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Part #2 of the 7 Deadly Mistakes
Exhibitors Make When Purchasing Promotional Products
For Trade Shows
Promotional Products Will Drive
Traffic to Your Booth
OK, so you’re looking for
hoards of people to gather to your booth for your
next trade show and looking to brand your product
/service. Well, here’s how to do it. Studies
show 71.6% of attendees
can recall the name of the company they received a
trade show promotional item
from.
Unfortunately you are not going
to be able to speak to every attendee walking the
show floor. Many people are going to slip through
the cracks during peak exhibit times.
There’s no denying it. Promotional
products will draw traffic to your booth. But what
items should you be looking for? Well if you’ve
read Mistake #1, you should know that you want inexpensive items that have high retention
rates, are re-useable
and that work.
Here’s another tip. Make your
promotional items available and make
sure your contact info is on the product and any message you are focusing
on at the show. You would be surprised at the amount
of promotional items given out WITHOUT contact information… what
a waste!!
The fact is, promotional
items are great for getting
a targeted message to a designated recipient on a
repetitive basis. If nothing
else, the exposure will help brand these attendees
for future shows. And that’s not all. Studies
show people receiving promotional items think
favorably of the companies that gave them to
them.
Keep in mind; this
is great if EVERYONE at your next show is a potential
buyer or prospect. But what if they are not?
Who is a Qualified
Recipient?
Sure, you may want
hoards of people to your booth to get some exposure,
but remember this…When talking about trade show
giveaways one thing is clear. You need to know WHO
your targeted prospects are… your QUALIFIED
recipients.
So WHO should you be
looking for out of the masses? The obvious answer
is that you want the decision maker, right! Well consider
this… How about other people who may be exposed
to the decision maker? What about people who can influence
the decision maker?
Picture this. If my
assistant was wearing your logo’ed baseball
hat everyday, chances are I would take notice. The
reason you should include those around the decision
maker is to take advantage of the opportunity to influence
them with your brand exposure on that promotional
item. In the case of the logo’ed hat – Don’t
you think that continued exposure would be worth the
$5 investment!
Trick or Treat
It would be a simple
world for you as an exhibitor if every person walking
the show floor was a buyer of your product or service.
The unfortunate reality is that this is not the case.
Here’s a common scene at trade
shows. Companies simply put out their custom promotional
products for everyone to stop by and pick up. The
result? They waste a ton of money that will never
bring them a return.
There’s a saying… “The
guy with a big bag of tchotchke ain’t buyin.” You
know the type, right? The attendee who goes from booth
to booth to gather as much “free stuff” as
possible. Yup, that guy… he’s not buyin’.
So do yourself a favor, do not wasting valuable
time talking to unqualified leads who are
talking to you solely to add to their overflowing
bag of “free stuff.”
Promotional Products
Can Drive OUT Disqualified Traffic
Ok,
you might be thinking, “What’s this
guy talking about? He just got finished telling
me how great promotional
items were for drawing traffic TO my
booth"
Truth is, if you
are prospecting for qualified leads, you can also
use promotional items to quickly get unqualified traffic
OUT OF YOUR BOOTH. It all comes down to this. If everyone
at the show is not a potential buyer it is just as
important to disqualify
people as it is to qualify them.
If an attendee is not
qualified he or she is not a prospect. What’s
more, they will cost you money by taking time away
from prospecting good leads. Your show
time is finite and must be managed to maximize results.
Here’s an Example:
A True Story
The first thing
I did before I ever exhibited at a trade show was
learn everything I could about exhibiting. The one
thing that stuck in my head was Time
Management.
One particular show
comes to mind. There were thousands of attendees,
but only a limited amount of potential buyers of my
product. So, it was important for me to set a goal
of getting as many qualified
leads as I could, and
then market to them after the show.
Here’s what I
did. I bought a putter, a portable putting green,
300 globe stress balls, and T-Shirts. I drew traffic
by offering a free t-shirt to anyone who could make
a putt.
Now here was the kicker… They
had to make the putt with a globe stress ball - not
a golf ball! Trade shows are fun and most people enjoyed
taking putts and watching others putt. It was always
funny for the non golfers to see their golfer co-workers
put on an even playing field.
So here was the plan.
While people were waiting their turn to putt, we made
sure to ask them what they did, and if they ever bought
promotional items.
Now, everyone who made
the putt got a free T-Shirt, but if we found out that
they were not qualified and they missed the putt,
we didn’t want to spend too much time with them.
We simply gave them the stress ball and some literature
to pass along to the decision maker. We moved them
in and out of the booth in 3 minutes.
If we felt they were
qualified, after the putt we would take them through
our sales pitch. Whether they made the putt or not,
we made sure to give them an assortment of samples,
company literature, and a T-Shirt.
What makes this so
special? The T-Shirt was not only an item with more
perceived valuable, but as I mentioned yesterday WEARABLES
have a huge retention and re-use rate. So we made
sure to get repeated exposure
to a qualified prospect who had the need for our service.
But you know what else?
We took their business card or information and asked
permission to follow up after the show. We DID
NOT TAKE INFO ON NON QUALIFIED BUYERS.
Why is this important?
Because if they are not a qualified prospect, you
don’t want to spend time and money marketing
to them after the show. I never rented a lead system
because I did not want a bunch of non qualified leads
in my database.
The business cards
we collected were stapled to a lead sheet where we
wrote notes to use in our follow up. All of our marketing
after the show was focused on buyers. Needless to
say we had a great conversion rate.
Let me just quickly
reiterate. The product we used to move them along
was the stress ball. Everybody left the booth happy
and we kept the lead machine moving.
Keep in mind…Unqualified
leads cheering in your booth is a good thing too.
People were drawn to the “buzz” in our
booth. Remember, TRAFFIC DRAWS TRAFFIC. Slow days
and slow hours were always busier for us than the
booths around us.
There are a lot of
different things you can do with promotional items
at trade shows but as you can see from my example
you should probably have a disqualifier (inexpensive)
and a qualifier item. Both will serve you well and
it sure beats giving stuff away and not knowing what
you spent the money on.
RJ Williams, is the
owner of Poor
Richards Promos. Our goal is to help
educate exhibitors and give them the tools to maximize
their trade show results.
Email for free marketing tips, “52 Ways to Trade
Show Wealth.” For a copy of our full report, “7
Deadly Mistakes Exhibitors Make When Purchasing Promotional
Products for Trade Shows” visit www.poorrichardspromos.com
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