Internet Mobile. We're a hotel marketing company based out of Asia. My question is, how do you, as ota, see the future of hotels now? See what that did was it allowed a few hundred people there to know who I was because I stood up, I was branded with my jacket, with my T shirt. And they actually got to hear a question. But before the question, it was an introduction of myself. So I'm introducing myself to three people. At the end of that 20 minute session or one hour session. When we got out, there were at least three to four people who came up to me and said, we'd like to have a conversation with you about what you're doing. So it's the best way to go out there and monetize and get an ROI for an exhibition. Because these are expensive. You have travel, you have a lot of fun, you meet a lot of people. But done consistently and with the right attitude, with the right approach, every exhibition, every conference allows you to get great mileage for your brand and actually get revenue. I actually got most of my clients from traveling around the world, but it does not happen in one year. It does not happen with one conference. Do not get disheartened. It took us seven years and maybe 100 conferences to make people realize these guys are always there, they're coming up with a better product every year. They are there with better information. They've started speaking at forums now, so you have to be there. Six, seven years of your life is not a long time to give to create a brand. Do it and creating a brand does not. This one point I wanted to make was creating a brand does not always mean that you have to spend a lot of money. I sometimes pity at large brands which spend millions of dollars. There is no human face to it. There are great television cameras, all of that happening. There's a Harley Davidson bike, you know, it's a crowd puller, the booth is a crowd puller. But the people behind the brand, it's all very corporatized. You need to be the person behind the brand. Always behave like a startup. Always be the person approachable at your booth. So this was our section on event marketing, going for conferences. Does it make sense how to. How to get more from your conferences? Should I go for how many conferences should I go for? Choose the right conferences to go for. There are Internet marketing conferences, there are social media conferences, there are technology conferences, there's TiE, there's India Internet Day, there is WTN, there's ITB, there is Sate, there are some travel based, there are some technology based, there are some mixed. So you actually have to see who are the people attending. I actually like to target like a sniper. I actually see who are the people who are coming. I always have a list of people that I am always wanting to meet. My prospective clients or the people I want to have synergies or partnerships with my company. And if those people are attending, it makes more sense for me to go and attend. Apart from, you know, actually seeing what other customers we can get shooting in the dark and all of that. That is also important. So find out who are the people who are coming and then go for these conferences. These are not only expensive sometimes, but it takes a lot of time. You do not have to be there for every conference. Choose your time because that's the most infinite, most finite asset that you have. Your time and your availability to be everywhere. Choose it wisely and. But having said that, these conferences make a lot of sense. These are the jackets that we got made for Internet moguls, for the entire team, sort of sports jackets. But helps us brand ourselves when we go for conferences or wherever we are. Helps us feel good about ourselves, helps us feel young. I'm slightly under the weather today, so you can pick up from my throat and my voice that I'm not at my best. Energy levels are the same, but the throat is not supporting what I'm the energy that I'm wanting to portray. Okay, so the next section of this show is about what is happening now. We are almost in May and we are talking about what is the latest in social media and Internet marketing. Guess what? In the last one month that I've been traveling and I've not been able to make videos, the Internet has completely changed in one month. It's changed. It's not the same. All the social media calendars that the team was doing, all the Internet marketing that we were doing, Guess what? I'm not saying everything is redundant. I'm saying it's becoming redundant really fast. Facebook Live. I used to speak about Periscope. I love Periscope. But Facebook Live, oh my God, I love Facebook Live. You know what I can do today? You can do it. Facebook Live is now available for everyone. After the FAA conference, Mark Zuckerberg announced it. And now slowly, everybody's getting it. I'm going to show it in the box over here how it actually works. Go to your status section on your Facebook. It could be your page or it could be your personal profile or your page. Go to the status section. Go to publish. You will find a new icon, like a wi fi kind of an icon with, you know, with circles coming out. That is Facebook Live. Once you press that, you are talking live to your audience on your Facebook. It could be your 600 friends or it could be your 60,000 followers. Most of those guys who are going to be online at that particular time are going to be seeing what you are saying. It is life from your phone right then and there. This opportunity of having a television in your hand. After all, a television was always live streaming, right? It was broadcasting capabilities. So there used to be a huge antenna, a huge television set and used to go to a station and they had all those satellites and everything which would allow you to broadcast to different parts of the world. Guess what? Today you can broadcast to whoever you want. Both whatever message you want, from sitting in your bed to being in your office or actually wanting a conference, delivering a message to a couple of hundred people in whatever message you want. You want to start Facebook marketing, start a tutorial, talk about how you bake cakes, your hotel marketing, show your new rooms to your guests. Start talking about the new lunch options that you have in your restaurant. Or talk about your nightclub and how it's getting ready for the evening and you were inviting people. Everything can be done for absolutely free just by the click of a button from Facebook Live. This is revolutionary. Right now I see almost zero good uses of it, especially in Asia. I'm not seeing a lot of people using it. Well, but if you check out my Facebook Live on the askavyaria page, you will see what I'm talking about. We are planning, I am planning. I'm pledging to live 15 to 25% of my life online from now, which means that I will be whatever events I'm going to, whichever conferences that I'm going to, I can actually be there live and I can show them to all my people, all my viewers, all my followers on my page, on the Internet mogul's page. Up between my page and the Internet moguls page, we've got about 100,000 followers. 100,000 people can don't need to travel to everywhere. I am actually going, curating the content and actually showing you what's happening. Or if I'm giving a training in my office on social media, I'm training my team on new aspects of reputation management or if I'm training my team on what's happening new in SEO, which I'm going to do today. After this shoot that we execute, you can actually be with me and whatever business you are in. Think of what you want to show, have a nice lighting, nice setting and start recording live, Start doing interviews with your customers. Facebook Live is here to explode. It is free and it's never, never, never. Social media and Internet marketing has never, never, never been better. However, it's still going to get better. And this is the future. The future after Facebook Live and all of that is what I experienced first hand in two different places. Virtual reality. Oh my God. Eight is going through the roof. There's a company called Uncensored. I believe it's an Indian company. So they had a double ner, un and un and then censored. So I'm going to show you the logo over there. I saw it on Facebook. I don't know the guys, they're in Delhi and Bombay and I think they're going to show some virtual reality experiences. I actually went on a virtual reality. I just put on the headphone, the virtual reality thing on my gadget on my head and I went on a roller coaster ride and I went deep sea diving. Oh my God. Both of them were so real that I actually wanted to stop the roller coaster. I was not getting nauseous, but almost there. And the lady who was ahead of me just in front of me was doing that. She was screaming her guts out and she wanted to get off. And guess what? That sort of put me in a pensive mood and I started thinking, I'm looking at that lady, she's wearing that mask and I know she's screaming and she wants to get off because she feels because of that experience around her that she's on a roller coaster and she might fall. She wants to get off, but as soon as she takes the mask off, everything is fine. She's going nowhere. She's absolutely safe. Nothing is happening to her. Isn't this what spirituality always taught us? Isn't this what the Gita always taught us? Isn't this what the Matrix always taught us? That we are but living in a dream and once the dream stops, we will realize that we are absolutely safe and everything is fine in our lives, that there is nothing to worry about. Right. So just when I see technology evolving, there's a side of my mind which relates it to spirituality, which is always a very cliched word, but it relates to the human experience at the back end. So it just makes me little more. Although I'm not very happy with this technology, doing whatever they want, but it's somewhat. When I relate it to the spiritual experience, it gives me that sense of fearlessness that nothing can happen. All we need to do is follow our dreams and keep marching. And not at break that speed. Like, you know, a lot of people profess to be doing or propagate or promote. You do not need to run at breakneck speed. You need regular breaks and adopt technology. Do a lot of social media because you know what, you need to get the word out there. But there's no competition. Last part I wanted to say was there is no competition. Firstly in the practical sense, because a lot of the people are not even doing 90% of the thing that they should be doing. It's the same example that I gave at the gym. A lot of people want a six pack AB and good body, but they hardly go to the gym. Or if they go to the gym, they're mostly chatting. Or if they go, they don't have a trainer. Sorry, if they have a trainer, they're not working out well, if they're working out, they don't have a proper diet, they're not doing everything, so they don't have the perfect body. Similar with social media, a lot of people are not doing what it needs to be done. They're not putting in the hard work, they're not putting in the hustle, they're not putting in the mindset, they're not putting in, they're not changing with time. After one month, like I said, the whole landscape has changed. How many people are actually adopting all of that? So it's very easy if you were willing to put in the Hard work, you will do well because everybody is taught, number one, that's the practical aspect. Second thing is there is no competition because you are different from I am different from the other guy is different from the fourth guy is different. Even if all of us are in the business of selling cakes or in fact, if all of us are even in the business of doing hotel marketing or if all of us are digital agency. A lot of my digital agency friends graduate questions and I invite them on the show. Even if we are in the same business, we all bring our soul. We all bring our own personal characteristic, we all bring our own intelligence, our own experience of how we dealt with a customer, how we dealt with the situation, how we had, how SEO helped my client versus his client, how social media helped me, how I am using Facebook Live. So there is no competition. What this competition word allows does this either it makes us angry, jealous, or in many cases we don't do anything because we feel there's a lot of competition. There is no competition. You do your stuff, you have your chart, your path to your course, and the other guy has his course. Do your stuff, everybody, but keep doing it Today, just with a camera, a few cameras here and there, with good recording system, mic and everything, you can consistently add value through these channels, these social media channels. Forget the value of Twitter or Facebook, how their stocks are doing, what they're doing with your privacy and all of that, all those things are passed. You can't help the privacy angle anyway. It's all gone. Just imagine you're on camera 24 seconds, 24, seven. Somebody is watching you. What is the message that you want to give to them? Make the message for them. It's. It will help your brand internally. I'm a marketer. I'm talking about your brand, which also means your personal brand. You as a person, what you want to showcase to the world. You're leaving an online legacy today. You cannot help but leave an online legacy today. Everything is being recorded. What do you want to be remembered for? Or as choose it very wisely. Obviously, most of us are like, for me, I am what I do. So my work is very much a part of what I do as a marketer, helping people. And I don't like to say I'm a marketer because I don't know, I don't like the word marketer. It sounds, you know, it doesn't sound the best. But why I do what I do is because if I come across a formula to help a hotel or a digital or a platform or A company do really well on the digital platform and I see the other hotel and not doing it, I, I feel just five miles away or just on my Facebook there's a hotel which is in Barcelona and the other one is maybe in Paris somewhere, maybe a thousand, few thousand miles away. But this guy is doing what I told them to do. The other guy is not. So on my Facebook, excuse me, feed, they're just few inches away. Why can I not help this guy with that information? That is what I want to do. The knowledge is there. I've been blessed to have the understanding of digital to a large extent on how it works to make brands explode in terms of their revenues. And I have made it my mission for the next decade or so to make this happen for as many brands that I can. They could be my clients or they could be people who just consume the Ask Avyaria show to understand what is happening in the digital world. What I'll be doing after 10 years, I don't know, but I think I'll be making movies. I always wanted to be a film director. Before that, I wanted to be part. I just wanted to be part of the movie fraternity. I wanted to be part of creation. I wanted to create stories. I wanted to create a story which comes from my heart and changes your life so that your path is slightly, you know, alters a little bit. It might sound selfish, but I don't want to alter the path that I want you to take. But I want to make an impact so that whichever path is best for you, you take it yourself. But it was because of my story that you chose to change that path. That is what I'll be doing 10 years from now. For now it's digital marketing. For now it's Internet moguls. For now it's the Askavyaria show. And my throat is giving way. So I'm going to put an end to this show right now. I hope you enjoyed what we brought to you this time. This show will be edited and will be on very, very soon on Facebook, on YouTube and all the other channels. And from next time, we will have a separate Facebook Live happening at the same time while we're recording the show. I hope you enjoyed it. Please come back to us with questions. We are rewarding people with questions. We're sending them T shirts, we're sending them caps. We're sending them jackets. We're sending them free tutorials. We're asking them to be part of the Moguls University for free. Free. We will guide you with your businesses. We will help you make your plan, your proposal. We can charge you nothing because we want more and more people to be part of the learning team at the Moguls University. So write in your questions, we will mention your questions, and we will answer them as the show goes along. Thank you very much for watching Sam.