Trade show promotional items



Tradeshows are great for a company’s marketing campaign and with tradeshow promotional items, it becomes a lot easier to bring people to visit your booth.

Using promotional products at tradeshows are valuable tools to a successful tradeshow experience. With hundreds of exhibitors that join tradeshows, companies need to have attractive offers to entice tradeshow visitors to come to their booths and see their products and services.

Virtually every industry holds its own tradeshows every year. Some tradeshows and exhibits have been running for many years and are already much anticipated by exhibitors, trade visitors, and even the media. Somehow, these tradeshows set the tempo for how industries are doing and moving forward. Companies use tradeshows to launch their new products and services, spy on their competitors, and reach out to new markets and customers.

With such enthusiasm associated with tradeshows, it is but fitting to put much thought on tradeshow promotional items. These items, no matter how small and simple, could actually make a person decide whether to stop by your booth or look the other way. The use of promotional items in tradeshows has increased to 12.14% in 2004 from 9.1% in 2003, data from the Promotional Products Association International show.

You can maximize the potentials of promotional items to boost traffic to your booth with a good promotional strategy before, during and after the tradeshow.

Tradeshows are not held at a moment’s notice so you know it will happen a year or so ahead. You can use the ample lead time to source for the right trade show promotional items, contact suppliers and distributors, and make your final orders. Your decisions should be guided by your company’s goals and expectations for joining the tradeshow. You should also consider the theme of the tradeshow, the expected number of attendees, the duration of the tradeshow, and the manner by which you plan to distribute your promotional items.

Most tradeshow participants are now being more proactive when it comes to inviting people to see their booths. With database from past tradeshows, they send out invitations to prospective attendees and tell them what to expect from the tradeshow in general and inform them about their booth location and what can be expected in their trade booth. Some would even include pre-tradeshow promotional item to really encourage them to come. A good strategy is to give pre-tradeshow items that you can complement with another related item when they come and visit your booth.

During the tradeshow itself, it is good to have some fliers and announcements informing people about the promotional items that they can get when they come to your booth. This way, people will make deliberate effort to come to your location.

But if you are after the quality of your booth traffic, you could keep the feelers in moderation. Your promotional items should be in a discreet place and be given only to people who really express interest to see your products. Otherwise, people will just grab and go and you have no way of measuring whether your promotional items helped in your tradeshow effort.

It is a good idea to implement some measures or standards for giving out your tradeshow promotional items. You could give it to people who listen to your talk, watch your video presentation, or filled out a short survey.

Since tradeshows are usually held several days, it is wise to have different promotional items for each day. This will give tradeshow visitors more reasons to go back to your booth.

After the tradeshow, you can already filter the good leads for your business and you can send them a simple item to say “thank you” for visiting your booth and take it as an opportunity to orient the customer more about your products and services.