Trade Show Marketing Best Practices

Here are some of our trade show marketing best practices. We have put this together after exhibiting extensively at trade shows. Additionally, we’ve helped others to exhibit sucessfully at trade show.

  • Have your staff dressed in polo shirts with your logo.
  • Bring some inexpensive flyers or brochures.
  • Have the best looking trade show booth you can afford.
  • Hire models only if you are selling apparel.
  • Use trade show giveaways to attract people to your booth.
  • Run a fast paced, high contrast video on your monitor.

Casinos bet that you won’t take the free $20 and leave – casinos win this bet!

trade show marketing best practices

You can use some trade show giveaways to get people to stop at your exhibit booth.  However, you may feel that you are going to a trade show to market your company. Additionally, you may not feel like giving away free pens. In a way, exhibiting at a trade show is similar to casinos offering $20 of free play. Consequently, the casinos lure you in with a free $20 to try the slot machines. Additionally, most people aren’t likely to walk out after they’ve used up the free $20. As a result, they start spening their own money.

You may say, “Id never fall for that trick” and that’s OK because the casino wins based upon the law of averages.  Consequently, enough people will take the gift and end up spending a whole lot more. Similarly, trade show giveaways are used to draw people into your booth. As a result, some will become customers and some won’t. Also, trade show giveaways are different from promotional products you’d give to existing clients.

Trade Show Giveaways

When you give something to a client with your logo, it is more likely to be higher quality and higher value. However, the trade show giveaways you’d use at your exhibit booth will be lower value items. Additionally, when you are exhibiting you just want to draw people into your booth. Consequently, if that means giving away free pens, it is a small price to pay.  Plus, if the trade show runs 3-days, you aren’t likely to give away more than 500 pens.  As you can see, at $0.50 to $1.00 per pen, this is cheap bait to attract visitors to your booth.

Draw a Crowd

Once people are standing at your booth to get some trade show giveaways, then others walk up to see what’s so interesting. Naturally, they assume you must have some interesting products or services to offer.  That is how trade show giveaways help you to draw a crowd and have a successful event.

Here you will find some unique trade show giveaways and some ideas about how to select the best items for your business.