1)      What is your ROI? Have you closed leads from this venue in the past? If you have good results, renew. If you have no past results to review, create some for this year, and track them.

2)      Coordinate a complete campaign for the event that will deliver your message and engage your prospects. Make sure the content from your sessions (if you have some) encourage people to stop by the booth next to see more, and at the booth talk about the sessions and cross promote.

3)      Tweet! Tweeting is a great FREE way to highlight things at the event for attendees you don’t want them to miss, and get great content out to prospects and customers who did not make the show.

4)      USE your CRM or SFA tool! If you don’t have a Customer Relationship Management or a Sales Force Automation tool, GET ONE today!!! These tools today are a “must have” for sales people and the only way to measure if your marketing is working, or NOT working. Top “Social CRM” on the market today is www.nimble.com , Top “SFA” is www.netsuite.com , and Top “Free” starter (not long term solution but a baby step with no out of pocket dollars) is www.zoho.com.

• How do I get my target audience’s attention?
• What launch materials do I need?
• What should I do with my website?
• What marketing mix do I use?
• What is the predicted ROI on my investment?
• How can I quickly convert prospect interest to sales?

At Bellandi Group, we realize that no one web designer can appeal to every potential customer. So we have brought together a collection of designers and developers to give you a choice.

For large websites that require a robust back end and high page count, we recommend Winn, our expert on Drupal website design.  Some of his sites are illustrated here:

For small to medium sites, we have a number of web designers and developers (Eric, Jenna, Samantha, Dave) that can design sites around HTML, CSS, Flash or WordPress. WordPress examples are shown here:

We differentiate ourselves from other firms in the Springs in that we put out a high quality website for a competitive price. Our integrated marketing team and local marketing office allows for you to add additional services over time such as Search Engine Optimization, Content Development, Public Relations, Search Engine Marketing, etc, without having to change agencies.

Come in and talk to us, or attend one of our Business Challenge Tuesdays, a free hour to tell us about your business and receive ideas and quotes from over 10 consultants. It includes lunch as well.

In looking at its choices, Agilent chose Bellandi Group – not only because of its history with the show, but also because of the innovative and ownership Bellandi Group brings to its success.

Bellandi Group supplied Event leadership with Ami Heath, a Director who has managed upwards of 250 events per year, to help them manage the show. Ami brought in I Was There technology to help get merchants participating in exposing the events and offering giveaways.

In addition, Bellandi Group supplied an event PR program, an on-site event management staff and and full campaign to promote the event and its participating product lines.

Bellandi Group excels at taking the disciplines of design, marcom, PR, social networking and event management and merging them together in a manner that drives results. Contact Ami for more examples in event management: Ami@BellandiGroup.com.

During these 11 years, Dirk got to know  the needs and frustrations of physicians well. He saw that they did not necessary like the business aspect of their profession while they loved helping patients manage their health.

This lead Dirk to pinpoint two areas to help physicians with:

1. Giving them both tools and knowledge to enable them to better manage their practice
2. Giving them better market presence and awareness by creating a consumer-facing website that had a robust directory of physicians along with articles and service provider information.

Medical Voyce needed a marketing service firm that could help them craft a website that could handle a fairly complex directory, be based on a content management system (CMS) that allowed for easy information updates and still be cost effective.

Bellandi Group addressed this need by creating the site around Drupal, a powerful open-source CMS that integrated the look and feel of Bellandi Group creative designers with a complex back end directory.

The site has received lots of great feedback from healthcare consumers, was featured in KKTV commercials and has grown steadily in traffic. See Medical Voyce website.

Talk to us about our Drupal and WordPress website design capabilities.

• Go to www.google.com
• Find your Google places listing. This can be done a number of ways. This particular client owned a Bistro in Manitou Springs; so, I Googled “Bistro Manitou springs” and PJ’s Bistro Manitou Springs popped up (AMAZING food, Bear (the chef) is always cooking up things that make you grateful you have taste buds).
• Click on the red dot. Your Google place will appear
• On the far right corner of the listing there is a “More” option with an arrow; click the arrow
• Click “Edit details”
• Fill in ALL of the information, including your main email address, and submit
• You will receive a letter in the mail with a code and the directions that will allow you to “validate” you as you, so to speak, as well as directions on how to maintain your listing going forward.

Make sure your information online today is correct so your clients can find you. Talk to Ami for more details.

Some of the larger ones simply came in much too high on their pricing. Other agencies, were too narrowly focused, just concentrating on Internet Marketing or on Branding and Design.

The Mining Exchange ended up selecting Bellandi Group because it was able to address their needs for Advertising, PR, Internet Marketing, Design and Printing all under one roof and for a cost-effective price.

The first deliverable was an ad placed at the Women’s Open at the Broadmoor that delivered a large quantity of leads and a high degree of awareness.

Bellandi Group continues to plan with The Mining Exchange how to best launch effective local marketing campaigns to compliment the excellent corporate marketing of Wyndham.

Some of the new Internet marketing companies have failed to step up to the challenge of providing compelling branding and messaging. Instead, they focus only on SEO and Google Adwords, and with some, Web design.

There is still a demand for companies to have a single agency that handles all their needs. However, they need the agency to span branding, design, Web, PR, SEO, Adwords, social networking and much more.

With this challenge has come a new agency – the digital marketing agency. It takes a while for a team to work together over a period of time to understand how to best bridge these silos and get results.

Bellandi Group started 9 years ago, recruited all of these separate disciplines and allowed them to work together, in a collaborative fashion, and on a large cross-section of projects.

What results is an agency that knows how to brand and design for the new digital age, how to message for PR, Web, Internet and social media platforms and can then launch companies via events, sales tools and lead generation events.

Give us a call and participate in our Challenge Tuesday. We listen to your issues, enjoy your business challenges and come back to you with fresh ideas to grow your business!

Approach Taken and Lessons Learned:

1. Because of the short time to ramp up, we quickly recruited seven subs to help for very low prices due to the slow economy.
2. We put subs in groups of two so the Xmas vacation would not slow anyone down.
3. Two subs were on PR, two subs on event management, one sub on product marketing for content generation, one sub on SEO/PPC programs, one sub on graphic design and myself to help with all areas as needed.
4. The teams were highly empowered to move fast and were told they needed to get results. Any obstacles were to be escalated upward. It was a given that there would be some overlaps, so subs were coached to be understanding and team-oriented.
5. The turning on of seven subs in one week and the fast moves made by the subs initially shocked the system of the I Was There people already in place, but it quickly became an exciting story to follow as results started pouring in.

Results

1. The product marketing person was instantly teamed with the graphics person and Web development crew already in place and told to quickly finish the Web content based on positioning we worked out in short order.
2. Visits were made over a two-week period to the mayor’s office of Aspen, the Aspen Chamber of Commerce, ESPN’s X Game’s group, Snowmass Ski Resort, KSPN radio (announcer of X Games), over 100 local merchants, four local major hotels, and a variety of local marketing groups. The reception was positive and many programs initiated based on ideas that came out of them.
3. We bought a sponsorship from ESPN that included a booth, advertisement and the participation in a kick-off charity event.
4. We hired an ex-Pro that recruited pro athletes to be at our booth for photos and signings for all four days. ESPN was excited about this and did announcements regarding it during the event to push attendees to our booth.
5. We put together campaigns that gave away merchandise every hour and a snowboard every day for the best photos and videos submitted to our website via mobile or web-based technology. We partnered with KSPN (official radio station of X Games), set up at their headquarters and had them interview our CEO hourly with announcements about winners each hour.
6. We ran PPC programs on Facebook and used Twitter and LinkedIn to tie into these give away campaigns. We had to launch this very close to the event and keep it small as this was beta software and we did not want to go too viral if it didn’t perform well. Looking back, this was a good decision.
7. PR-wise, we were interviewed on local TV stations, put into local newspapers after we got the Mayor to use our product and do a photo opp, and picked up by several other magazines. We, again, were asked to not go too crazy with PR, but prototype some approaches.
8. With regards to leads, we got long lines of people at the booth every day to meet the athletes. We had people creating IWT accounts for them while in line and teaching them how to upload pictures. We also got people trying the software based on the radio coverage (website at http://iwasthereproof.com) and contests. We gave away 20 snowboard and 100s of beanies, fleeces and scarfs.
9. We designed posters and cards for merchants to give out that had a QR code on them, which led to specials done by the merchants. The merchants gave out over 20,000 cards and experimented with QR coded promotions.
10. We had discussions with 10 merchants about branded merchandise they could sell throughout the year and QR coded campaigns they could run. Several hotels were also interested.
11. We partnered with two bars each night to do giveaways and show photos and events taken from the Hill at the bars at night.
12. We did on-the-street research with over 100 people to gather feedback on the brand, the use of the mobile and facebook apps and the difference in preferences of age groups regarding commemoration, photo sharing and use of social networking.
13. We learned a lot. There were a lot of successes and some failures. The connectivity on the mountain via AT&T was not good and created very slow photo uploads. The iPhone mobile app worked, although it needed some improvements, but the Android app release had to be cancelled and the Blackberry app was Web-based and did not work well.
14. There was a wide discrepancy in age groups for use of social networking and preferences for how they would commemorate their presence at the event. This was great info for the company and is being used to redesign their product strategy and marketing strategy going forward.

Problem:

Accanto Systems was a new company that had spun a division out of Sunrise Telecom. They sold protocol analyzers and large networking monitoring systems to Wireless and Wireline service providers. They needed to develop awareness about the new company and create more professional and effective sales tools. Lastly, their channel was not well-trained in the new products and was widely varied in its ability to generate leads, indentify new business and close sales.

Approach Taken & Lessons Learned:

1. An internal positioning workshop was held to determine the best positioning and key messaging to use in launching the new company;
2. A new website was designed based on Drupal;
3. SEO optimization was completed and ongoing PPC and SEO programs were put in place;
4. Sales collateral was totally rewritten and rebranded;
5. The company was launched at the Mobile World Congress conference;
6. An aggressive but cost effective PR program was put in place to create a monthly stream of customer wins, new product and partnership stories;
7. To help the VAR Channel with lead generation, off-the-shelf marketing programs were developed in the areas of email, road tours, vertical events and webinars; and
8. Social networking programs involving Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook were prototyped to learn how to best use these tools in this market.

Results:

1. The company launch at the Mobile World Congress in Spain and was widely successful and received a lot of press and analyst coverage.
2. The new website and sales collateral proved highly effective during the sales process.
3. The channel marketing program adoption grew each month as the channel was interacted with and began to see results from educating their customers.
4. Leads generated from the channel marketing programs were collected, distributed, tracked and reported upon.
5. Getting an estimate of sales based on leads provided required inside sales subs for first pass qualification. 100% tracking was not possible, but enough tracking was done to make statistical estimates.
6. Accanto’s business grew 25% in 2008 in an economy where many companies were shrinking.
7. It had more deals in the funnel in 2009 than it can adequately respond to.