Have a Sales Incentive: Will your trade show giveaway directly help future sales? Hand out a discount coupon or a gift certificate requiring future contact with your company for redemption. Consider premiums that will help generate frequent visits to customers and prospects, such as calling you for free refills.
Inform Your Target Audience: Novel trade show giveaways can actively help to draw prospects to your booth. Make sure your prospects know about it. Send a tickler invitation with details of the giveaway, or create a two-piece premium, sending one part out to key prospects prior to the show and telling them to collect the other half at your booth.
Have a Tracking Mechanism: Establish a tracking mechanism to measure the success of your trade show giveaways. If it is a redemption item, code it so that you know it resulted from the show. Post-show follow-up could include a question about the premium - did visitors remember receiving it and how useful was the item.
After the trade show, critique your giveaways with your exhibit team:
There are plenty of exciting trade show giveaways for you to choose from to avoid the usual pens, pencils, and key chains. Make your premium work for you by applying the 10 ways to master your trade show giveaways and experince show success...it will be money well invested.
Written by Susan A. Friedmann,CSP, The Tradeshow Coach, author of "Meeting & Event Planning for Dummies," working with companies to improve their meeting and event success through coaching, consulting and training.
