How Promotional Items Can Help Market Your Trade Show

Trade shows are great events to give your company a chance to get noticed, shine and stand out among the rest of the companies surrounding you.

The best way to become noticed within the crowd is to create an experience they will remember by creating an engagement strategy.

Your engagement strategy starts before the show.  In fact, your engagement strategy should run through the show until after the trade show. Here’s how:

Before your Trade Show

Before a trade show, companies sometimes order promotional items to generate buzz about their event, invite prospects to come to their booth and learn more about their company/product that’s being promoted.

For example, you can send out promotional mailer to both prospects and current attendees with two-part and solitary gifts.

Two part gifts are usually gifts that are given out beforehand and invites prospects to receive the second gift when they come to your booth.  For example, pens and journal books, dog collar and dog leash, or a coffee mug and logoed candy to fill the mug with.

Solitary gifts are simple gifts to be sent out to announce announce your trade show presence (webkey with directions to the trade show, promotional bag or stress reliever).

During your Trade Show

Your trade show booth space should make a statement about your company. Think of it as a mini version of your office.  You want clients to come into your office and get a feel of your company’s culture.  A great trade show display usually does the trick.

Next, hand out gifts to attendees who visit your booth.  Usually, passing out items will help them remember which booth they attended.  These gifts should be lower cost, simple items with your information printed in case you didn’t get a chance to talk to someone who took the item.

Then, you should have your higher end gifts that can be given away to qualified prospects.  For example, these gifts can be given to select attendees who participate in a contest, drawing or opt to sign up for your monthly newsletter.

After your Trade Show

Send a small gift to participants who visited your booth and gave you contact information.  Usually, these gifts that are given out are small thank you gifts showing attendees thanks for visiting your booth and also invite further contact.

Also, remember your contest winners and send their gifts after the show.  As a bonus, you can showcase the winners on your social media profiles.

Bonus: Measuring Results

How do you know if your promotional efforts were successful?  Here are a few ways:

• If you used a two-part gift, make sure you keep track of attendees that bring in the first gift to redeem the second gift.
• Add a QR code or designated URL onto your promotional item. Then, invite attendees to go to the designated website and fill out a survey, contact information, etc. for a chance to win a prize or to redeem a gift. You can measure results on the back end of your survey, if done digitally.
• If you include paper webkeys as part of your giveaway during your trade show, you can track how many people loaded the content on the webkey.