Are You Throwing Money Away?
By Susan A. Friedman, CSP
Shopping for trade show giveaways can be an overwhelming experience.
One catalog is jammed with custom printed pens, another showcases mouse
pads. Your boss mentions that last year, everyone was giving away really
nice tote bags. The sales rep really wants you to buy keychains that can
play MP3's of your marketing message set to popular tunes.
But what happens to all this stuff after the show? Let's follow one
attendee, a buyer from a mid-size manufacturing firm. Tired after spending
three days at the show, he's returned to his office. He's toting two bags
jam-packed with trade show tschokes, which he upends on his desk.
All those fancy pens? They get jammed in a cup on his desk. Mouse pads
go into a general office supply cupboard, on the off chance one of his
office staff wears their mouse pad out. That seems unlikely - two or three
are still in there from last year's show. His secretary snapped up the
tote bag - it'll be perfect for her daughter to carry her ballet clothes
in. And the MP3 playing keychain? He's giving it to his teenage son.
But what's this? A booklet slides out of his tote bag. It's small -
just 3 ½ x 8 ½, somewhere between 16-24 pages. It fits perfectly
in his pocket - or in a purse, as he discovers when he hands it over to
one of his co-workers. The information contained in the slender volume
- tips, techniques, and strategies all related to your products and services
-- is just too good to keep to himself.
Of all the trade show giveaways, only the booklet has done its job.
Without being overpowering, it has educated the buying public about your
products and kept your company name and logo in view. When the buyer needs
to make a purchase, he'll think back to what he read in your booklet -
and he'll know exactly who to call.
Giving out booklets heightens your company's credibility as an expert
in the industry. When prospects read your information, they perceive you
as knowledgeable. Booklets also clearly signal that you're interested in
pursuing a business relationship. Giving away coffee mugs signals that
you hope your prospect enjoys his morning joe.
Booklets offer a lot of bang for the buck. Anyone in an industry who
is selling or exhibiting at a trade show is a candidate for using booklets
as a promotional tool. They are very cost effective. A company can create
their own booklets, have someone else produce them, or purchase someone
else's booklet on a topic of interest for their audience and have their
contact information printed on. No matter what method you choose, booklets
simply don't cost much to produce. They also don't have an 'expiration'
date. One print run can easily and effectively carry you through the show
season and be integrated in other sales & marketing efforts.
To get the most use out of your booklets, be sure to pack them full
of common sense, grass roots, basic, practical, how-to information. Your
customers won't turn to a booklet for dry, theoretical information, so
don't waste time and money printing up journal articles. Keep it current,
relevant, and important. Address everyday concerns in your industry. Sometimes
the silver bullet answer everyone wants turns out to be information that
is known but simply forgotten. The booklet serves as a reminder and reinforces
your position as an expert in the field.
Once you have produced your booklet, you can often find other organizations
that can benefit from it. Selling booklets - to your distributors, for
example - can not only help recoup your production costs, but actually
generate new revenue while continually marketing your own company.
Other ideas to consider include direct mail campaigns or licensing the
rights to your booklet to another company. If you license the rights, you
grant the client specific, limited production rights to the booklet manuscript
that your company owns. Successful booklets often have to be translated
into several languages to meet market demand.
Prospects for your booklets include the vendors, suppliers, and manufacturers
in your own industry. Each is a marketing niche, with individual, specialized
needs. Approach them in a common sense way. These booklets provide solutions
to many of their problems!
Last and definitely not least, distributing booklets helps you garner
a better ROI on your tradeshow participation Some industries, such as the
pharmaceutical industry, are now making a concerted effort to pull back
on money spent on excessively expensive and inappropriate giveaways with
educational value. A booklet is perfect in these situations because is
helps you create better-qualified leads. This in turn leads to larger sales
over a longer period of time with well-educated clients. When your company
makes one more sale because someone reads the booklet you gave them, the
investment of purchasing or creating the booklet pays off handsomely. Buyers
are far more likely to make a purchase based upon information they've read
than upon any number of fancy-printed pens - even if they write with sparkly
gel ink!
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