But she’s up for the challenge. For 2009’s TFM&A, Puddifoot, 32, hopes to see a 20 per cent increase on last year’s turnout of around 6900 visitors. We don’t want to be over ambitious, she laughs, adding that event organiser UBM has also taken the quality of experience for visitors into consideration.
Puddifoot has held her position as group marketing manager for 18 months now, although she has been with trade event specialists UBM (formerly CMP) for six-and-a-half years, during which, she says, she has held every single job title within the department. You have to do the grunt work in order to understand the foundations and principles, she notes with a smile.
Puddifoot’s current portfolio is valued at around £22 million, and includes several exhibitions beyond TFM&A she oversees Internet World, Service Management Expo, Call Centre Expo and Customer Management Expo, as well as a couple of magazines and awards programmes, all in the B2B space. My specific remit is to deliver an audience to whatever media product I’m looking after, she explains, priding herself on her understanding of this specialised niche audience.
TFM&A presents some unique challenges to this marketer and her team of eight there are many ins and outs of marketing to marketers, Puddifoot explains. We’re marketing to an extremely critical audience, she says. Everything we put out there is going to be critiqued and evaluated… so everything we do has to be scrutinised far more than if we were marketing to a non-marketing-savvy audience.
Puddifoot’s solution is to be on the vanguard of current marketing trends, and to innovate. We have to be using those cutting-edge technologies, if we’re preaching about them, we’d have a lot of egg on our face if we weren’t pushing the boundaries and experimenting ourselves, she says. But not at the sacrifice of her roots. We still find the traditional channels very effective and therefore integrate digital marketing into our existing, tried and tested, marketing mix.
The backbone of the TFM&A campaign is direct mail and email marketing, says Puddifoot. She is a huge fan of direct mail, explaining that nothing matches having the information physically in front of you.
We find when we send those big, very comprehensive direct mail pieces they far and away get the best response. The DM is supplemented with advertising and inserts in marketing titles and a dedicated PR campaign to complete the ‘traditional’ approach, and with viral, mobile marketing and social media on the digital front. Working on TFM we have to be seen to be pushing the boundaries, we have to be seen to be experimenting, she summarises.
With the rapid advancements in marketing technologies, Puddifoot admits that she feels intimidated. If you’d had a chunk of experience in say, direct marketing, you’d consider yourself a master of your trade, and then it’s like someone pulling a rug from beneath you and going, ‘well actually, if you could just go and learn it all again…’ she says seriously.
It’s very exciting at the same time though, she adds, noting the dynamism and instantaneousness of Web 2.0.
There isn’t a marketing technique, however, that can match the pull of a genuinely good offer. As soon as you have a big proposition, a bold headline, that’s when you get the response, she says. Everything now is geared around getting in those big brands because they are the drivers for good response. . . As soon as you put Google, Microsoft, Facebook in a subject line, your open rates go through the roof.
Puddifoot sees the success of trade exhibitions like TFM&A and Internet World only continuing to grow as things move forward. Because marketing as an enterprise is evolving so quickly, there is naturally a huge thirst for education, but I think what people sometimes forget is that it is just a big marketplace, people do require technology solutions, people do need problem solving, and they do need the suppliers who are at the exhibition to help them do that, she says, observing that in these ways, TFM&A is just like any other exhibition.
The event offers ample opportunities for B2B marketers, she assures and is in many ways more suitable for B2B marketers than B2C, she says. I almost think that B2B marketers are in a better position… as they have a lot more direct access to their target audience than B2C, and the tools at their disposal are a lot more varied than with B2C, she says.
Related articles
EVENT NEWS: TFM&A report: Technology embraced – 13-02-2008
Or used our enhaced search functionality to find other related articles
