Means To An End
Before you invest in a promotional item, realize its purpose. It’s not enough that your trade show giveaways attract masses of people to your booth. If those people are not good leads for your company, they’ll merely consume precious resources. Your giveaways should accomplish 2 goals. First, they should attract people who actually need the products or services that your company offers, and can sufficiently influence buying decisions. Second, they should continue promoting your solutions long after attendees have returned home.
Useful Equals Long-Term Promotion
If your trade show giveaways aren’t useful, they’ll be thrown away quickly. A lot of exhibitors think that their promotional merchandise should be wacky or funny. But, the novelty wears off and when it does, the items will be forgotten or discarded. You can encourage event attendees to keep your promos by making sure they’re useful. For example, logo imprinted USB flash drives are almost guaranteed to be used constantly. By imprinting those drives with your company’s name and contact information, your business will enjoy long-term promotion.
Give Selectively
The better your giveaways, the more freebie-seekers your booth will attract. But, you don’t need to give your promotional products to every person who asks for them. The problem is that giving them away indiscriminately is expensive and fails to accomplish their purpose. Even worse, as the rumor circulates that you’re giving away high-quality promos to anyone who asks, your booth staff will need to allocate their limited time to address the freebie-seekers. Instead, consider offering your trade show giveaways only to those who have qualified themselves as potential leads. Then, collect their contact information in exchange.
The Danger Of Cheap Giveaways
Investing in cheap trade show giveaways is a fast way to exhaust your marketing budget without seeing positive results. First, they can break or become unusable quickly. Pens run dry and second-rate totes can tear. Second, cheap products look shoddy. And when you’re trying to create a high-quality image and brand for your company, shoddy-looking promos can sabotage your efforts. Rather than investing in cheap products that you give to every visitor, invest in higher-quality items and give them selectively to qualified leads.
More Business Through Trade Show Giveaways
Promotional products are an ideal trade show marketing solution for attracting attention, drawing crowds, and promoting your company’s solutions for the long-term. However, you need to consider their purpose before selecting the items to give away. They should create a channel through which you and your booth employees can engage visitors about the problems they’re trying to solve. And your merchandise should keep your company’s name in front of qualified leads until they’re ready to do business. When used properly, trade show giveaways can be an effective perpetual marketing solution.
About the Author:
Jonathan Edelman provides helpful advice about trade show giveaways. With years of experience in the trenches, he is an expert on booth displays, follow up techniques, and using trade show marketing tactics to boost revenue.
