Promotional Items and Trade Shows

Promotional Items Attract Quality Leads At Trade Shows and Conferences.

Trade Shows are hard work. One of the hardest working contributors to B-to-B Trade Shows are "Cheap and Cheerful" promotional items. When used properly, carefully selected promotional give-aways boost lead counts and grow the number of quality leads produced from an exhibition, conference, or other industry event. You’ll get more visitors to your booth at minimal cost, expand your potential prospect contact list, and out-perform your competitors.

Well chosen promotional items are eye-candy and provide an element of entertainment. No matter how busy or how important a delegate walking down your exhibit aisle is, promotional items will get their attention.  These lowly "cheap and cheerful" booth workers are often noticed well before people pay attention to your carefully designed booth. Delegates and prospects are people, and people love novelties and freebies.

Deciding what promotional item to order can take some thought and deliberation. Choose items which fit the venue and focus of the conference. It's easy to keep costs under control, just don't go low quality or boring. In other words, cheap or boring give-aways which break or quickly stop working are worse than having nothing at all. Avoid branded items which are eaten or consumed (such as gum or candy). Better to give them something that has function or is 'fun' and a conversation starter. When people show other people their new company branded 'toy', you've won. Think out of the box.

At one key conference and exhibition, for example, we stopped VIP senior execs dead in their tracks with our 'secret weapon', a cleverly themed promotional item which fit the event perfectly. These men and women manage, own, and lease significant assets and usually would ignore the booths around them while engaged in their deep conversations. They would have strolled right by us with barely a look had we not put on the exhibit table our clever promotional item... and that is how we met many of these key contacts. They wanted multiple samples too.... for their kids, grand-kids, people in their office, and themselves.

Hard Working Booth Staff.

The promotional item created a face-to-face opportunity to meet, greet, and give them our slate of services and created golden opportunities with significant new potential accounts. These inexpensive company-logo give-aways will be happily found in their homes and offices…. providing great brand exposure for us. Call it "In-House Advertising". Needless to say, our global manager for that business niche now insists we have these giveaways on duty at his major worldwide trade-show events.

At another key European conference for another business line I used the same strategy, once again tailoring an inexpensive but eye-catching give-away item to the event. One of the country managers had been very skeptical of trade shows and promotional items, based his past experience. He was amazed at the sheer number of quality leads generated thanks to the promotional item working in tandem with a newly designed booth, literature, and a hand-picked team of experts. He also now insists that the same approach be used in the future. I can cite many more examples of how promotional items help drive in leads and spark conversations with valuable prospective customers.

Promo Item Going Viral.

There is also a viral marketing benefit to this. People who were given the cheap and cheerful giveaway item showed it to their colleagues and friends at the conference, and pointed them our way. They also post photos of the giveaways on social media and share them. We gained additional qualified leads as a consequence.

At a recent and massive trade show and conference, I gave every one of the hard-working people registering delegates one of our event themed promotional items as a thank you from us. They loved them, and they wore them while registering hundreds and hundreds of delegates! They even came back for more. We gained significant conference exposure as a consequence. When you are in a massive trade show with over 1,000 exhibitors and you're only a minnow in a very big sea, every bit of 'viral marketing' and 'guerrilla  marketing' helps.

Silly promotional item? Yes. Effective at the job of attracting leads? Yes.

There are advantages and disadvantages to various promotional item approaches. There is no single solution. In fact, each solution comes with its own set of challenges. Having a drawing for a big-ticket item is valid and can attract a lot of business cards and contacts, but only one person will win. Inexpensive giveaways make everyone who stops by a 'winner', and if a conversation is started and a contact is made and recorded, both sides win. If budget allows for it, it would be ideal to have both a 'raffle drawing' for a big ticket item and mass quantities of branded promotional items.

I can’t tell you how many times we've made important client contacts at trade shows because we had a ‘cheap and cheerful’ bauble on display…. too many to count.

When exhibiting at trade show or conference, include an appropriate give-away item. It can be quality, it can be classy, it can be silly, it can be clever. But include one.

More on Trade Shows, Conferences, and Marketing Tactics:

• Trade Shows Still Work
• Success with International Trade Shows

Promote Your Business - Wear The Brand

Inexpensive branding is easy when employees wear the Brand. 

Looking for a cheap (cost-effective) way to promote your company and brand?

Look no further than the shirt or blouse on your back. Wearing branded shirts while conducting business with clients and during business travel is an inexpensive, economical, and effective way to promote your company and business.

When travelling on business and attending business events such as seminars, conferences, and expositions, consider wearing branded shirts, where appropriate.

Wearing a company branded shirt while attending an industry event and during business travel by air, subway, and train, enables your company name and logo to be seen by hundreds, even thousands, of people in a single day.

A company branded shirt brings instant recognition from potentially valuable contacts who might have heard of your business and want to know more. Existing clients will introduce themselves and present an opportunity to further strengthen your business relationship.

Wearing a branded shirt is a great low-cost marketing tactic straight out of the Guerilla Marketing playbook. Any business can take advantage of this simple but valuable method for promoting attention to your business, from a local Mom & Pop operation to a global Fortune 500 company.

Is Search Engine Marketing Tactical or Strategic?

Rhetorical Marketing Questions of the day:

Is search engine marketing a tactical or strategic marketing tool? Yes.
Is search engine marketing transactional or relationship (branding)? Yes.


OK, the best answer is "All of the above". 


B-to-B Search engine marketing is a fantastic way to generate leads for specific projects and business opportunities, and it acts as an ever-present branding tactic. SEM is both Tactical and Strategic... both goals can be applied to paid and organic search campaigns. 


In effect, SEM can target and pull in leads for every stage of the buying decision process... attraction, features, benefits, solutions. 


Webpages and Paid Search ads can target the potential customer across the entire buying process, including:


1. Getting their attention. Simple awareness. Uncovering a prospective client need. The prospect is thinking about thinking about buying.

"You have a problem" or "hey, we exist!", "We offer a product or service you are pondering or considering" etc.


2. Researching options. Competitive research. The Prospect is thinking about buying.  


"How our product or service, and features and benefits, meet your needs", "why our offerings are better for you than alternatives" etc.


3. First Contact. Getting the lead, or inducing a call-to-action. The prospect is going to buy from someone, it may as well be us. 


"Solve your problem now", "We have a solution to your problem", "We offer that niche specialized product or service you are looking for" etc.


Understanding the market I am targeting and the issues they face, for which my company can provide help and services is key to how I approach the use of webpages, search terms, campaigns and ad filters.


Since people search in a huge variety of ways, a particular search term used in a campaign may be attracting people who come from many or even all phases of lead generation development... from those just beginning to search and those about ready to make a decision to contact a business. 


To accommodate these different visitors who have different agendas, a landing page must be focused but also have a little something for everyone who visits the page.... appropriate content with links to 'learn more' related pages, a call-to-action, and a look and feel which invites the visitor to stay in the site and explore - - or better yet - - contact you, no matter what stage of the process they are in.


An intelligent and aggressive approach to organic and paid search engine marketing allows both tactical and strategic marketing. 


Thus, transactional marketing campaigns that target niche services, products, markets, fragmented markets and micro markets are very effective and profitable. 


For building reputation, awareness and branding, creating more branding focused campaigns to promote and support broad and key brand name related searches is helpful. Web analytics can help measure the quality and performance of such campaigns.


Targeting the customer awareness, research, competitive comparisons and call-to-action phases of the potential customer base will power greater lead generation to feed the B-to-B sales funnel. Webpages that "sell" in professional way help throughout the entire lead gen process. 


Just like a top performing sales representative, a B-toB website should be able to conduct consultative selling along every customer decision phase, in order to engage and keep the quality visitor, and encourage them to take the logical step of contacting your company to buy/investigate your goods and services. 


Best Regards;       Erik Holladay