Planning Trade Show Stand Giveaways? Questions To Ask Before You Spend The Cash

Most companies agree -- giveaways are an important part of a display for a trade show. However, these handouts and promotions aren't exactly cheap! Before you shell out thousands of dollars in trade show exhibit giveaways, ask yourself these questions.

Question #1: What Do You Want To Accomplish?

Before you can choose your trade show stand promotional materials, it's important to ask yourself what you want these giveaways to accomplish. If you want your item to be in constant use, giveaways such as personalized pens, post-its or notepads are excellent options. However, these promotional items will have limited space to personalize your message. If you're trying to share information about your company, it's a good idea to pair a small giveaway item with some printed material that tells visitors just what your business does.

Also, consider the shelf life of your giveaway. Some items, such as a candy bar with an imprinted wrapper, are meant to be consumed right away. While guests will likely love your treat (who doesn't like free chocolate?), they'll eat it and then throw the wrapper, with your contact information, away. Instead, look for a product that customers will be able to use over and over, like a coffee mug.

Question #2: What Do You Want To Give Away At Your Trade Show Stand?

Once you know what you want to accomplish with your trade show stand giveaways, it's time to decide what type of item you want to give away. Do you want to give out bigger items such as stainless steel water bottles or gym bags? Or are you looking for smaller things such as pencils or stress balls? If possible, tailor your promotional items to your industry. Knowing your industry and what type of items your customers prefer will definitely help keep them interested in visiting your display for a trade show. It's also important to choose something that you'd like to receive yourself. Before you pull the trigger and purchase your giveaways, ask the employees in your office to rank your top five choices. This can help ensure that you're buying something that clients will be excited to receive.

Question #3: What's Your Budget?

Budget matters! Chances are good that you're already spending a lot of money taking your trade show exhibit to an event. If you're working with limited funds, you're not alone, but that doesn't mean you can't afford to give your visitors a great giveaway. Look for something inexpensive, yet desirable, like a USB drive, a keychain bottle opener, car ice scrapers, clocks or pens. If you have a little extra room in your budget, look for a higher value promotional item, such as T-shirts, stainless steel water bottles or even a tote bag.

Taking Your Bannerstands And Other Displays Outside: Tips For A Successful Outdoor Exhibit

It's easy to control your exhibits if you're going to an indoor marketing event. However, it's likely that you'll want to exhibit outdoors at least once. If you're planning on taking your bannerstands and other displays to an outdoor event, use these tips to help ensure that you have a successful event.

Consider A Canopy Over Your Tables

A canopy is vital if you're going to be outside. Canopies can provide a great deal of shade in the hot sun, but they can also help protect expensive equipment in case of an unexpected rainstorm. This will not only protect your own employees -- your canopy can provide a welcome refuge for attendees!

Use Bannerstands That Are Designed For The Outdoors

If you're tempted to use your regular bannerstands outside, don't! Instead, look for bannerstands that are designed to be used outside. These bannerstands are specially weighted on the bottom to protect them from strong winds. Also look for graphics printed with special inks that are resistant to UV rays -- these inks will help your graphics remain bright and vibrant, even after hours in the hot sun.

Plan A Trade Show Booth Design That Can Anchor To The Ground

Another thing you should do is to have your trade show booth design company come up with a display that can be easily anchored to the ground. Make sure to let them know that you're planning on using your exhibit outside and ask them for any special tips to keep your booth safe from a strong gust of wind.

Successful Attendant Management for Product Launches

To help customers, event managers need to host a solution (event) that highlights the target markets need to improve, whether its sector knowledge, making new friends, integrating new trends through marketing or entertaining their target audience in new ways. Sometimes we have to highlight the requirement to improve by placing an idea into their heads, turning this new found recognition into an urgency to better their business or personal development.

The process we make to attend an event is as follows;

1. Realising the need to fix a problem.

2. Research into the ways on how to do so.

3. Comparing the alternative options.

4. Documenting the behaviour of audiences deciding to attend.(Peer influence and opinions play a huge part in this).

5. Reviewing the experiences gained from doing so. (Whether it was a positive or negative experience, deciding any future action with the event and its management. Do we estrange ourselves or stick with them?).

This structure is then edited by event managers to create a marketing initiative suited to the process of a decision maker, which is why social networks have become our best friends.

The power of technology for marketing hasn't gone unnoticed, but what we tend to forget is how much websites control and consume our information;

· We create multiple online profiles throughout the internet because websites ask us to, casually sharing our entire identity with strangers. Our occupations, salaries and personal information are no longer a secret.

· We target the search behaviours of our audiences because the internet documents them. Interest based targeting through cookie capture and questionnaire data on websites ask us for detailed information which is then published where marketers can track them.

· We optimise our websites with user search terms to suit growing trends relevant to our sector, because we can no longer research without Google, Bing or Yahoo.

· We listen to social opinions of strangers who claim to be- and sometimes are- experts. Their opinion and social status becomes more important than our own decisions!

Our social networking personas tell the world what we are looking for. We pour our groaning into statuses and make people jealous with our constant stream of social updates including images and videos. We brag, and this makes it pretty easy for marketers to find, analyse and pester us.

Our communities are made up of people who have the same interests as us and although we can very easily - and still do - search for an event that suits our notions, we are personally invited to events by our peers through social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Trends and feedback now come to us in realtime, whether those experiences are a good thing or not.

How has this changed our attending behaviour?

Technology has given us the ability to ensure upcoming events are sector or socially worthy. Event feeds populate the web, influencing our ideas with extensive content which helps us compare multiple event options before we make the decision to attend. We skim through the comment feeds and attendant lists of online registration sites and also search into the past of event organisers and hosts through search engines.

· YouTube allows us to watch past events, gaining personal reviews of events from the online social public whilst also compiling our own thoughts based on films.

· Facebook allows us to follow venues and promoters who host those events we are interested in, meaning we get personal invites to events as they appear.

· Twitter gives us the chance to follow those we aspire to be and like, giving us a live feed of what they are up to, where they are and how they came to succeed. But Twitter also gives us the ability to manage issues in the real world, hash tagging our thoughts and events into the trending, following world.

But social media isn't the be all and end all as blogs review those events that make an impact on the real world, with articles showing up in our Google search results. They deliver an emotion to the information seeking public, deterring our thought process to become more analytical. This means that expert opinions and peer incentives are even more relevant for event managers when deciding to make your event stand out because finding an alternative has become very easy.

Blogs are our idea outlets. Their sour reviews amplify our cognitive dissonance which needs to be avoided if you wish to be an imperatively savvy event professional. The slander of a particular event could leave you with a lack of attendants. The event management company, host and venue could also be at risk of becoming socially downgraded with the disappointment of those attendants.