Tradeshows, Fairs, and Festivals: Promotional Products that Get You Noticed

With the warmer weather comes the burden of organizing and attending tradeshows, fairs, and festivals. These crowded gatherings leave exhibitors competing for the attention of attendees. Among the various gimmicks, promotional products remain a standard. Few, however, carefully select their products to suit their audience and their own business objectives. Whether it's a professional tradeshow or an Independence Day festival, an exhibitor has two basic objectives:

1. To increase booth traffic

2. To keep their name in front of prospects

If you can't get attendees to your booth, they cannot receive your advertising message. That's why increasing booth traffic should be your number one objective. Food may just be the best way to attract attention. After spending hours walking the aisles at my promotional products trade shows, my stomach starts rumbling. I can never pass up the chocolates and the popcorn. The caveat, however, is that even imprinted wrappers get thrown away. Therefore, it's best to pair food items with something that will stick around. One idea is to attach imprinted bag clips to small bags of snacks. It's not even too important that you spend the extra money to get customized bags for the snacks because the clip will carry your name. Also, don't focus only on the products. Think about the product colors. Instead of utilizing basic blue and neutral promotional products, adorn your booth with items in an array of bright, beautiful hues. Energetic splashes of color will be more eye-catching and help you standout!

Getting your promotional items into goodie bags is, unfortunately, no guarantee that your promotion has been successful. Your promotional products need to see the light of day in order to make an impression! If you want your advertising message to get out of the bag, you have to make sure that your product does. That's why my favorite promotional products are the ones that I use but didn't buy myself. If a recipient doesn't perceive a use for your product, it will get stashed or thrown away. In order to keep your products from such a fate, you should choose promotional items that will be useful to your prospects. First, ask, "Who are my prospects?" Are they office workers, executives, families, or young adults? I have a client who exhibits at career fairs. The objective at these events is to get college students to apply for job openings. Increasing the number of applicants means increasing the chances of finding great employees. These students, however, may not be ready at the time of the fair to apply for the job. So, it's imperative that the organization's name remains in front of the recruits. We accomplish this by choosing items that are incredibly practical for college students. One such item is a laundry bag, an oversize drawstring style made of an inexpensive fabric. The students use it to tote their laundry home to mom on the weekends, and the organization's name is taken along for the ride.

The next important question is "Where are my prospects going after the event?" You don't want to get the right products into the right hands at the wrong time. Even if the recipient could use a document clip for her monitor at work, a product that goes home probably will not make the journey to the office. Certainly, a number of office workers attend festivals, but they're not going to the office after the event. So, when my client needed promotional products for her booth at baseball's All Star Fan Fest, I suggested handy items for the home. She decided on chip clips, which are equally useful for vegetable and cereal bags. Then, we complimented the clips with a word magnet picture frame. Instead of using generic words, I came up with a list of baseball terms. This option had the perfect blend of utility and pizzazz, and customizing the words made it the ideal gift for baseball fans. Recipients can show-off their latest snapshot on the refrigerator with the frame and have fun creating phrases with the words. The best part is that magnets serve as a billboard for the advertiser. If a magnet makes it to the fridge, chances are it will be there for a long time to come. When I visit my parents, I see the same refrigerator magnets that I've been looking at since high school!

Lastly, when choosing promotional products for any event, be sure to involve your promotional products consultant early. Your consultant will be able to show you new and exciting ideas. In order to take advantage of the full array of options, however, you will want to prepare months in advance. Sure, rush orders are a way of life for us promotional products distributors, but not all products are available on rush services. While the average normal production time for imprinted items is 7 to 10 days, proofs add additional time and some products can take months to produce. Not to mention that expedited shipping can blow your budget! I generally encourage clients to start planning a few months in advance for any project.

Ensure success during this year's trade show and festival season by choosing functional items that will both increase booth traffic and keep your logo in front of prospects. Ask yourself what types of people will be at these events, and where they will be going afterward. Then, contact your promotional products consultant months before your event to reduce your stress and secure attention-grabbing giveaways!