Dec. 10, 2024
062: Tactic Tuesdays: The Power of Face to Face Marketing
Ever wondered how face-to-face marketing can catapult your brand beyond the constraints of online sales platforms? Join us as we unravel the strategic shift from Amazon’s ad-heavy sales model to the dynamic realm of trade shows. With insights from our guests, Mike and Matt, we'll guide you through their transformative experience at a major trade show, targeting pool professionals and builders. Discover how an interactive booth experience, like the "Pool Olympics," can captivate audiences and create lasting brand impressions.
In our discussion, we move through the lessons learned from engaging directly with industry pros. From the critical choice of booth location on a main aisle to creative promotional strategies using QR codes, we’ll share the nuances of effective trade show tactics. Uncover the importance of product durability and attractive warranties that can take attendees by surprise and ensure your brand stands out. Learn why distinct QR codes are key to better tracking and how they can inform your future marketing decisions.
Finally, we tackle the financial intricacies of trade show participation. Explore how a customizable backlit booth sourced from an overseas manufacturer can provide both flexibility and cost efficiency. We also discuss innovative ways to gather contact details using tools like Popple and how to maintain engagement through product giveaways. Whether you’re venturing into trade shows for the first time or seeking to refine your strategy, this episode provides actionable insights to maximize your brand's presence and market penetration.
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Chapters
00:00 - The Power of Face-to-Face Marketing
13:16 - Trade Show Lessons Learned
19:32 - Maximizing Trade Show Budget Efficiency
29:48 - Pool Pro Market Penetration Strategy
34:24 - Maximizing Trade Show Attendee Engagement
Transcript
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Welcome everyone to the Brand Fortress HQ Tactics Tuesday.
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This is our podcast episode where we talk about different tactics for building brands on Amazon and beyond.
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Today we have a really interesting episode that I'm excited to bring to you guys about the power of face-to-face marketing.
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We think a lot selling on Amazon and e-commerce about ads on Amazon and ads on other platforms and TikTok and social media, but there's a lot of power in just being able to talk to people face-to-face, to interact directly with people around your brand.
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And today Mike and Matt are going to share a pretty unique experience that they had of being at a trade show that was within their target market, what that looked like, what they learned from it.
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We've talked a little bit on previous episodes what that setup to the trade show looked like, which I think is also very important.
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So I encourage listeners to go back and listen to those, because there's a lot of work and planning that went into that trade show before you guys even started.
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But with that, I guess Mike, I'll turn it over to you on.
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Maybe start with just at a high level, or if you can kind of recap what got you interested in the trade show and at a high level.
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You know what was some of the prep that you did to be successful at the trade show Sure.
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So the first thing was is that the decision to do the trade show was very much prompted by the, I guess the idea that we needed to move into other territory outside of Amazon in order to not only.
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We've been in a position where a large portion of our sales on Amazon are now all ad-based, which obviously is very expensive these days, since ad costs on Amazon are way more than they used to be.
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So from my perspective, the only way that we really kind of turn that trend around a little bit on Amazon and begin to move toward a higher percentage of sales coming from organic, which obviously is from ranking then is to get more brand exposure off platform so that our brand becomes something that people are actually searching for on Amazon because they heard about us someplace else.
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We all know the more that your brand is being searched on Amazon in reference to or in combination with the key phrases and terms and products that you sell, the more likely you start moving up in the rankings on Amazon just by virtue of the fact that Amazon expects you're going to get more conversions out of that because people are looking for you, so there's a lot of value there.
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Also, amazon pays attention to how Google is ranking you and things of that nature.
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So there's a lot of off-platform stuff that can affect the Amazon algorithm in terms of ranking.
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So the other thing was is that we know that our market on Amazon is mostly residential users.
00:03:01.963 --> 00:03:05.973
We do sell to some commercial users on Amazon, but mostly it's going to be residential.
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We recognized not too long ago that it made a lot of sense for us to move into the commercial market with our products.
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Now, for anybody who doesn't know, who hasn't maybe listened to previous episodes, we sell a super high quality like premium grade pool cleaning tools, so poles and nets and brushes, things like that.
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Essentially they are pro grade, but we have sold to primarily the residential market ever since we started about 10 years ago.
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What became obvious was if we're going to sell a pro grade unit, why don't we start selling it to the actual pros that would also use it Because they're going to buy in bulk?
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There's a lot of things about our warranty that makes sense for a commercial market, because instead of unlimited free replacement, it's unlimited 50% off replacement and so we actually make money on those replacements.
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So it's kind of like a consumable.
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And at that point it became clear okay, if we're going to move into the pro market, then how do we get there?
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Like, what are the ways that we get our brand in front of those individuals that are the buyers for these companies, whether they're pool cleaning pros, whether they're pool builders or developers, things of that nature?
00:04:11.544 --> 00:04:21.603
And it just became obvious the trade show made a lot of sense for us to, for us to dip our toe in, and really not even dip our toe in, but, like, if we're going to do it, then let's go big at it, right?
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So we went to one of the biggest trade shows in the U?
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S for pool professionals and pool builders and kind of that's.
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That was the road to, you know, getting in there and making that decision.
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Okay, yeah, and I think that that you know, a key takeaway there that I have is is that, yes, expanding off Amazon, but also looking at how can you take that same product into a little bit different customer segments, which I think is really important there.
00:04:47.810 --> 00:05:00.201
So I know, you know, and we talked again about a little bit about it on a different episode but one of the things that you were implementing in order to, you know, go beyond just hey, here's a booth, here's some information.
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Investing in this, you really have to have something that's more interactive, that's going to catch people's attention, and that type of stuff.
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And you had, you know, a booth set up around the pool, olympics, and some activities and that type of stuff.
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Can you give us a quick overview of what those activities were and how you got people engaged at the, at your booth, sure, so yeah it, we.
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I've never done a trade show.
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I've been to some, but I've never done one myself, so it wasn't something that I had a lot of experience in, but it became.
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I just thought it made perfect sense that a lot of the booths that I have seen at trade shows in the past were simply we're here, products.
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You know, we've got a little video running and I'm sitting at my booth waiting for somebody to stop by my booth and then I'll tell them about my product if they happen to show up right.
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And so for a lot of you know, businesses that do trade shows, I feel like they don't get a lot of traffic to their booth because they don't really do anything that would encourage people to show up there, and so I wanted to do something different.
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I wanted to do something not only that I thought would draw people to the booth, but also that we could get video of and get pictures of, and get up on social media and utilize that in other ways.
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So we decided that we wanted to have some sort of a competition at the booth.
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We thought that that would drum up more activity.
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People would show up at the booth, people would see people at the booth, and so that would draw others to the booth, and then the question was okay, well, what does that look like?
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What are we going to do?
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So for us, the thing that made the most sense was creating this competition, which was based around our actual products, so that we could get our products into the hands of the users that we felt like we wanted to sell to, so that they could feel this you know, the durability of the units, our warranty.
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One of the things that's really useful for a pool pro with regards to our warranty is that not only is it unlimited 50% off replacement which nobody else in the category is even offering a warranty to commercial users, much less, you know, at a discounted rate.
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You know of that nature but also that the units that we sell are very modular.
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So instead of when their pool rake dies and they need a new one, with everybody else, they got to go out and basically pay the standard wholesale rate for that product and to replace it because there's no warranty.
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With us, not only is it 50% off, but instead of replacing the entire rake, they can replace the handle or the rim or the net, you know.
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So it's much less expensive, but part of that that we needed to really drive home in terms of the message was not only is it inexpensive, but it's easy to do.
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It's easy to actually replace the handle or replace the net or something, because time is money for these guys, right.
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So what we did was part of the competition was a disassembly and reassembly station.
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So we had a table set up, we had three of our products.
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We had our brush, our net and a shortened version of our pool pole sitting on this front table, and the idea behind the competition was you disassemble, completely disassemble the unit and completely reassemble the unit and we'll time you, and whoever gets the best time on any given day will win that item.
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So if you were the best on the pool net, you win a pool net.
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If you were best in a pool pool, you win a pool pool.
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We also had a couple of strength stations, which was inclined pushups and inverted rows for individuals that maybe are a little bit more fitness oriented and thought maybe they could, you know, break out a bunch of push-ups.
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And the idea behind that was we had it set up so that our pool poles were the stands, so the stands for the push-up, you know section, and the inverted rows were our pool pole.
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The idea was it was stressing the locking mechanism on our pool pool, so every time somebody did another push-up, they were stressing that locking mechanism, so we were able to show the durability of the unit.
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Honestly, we had a lot of interest.
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We had a lot of people show up at the booth and actually compete in the competition.
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We had people come back numerous times to improve their times.
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We saw a lot of people who would see people at the booth and that would draw them to the booth like, hey, what's going on here?
00:09:07.293 --> 00:09:15.583
But, honestly, the biggest benefit to it was once people got it in their hands and they were able to see so we had.
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We literally thought so I did a disassembly and reassembly of all of our tools and it looked like okay, yeah, pretty much everybody should be able to do this in three minutes.
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You know, if they've never seen the product, they've never done it before.
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Like, three minutes is a good time, right, I didn't want to make it too much shorter than that because I wanted them to be successful, right?
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Like the idea was hey, this is easy, so I wanted them to succeed, but we didn't want to, you know, make it too, you know, too long either.
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So three minutes was it.
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We found that we had a bunch of people who managed to fully disassemble and reassemble all of the units in as little as like 20 seconds.
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Wow, and and on one I think the minimum was like 45 seconds versus what I thought like two to three minutes.
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Right.
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But the nice thing about that was then we could tell people when they came up to the booth and they're and we're talking about the product, we can say look, we had a 15 year old kid who fully disassembled and reassembled this net in like 30 seconds.
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So if you need to do this out in the field and you got to swap out a handle, you can re.
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You could put every piece on this unit, like fully disassemble it and reassemble it in 45 seconds.
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So if you've got to just do a handle, imagine how quickly you could be back on the job If you just keep handles, you know, keep the individual parts in the truck, so that then you're just back to work, right.
00:10:36.831 --> 00:10:43.390
So it was really a very experiential way for us to show them how easy it is to replace those parts.
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And then also, obviously, what is the cost to do so, like hey, it's 50% off on the net or a handle or whatever that is.
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So it actually worked out really well and we had a lot of people who are very interested in it and it taught us a lot, because we got to have a lot of conversations with pool pros and so we learned a great deal from having those conversations with people.
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Okay, it people.
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It was such a brilliant.
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I mean everything was so well orchestrated.
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I mean I was part of the conversations that we all had before the trade show happened, months before the trade show happened, and then I had the opportunity to be at the trade show and watch it all unfold.
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And I mean all of the things that Mike said that I think that were in his head as potential benefits of doing this Pull Olympics.
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But I got to see it firsthand.
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And what happened to this kid?
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This 15-year-old kid came back.
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I mean he probably all in all spent six hours at our booth over the course of a couple of days because he was so competitive and this is a predominantly male industry and I think that males are predominantly more competitive than females are and I mean people would go and get their friends and bring hey, let's see if you can do more pushups than me.
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Or hey, let's see if you can put this together.
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We had an uncle and a nephew that were razzing each other but, like Mike said, every time we had some guys there that were competing against each other, we'd have 10 more people that would come up to see what was going on because of the ruckus and one of the things that we didn't do that I think was a little bit of a miss is they most booths or most trade shows have that scanning tool where you can scan someone's their lanyard and then get their contact information.
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We didn't do that but like there are so many people that came up to watch that I had conversations with that didn't necessarily want to compete, that were interested in what we had to say but didn't stop for very long, if I, if we had some sort of a tool or we could have scanned, we could have got a bunch more people on the list.
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So I think it could have been a little bit more successful in that regard.
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But I mean, the whole thing went just to plan and I think it went even better to plan based on how competitive, how much of a competitive nature, the competition was and then how many people came as a result of not only the competitive part of it but also just to see what the ruckus was.
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It was brilliant and I was honored to be a part of it and we learned so many lessons for the next trade show.
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And that was I was honored to be a part of it and, like I, we learned so many lessons for the next trade show and that was the other thing is that we it was successful enough to where trade shows are going to become part of part of getting in front of those pool pros.
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And one more thing I want to add.
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You know I'm still kind of fairly new to the pro-tough family and being able to have those conversations with the pool pros.
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I think all of this starts with having a better product or having a good product, because that, you know, being able to have that conversation with the pool pro and show him and have him be able to handle the tools that are more durable very easily identifiable as more durable than the tools that they're using but then having conversations with them about the warranty, like I can't, I can't count.
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I lost count of the number of pool pros that looked at me after I told them about 50, that 50% off unlimited replacement warranty, and they asked me what the catch was.
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Like Mike said, there's nobody in the industry that does that.
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The pool, the tools are better.
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In general, we offer a warranty.
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Like it's literally a no brainer.
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And that's what I learned by being face to face with these pool professionals and I don't think that we would have learned that in the same way if we were just having phone calls or emails with those pool professionals.
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So, yeah, it was, it was, it was great.
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Well, and Matt, you talked a little bit about lessons learned and I'd love to hear from both of you guys, you know, based on this experience, you know, what are maybe a couple you know what are maybe a couple.
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You know two to three of those lessons learned that are on your guys's list for next time.
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So I'll say that one of the lessons that we learned that I think is going to be really critical is location.
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We were I don't even want to say lucky enough.
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Honestly, this is a God thing as far as I'm concerned, because we were in.
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We were placed in a booth because we were late to the game, you know, getting ourselves registered for the trade show.
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We were in a booth that was way back off in a corner and our original plan because we knew that was going to be problematic, our original plan was that we would have people at least one person at all times, walking the trade show with essentially a billboard on their back, you know, like with with a t-shirt or polo advertising the competition and the unlimited 50% off replacement warranty and whatnot, and the booth number just to get people back there and a QR code that they could scan, which would give them the map and would direct them to where we were exactly.
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We ended up not really having to do that because, I don't know, a month before the trade show, I happened to jump in to check on something I don't even remember what it was it was something related to the map of the trade show and recognized there was an opening for a booth and it wasn't even technically an opening, it was held by somebody, but it was getting pretty close and so I asked Pam and just said, hey, would you investigate this?
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You know, like, because this would be a really good place placing for us.
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Turned out they weren't going to come, so we got their boot and we ended up on a main aisle, so we got a lot of traffic just rolling by our booth.
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But here's the thing we learned that that location and I mean everybody knows location, location, location, right, like it's important.
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It's not as if we didn't already know that going in.
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But what we did discover was if your booth is interesting, like if there's something going on there that draws people's eyes and draws their attention, and you have good location, you will get people coming into the booth without having to walk out into the aisle and drag people in.
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They will just show up, naturally.
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So one of the things that we will absolutely do going forward is make sure that we are on some sort of a main aisle that we know we're going to be able to get traffic, you know, just naturally walking by our booth.
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So as long as we're interesting enough that we'll get people coming in.
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So that was one thing.
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Another thing is we had QR codes everywhere and the QR codes mainly were they took them to a landing page.
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On that landing page they could register for the competition and a few other things.
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There was information about the company and I think that was really valuable.
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We had people scanning.
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We had a little in fact I've got one in my pocket because we have some extra ones.
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We did these little mint tins which basically became our business card.
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So anytime somebody was at the booth and we wanted to send them away with something, we would just give them this.
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There's like a hundred little mini mints in this thing.
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It's super tiny, easy to pop in your pocket, but there's a QR code on it that they can scan and would take them to the landing page.
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And of course, we can change that If you do that.
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By the way, if you use QR codes, make sure that you're set up in a way that you can change where they go after the trade show, so that during the trade show it can go to a trade show specific landing page.
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After the trade show, you can send them to the homepage or send them wherever it is that you want them to go.
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But we had QR codes everywhere for people to scan.
00:17:44.026 --> 00:17:49.913
And one of the things that we didn't do and I would highly recommend is, if you're going to do that, because we put them on coffee cups.
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So we had coffee at the booth.
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We had QR codes on the coffee cup so that as you're walking around, you know it was advertising, the pool, olympics and our booth number and you could.
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You know, if you want to tell somebody about it, you could just hand them the cup and they could scan the QR code, give them directions back to our booth.
00:18:04.670 --> 00:18:05.672
But we did.
00:18:05.672 --> 00:18:09.979
We use the same QR code on everything because it all went to the same place.
00:18:09.979 --> 00:18:15.376
Yep, bad idea, because now we don't know which which items got the most scans.
00:18:15.396 --> 00:18:19.105
You know like where people actually come from the coffee cups, or they come from the mince, or do they come?
00:18:20.567 --> 00:18:24.657
from the future trade show, everything will have its own QR code so we can track that.
00:18:24.657 --> 00:18:26.327
But it was very effective.
00:18:26.327 --> 00:18:29.998
We had a lot of scans on those QR codes and so it did work quite well.
00:18:29.998 --> 00:18:31.788
So that would definitely be a takeaway.
00:18:31.788 --> 00:18:33.433
That, I think, was a valuable one.
00:18:33.433 --> 00:18:37.826
There's plenty of other ones, but, matt, I don't know if you want to jump in there and talk about some of the other stuff.
00:18:38.669 --> 00:18:43.025
Yeah, I mean I think the other one that we put a lot of work into that I think was important.
00:18:43.025 --> 00:18:59.074
Now it does add a considerable cost but I think and I did see examples of people that didn't do this Our booth was really cool, like it was backlit, it was big, I think having a good booth.
00:18:59.074 --> 00:19:06.955
I did go walk the floor a couple of times and I literally saw a Chinese manufacturer that had a folding table that didn't even have a tablecloth.
00:19:06.955 --> 00:19:09.174
It said exhibitor.
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On the back, like that was their label, was just exhibitor.
00:19:12.752 --> 00:19:17.589
And to be honest, I'm not a pool professional, so like I don't even know what they were selling, I have no idea what was on the table.
00:19:17.589 --> 00:19:32.557
So like I think, investing in I think Mike's going to talk a little bit about overall budget, of what it costed, of the trade show in general, and I think the booth was probably a big part of that but I think it was super important and I think it legitimized the business as a whole.
00:19:32.557 --> 00:19:47.726
I think you know appearance and I mean first impressions are important and I think investing in having you know something like that, you know a real nice booth, that kind of sets people's mind at ease when they're coming up to you.
00:19:47.726 --> 00:19:49.412
But I think that is super important.
00:19:49.412 --> 00:19:56.051
So that was one of the things I learned, to be able to pass on to other people is you really have to invest in what that first impression looks like?
00:19:56.051 --> 00:19:58.647
I think that was another big thing that I learned as well.
00:19:59.009 --> 00:20:05.045
Yeah, on the topic of the booth, first of all, I was really pleased with how the booth came out.
00:20:05.045 --> 00:20:15.891
But one of the things that when we were initially looking at it but one of the things that when we were initially looking at it, so we wanted a really good design we had a 10 by 20, basically two 10 by 10 slots.
00:20:15.891 --> 00:20:23.874
So we had a 10 by 20 booth and we needed that because one side was the show side and one side was the competition side and we needed that kind of division there.
00:20:23.874 --> 00:20:27.355
We decided fairly early on that we wanted it to be backlit.
00:20:27.355 --> 00:20:31.718
I thought that that was going to add a lot and if we had the right design, that that would help.
00:20:31.718 --> 00:20:40.541
And I will say, when we assembled this, it looked good even before we plugged it in, let's say.
00:20:40.541 --> 00:20:50.087
But once you backlit it it really drew your attention.
00:20:50.087 --> 00:20:50.971
So I would highly recommend a backlit booth.
00:20:50.991 --> 00:21:03.829
But here's the thing we started looking at companies in the US that could do that for us and the cost was going to be about 15 grand for the booth and I was like first trade show, don't know how this is going to go.
00:21:03.829 --> 00:21:06.493
No way I'm investing that kind of money in a booth.
00:21:06.493 --> 00:21:08.490
What are our alternatives?
00:21:08.490 --> 00:21:10.825
So what we did, we went overseas.
00:21:10.825 --> 00:21:15.683
We went to Alibaba and look for who makes these things, because I knew the guys in the U?
00:21:15.683 --> 00:21:18.556
S weren't making them Like they were buying them from somebody.
00:21:18.916 --> 00:21:22.086
So we went to a manufacturer overseas that makes these booths.
00:21:22.086 --> 00:21:26.655
We managed to buy the exact same booth for $3,000.
00:21:26.655 --> 00:21:31.615
And now we paid two grand to ship it into the U US because we needed it really fast.
00:21:31.615 --> 00:21:33.027
So we had to ship it by air.
00:21:33.027 --> 00:21:50.291
But we spent five grand total for a $15,000 booth and if we hadn't needed it so quickly and we could have sent it over with one of our product shipments or something in a container, you know, we probably would have gotten away for 3,500 bucks you know for for the whole thing.
00:21:50.291 --> 00:21:59.061
So I would you know, if you want to go with a backlit booth, definitely look overseas to to a good manufacturer in China, because the one that we used was actually terrific.
00:22:03.545 --> 00:22:04.807
How did you do the design for the booth Like?
00:22:04.807 --> 00:22:06.828
Was that done from somebody separate from who you ordered it from?
00:22:06.828 --> 00:22:07.289
Or was that the like?
00:22:07.289 --> 00:22:08.030
Who did the design for it for?
00:22:08.050 --> 00:22:09.653
you guys, they would have done it for us.
00:22:09.653 --> 00:22:13.898
We just I wasn't entirely confident, you know, in their design team.
00:22:13.898 --> 00:22:18.212
You know, maybe they would have done a great job, I don't know, but we actually had a designer that did it.
00:22:18.212 --> 00:22:22.633
Matt had somebody that he'd already worked with, and so we brought him in and he did the design.
00:22:22.633 --> 00:22:25.506
Took a little bit of work, but it came out really good.
00:22:25.865 --> 00:22:36.894
Another recommendation that I would make this is something that we decided to do as we were walking through the process of design was we designed the booth so that it's configurable.
00:22:37.295 --> 00:22:52.669
So the way that it comes is it basically comes in 10-foot lengths, like there's a 10-foot wall, another 10-foot back wall, and then we've got a 10-foot side wall and then you just kind of put them together and it comes with a fabric that you put on each side.
00:22:52.689 --> 00:23:03.226
So what we did was because my thought when we started working through it was well, if we go to other trade shows, I don't know if the configuration of our booth is going to be the same.
00:23:03.226 --> 00:23:10.009
What if we decide we want to put the competition on this side because we're in position, or maybe we only get a 10 by 10 space?
00:23:10.009 --> 00:23:12.173
We can't afford, you know we can't do the 20 by 20.
00:23:12.173 --> 00:23:21.369
So we actually made the design so that everything was basically reversible and configurable, so we could set it up any way we wanted and it would still work.
00:23:21.369 --> 00:23:35.067
So that's one thing I would recommend with the design is make sure you design it with that in mind that if you're in a space where you want to shift the position of things, you can actually do that, so you don't have to repurchase new, you know graphics for the for the booth, okay.
00:23:35.769 --> 00:23:46.911
And then you know since we're on budget, I mean you know if you're comfortable sharing kind of ballpark, by the time you paid for a booth and you know what it costs to be in the trade show and you know getting out there and all that type of stuff.
00:23:46.911 --> 00:23:52.309
If you're comfortable sharing kind of ballpark, all in, where did you end up?
00:23:52.731 --> 00:23:54.960
Yeah, no, I'm plenty comfortable with that.
00:23:54.960 --> 00:23:58.534
We haven't done the full total yet, we're still putting those numbers together.
00:23:58.534 --> 00:24:11.401
But if we talk about some of the major expenses getting the booth space so we did two 10 by 10 booths Each 10 by 10, I think, was like 3 800.
00:24:11.401 --> 00:24:20.246
So we were in the area of 7, 7 500 bucks for the booth space itself, they will absolutely nickel and dime you on every single little thing that you need.
00:24:20.246 --> 00:24:24.713
So, like coffee, you know, for two days was like 700.
00:24:24.713 --> 00:24:25.394
You know like it was.
00:24:25.394 --> 00:24:27.298
It was just you and you.
00:24:27.846 --> 00:24:31.916
If you've never done a trade show, when you you get those numbers back you're going to think that it's a joke.
00:24:31.916 --> 00:24:33.890
You're literally going to think it's a joke.
00:24:33.890 --> 00:24:35.054
It's not a joke, it's for real.
00:24:35.054 --> 00:24:38.830
You know, electricity, getting electricity to your booth was like I don't know.
00:24:38.830 --> 00:24:42.618
We paid another $300, $400 just to have electricity, you know.
00:24:42.618 --> 00:24:53.240
So there's all sorts of stuff like that, that the overall cost for the booth, for some of the additional items that we needed for the booth.
00:24:53.240 --> 00:24:57.888
You know the booth space, you know all of that it probably costs us.
00:24:57.888 --> 00:24:58.971
You know about.
00:24:58.971 --> 00:25:03.013
Well, let's see, we had five and some 12.
00:25:03.013 --> 00:25:16.790
I would say you're probably looking at like 15 grand for the, the booth itself, leasing the space for the booth and all of the incidentals and stuff at the trade show for the booth.
00:25:16.790 --> 00:25:18.635
You're probably in that 15 grand range.
00:25:18.635 --> 00:25:23.336
And again, that assumes that you went overseas to get your booth done, because that was a big savings for us.
00:25:23.904 --> 00:25:25.769
Now, beyond that, we had travel expenses.
00:25:25.769 --> 00:25:29.787
We brought in six people, so we had airfare for six people.
00:25:29.787 --> 00:25:38.753
We had an Airbnb that we rented, you know, near the venue, for a week, essentially because we needed some prep days so that we could get things figured out.
00:25:38.753 --> 00:25:43.412
We wanted to have some decompression days afterward so the team could just kind of enjoy being together.
00:25:43.412 --> 00:25:55.319
And you know, if you're a remote team, that was actually a big benefit to us as well was just having this remote team come together and personally get a chance to actually interact and get to know each other better.
00:25:55.319 --> 00:25:59.155
So that was actually a significant value to us.
00:25:59.155 --> 00:26:03.936
It's hard to calculate that, but I would consider that a very big value of having done it.
00:26:03.936 --> 00:26:12.525
But I mean, you're probably, if you're bringing people from in the US from in the US versus overseas you know that'll lessen your transportation costs.
00:26:12.525 --> 00:26:14.925
But they weren't insignificant, you know.
00:26:14.925 --> 00:26:23.415
I would say a couple of grand total, you know, maybe, well, once you account for the Airbnb, probably a few grand for that.
00:26:23.415 --> 00:26:25.651
We had to rent, you know, vehicles.
00:26:25.651 --> 00:26:58.536
We needed two vehicles, so you've got rental costs there, no-transcript, and literally that's probably, you know, five grand.
00:26:58.536 --> 00:27:01.847
You know, in terms of the total, man, hours and things like that.
00:27:01.847 --> 00:27:04.616
So it wasn't cheap by any means, you know.
00:27:04.616 --> 00:27:24.218
Was it cheap However so I would say that rough estimates would suggest that the next trade show that we do will be no more than a third of the total expense that we put into this one, and maybe as much as a quarter because there will be so much less time invested, because we already know what we're doing.
00:27:24.565 --> 00:27:26.490
We figured it out, we've got the template.
00:27:26.490 --> 00:27:29.897
You know, like there's a few things we want to change, but ultimately it went well.
00:27:29.897 --> 00:27:32.012
So there's not a lot of expense there.
00:27:32.012 --> 00:27:33.470
You know we already have the booth.
00:27:33.470 --> 00:27:36.693
You know we kind of understand the trade show game a little bit.
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