Creative ways to use promotional products to drive traffic to your booth
Even in modern business, trade shows remain one of the most effective methods for building industry networks and appealing to relevant clients.
Unlike on a screen where you need people to actively click your name, a trade show puts you right at the forefront for an audience that has an existing interest in your offerings.
Yet, trade shows don’t bring guaranteed sales. With potentially hundreds of other businesses in your sphere also attending, competition here is rife. Luckily, 64% of trade show attendees remember the names of exhibitions they’ve visited and are likely to make a purchase down the line. Your job is to ensure they visit your stand and are impressed enough to remember you.
Here at Promo Superstore, we’ve seen first-hand how promotional products can be the ideal method for achieving precisely that outcome. In this article, we’ll consider some of the most creative ways you could use promotional products to drive traffic to your next trade show booth.
Why Do Trade Show Impressions Matter?
In an age where business is largely conducted on a screen, it’s natural to wonder why trade show impressions matter. But, the simple fact is that they do, and will continue to be a vital part of your business operations for a few different reasons, which include –
Attracting Relevant Audiences
The majority of trade shows are industry or service-specific. By making the best possible impression, you can appeal to relevant audiences that might not find you otherwise, and which could be as large as 5,000+ people.
Securing Industry Standing
Stealing the show at a trade show can be a great way to secure your standing as a front-running company to watch in your industry. This could lead to additional show invitations or increased respectability in your field.
Providing Networking Opportunities
Trade shows are as much about networking as they are about sales. By hosting a stand-out booth, you increase the chances that you’ll connect with a great network, and that those individuals will remember you after the event. This could lead to interesting collaborations, or the ability to work with industry authorities you otherwise might not have met.
Returning Your Investment
Trade shows are valuable tools in the business world, but they don’t come for free. You’ll most often need to pay for a place, as well as any promotional products you take with you. Making a good impression can quickly secure a return on those investments, as well as notable profits.
Expanding Your Brand
Making a great impression at a trade show can help to expand your brand quite significantly, both by boosting interest on the day, and by increasing the chances those customers will keep you in mind, and even recommend you to friends if they like your presentations, products, or services.
Promotional Products For Trade Shows
There are many different promotional products that could help to drive traffic to your booth at a trade show. These vary from promotional items that attract attention, to promotional merchandise that may serve as an incentive to visit your booth. Top promotional products for trade shows include –
Custom printed banners
Custom printed banners, which could include feather banners or banners for your booth.
Promotional inflatables
Promotional inflatable items such as these bespoke advertising inflatables.
Booth promotional products
Promotional products for your booth itself, such as custom printed marquees and tablecloths.
Promotional merchandise
Promotional merchandise like branded pens, t-shirts, or games.
Creative Ways to Use Promotional Products to Drive Booth Traffic
Promotional products can transform the impression your business makes at a trade show. This is especially true if you consider creative ways that promotional products could help to get your message across, such as –
Playing to Your Audience
The more you know about the specific audience of a trade show, the better you’ll be able to use promotional products effectively. For instance, if you know a trade show attracts a fun and young audience, something like these inflatable air dancers could help to get that audience onside.
By comparison, a more conservative trade show turnout may prefer less loud promotional offerings, like standard feather banners and booth marquees. Simply make sure to do your market research in advance, and consider things like attendee ages, interests, and priorities for the day in question.
Matching Trade Show Themes
Not all trade shows are themed, but some might focus on specific topics including health and wellness, technology, or sustainability. Matching trade show themes with your promotional products can be a great way to make your booth more fun. It can also ensure that your offerings are ideally suited to the people in attendance.
With a trade show centred around sustainability, for instance, something as simple as using green colour schemes on your banners and recyclable promotional materials where possible could help drive traffic. Equally, choosing themed merchandise, such as water bottles or self-care packages for a wellness-themed event, could help you create a lasting, positive impression.
Going All Out With Branding
If promotional products like inflatables and flags attract consumers to your stand, you’ll want to keep their attention on your booth itself by going all out with branding across every element of your presentation. By pairing flags with additional branding materials like these fitted table cloths, custom printed banners, and branded merchandise offerings, you make it way more likely that you can both attract traffic and keep those people interested.
After a trade show event, iconic branding, which will ideally include bright colours and logos used across a range of different promotional items, is also the thing that will stick in people’s minds. Even if they can’t remember your services, recalling your great displays could see them reaching for your business card, and delving back into your products at their own post-show pace.
Integrating Technology
According to the latest trade show stats, 71% of exhibitors consider incorporating interactive technologies into their booth designs. Well-chosen promotional items offer a simple and cost-effective way to do that via things like QR codes or even banners with space for interactive screens and other technologies.
QR codes are perhaps the most obvious of these examples in action and can be printed easily on any customisable banner of your design. Simply make sure that QR codes are easy to spot, and that they lead to fun, interactive pages which encourage use via gamification techniques or other similar methods. With a particularly fun QR code, such as one that leads to some kind of interactive giveaway or ‘spin-the-wheel game’, you may even find that word travels around a trade show and drives even more traffic to your booth than simply the people who are passing.
Choosing Innovative Promotional Products
There are some standard promotional products that no trade show booth can be without, such as printed banners and a branded marquee. As vital as they are, these things are relatively commonplace for any trade show. To stand apart, you should also choose some more innovative promotional products for your booth.
Not every stand will use a feather banner or an inflatable, for instance, and these things can help to draw the eye and a decent crowd throughout an event. Equally, innovative promotional merchandise products, such as games or novelty items, can help to both attract people to your stand and keep your brand fresh in their minds for later.
How to Choose the Right Trade Show Promotional Products
The creative use of promotional products can enhance both booth traffic and the amount of trade show attendees willing to follow up with your company. This is especially true if you choose the right promotional products for every event by considering –
The size and scope of an event
Large events might call for promotional products like feather banners which are visible from long distances. By comparison, a small event might be better suited to standard printed banners or marquees.
Your budget
Knowing your budget for promotional products can help to highlight which products would be best for your purposes, and which may make it far harder to achieve return on investment (ROI).
Your brand
Your brand messaging may also impact the types of promotional products you purchase, depending on whether you’re a high-end company looking to attract professionals, or are a fun brand looking to spread your message.
Current trends
Trends come and go in promotional products, particularly from a merchandising standpoint. For instance, flash drives were incredibly popular a few years ago. Now, a focus on wellness means that items like bottles and even wearable fitness technologies are more common and desirable.
Drive Traffic at Any Trade Show With Promo Superstore
Trade show traffic can make a huge difference to the overall interest your brand receives. Promotional products like banners, inflatables, and merch, offer proven ways to increase that traffic and enhance returns.
This is something we understand here at Promo Superstore, where we offer every promotional product you need to stand apart at your next trade show. From custom marquees to inflatable air dancers and merchandise options that include sweets, drinkware, and clothing, it’s never been easier to attract all-important trade show traffic.
Whether you want to improve your struggling trade show performance, or you’re determined to steal the show at your first expo, browse our collections today to make it possible.
