How to find the right giveaway for the next trade fair

The right giveaway at trade fairs can help companies to attract the attention of interested parties, increase brand awareness or enhance the company image. Giveaways or promotional gifts are small, free giveaways that target advertising for the company at interested parties and draw attention to the brand. In this blog post, we clarify all questions relating to giveaways and provide ideas for the right giveaway for your next trade fair appearance.

Giveaways at trade fairs as favourable advertising

There are many different types, shapes and sizes of giveaways. Sustainable items that are environmentally friendly are playing an increasingly important role. Above all, however, the products are available in a wide variety of categories and price ranges. In addition to physical items as giveaways, there are now also virtual giveaways at virtual events.

Promotional items for trade fairs range from items such as key rings and lighters to pens and ballpoint pens, mugs, drinking bottles and USB sticks. As different as these giveaways are, they all have one thing in common: they are inexpensive to purchase and should offer potential customers added value or create a benefit for them. Once this has been achieved, the trade fair promotional item is frequently used and serves as ‘low-cost advertising’.

Summary

• Psychological significance of giveaways
• Placement of giveaways at the trade fair stand
• Giveaway ideas for the next trade fair
  
  • Sustainable giveaways
  • Virtual giveaways
• Analysing your giveaway inventory
• Conclusion

Psychological significance of giveaways

Are you familiar with the ‘Hare Krishna movement’? It says that a person who receives a gift feels bad when they accept it, but gives nothing in return. With this way of thinking, it is hoped that by handing out promotional gifts at trade fairs, visitors can be turned into new prospective customers and, in the best case, a business deal can be closed.

In the course of this, we could also ask ourselves why world-famous brands - which really everyone knows - continue to advertise in any form. There are certainly many reasons for this. However, one is particularly decisive:

Repetition!

The easiest way to make something stick in the memory for longer is to repeat the advertising message. A commercial seen or heard over and over again will sooner or later become ingrained in our memory, regardless of whether it is good or bad. Although this strategy of repetition leads to success in terms of memory, the effect of image enhancement does not materialise at first.

The right placement of giveaways on your trade fair stand

Where do you actually find printed promotional gifts from companies? They are often displayed in the company itself or, traditionally, at trade fairs. At trade fairs, there are typical behavioural patterns of certain groups of people when it comes to promotional gifts: you are at a trade fair and meet people who collect all kinds of promotional items with wheelbarrows that they can get their hands on from the employees of the exhibiting companies.

Do you recognise this?

It's not an isolated incident and it happens frequently. The annoying thing: It's usually not your potential customers and business partners who get their hands on your last promotional items, but often school classes or private visitors at both B2B and B2C trade fairs. Due to these frequent occurrences at trade fairs, you should pay close attention to which of your advertising materials you place where:

• Inexpensive promotional items such as pens, key rings or bottle openers can be placed visibly on the reception counter of your trade fair stand, where they are accessible to all visitors.
• High-quality and more expensive promotional gifts printed with your logo, on the other hand, should only be handed out personally to interested parties by your stand personnel. This creates trust and a feeling of exclusivity among potential prospects and customers - Attention: Make sure that you place your prospects or customers on an equal footing and that each of them receives a free gift.

Therefore, the following tip: Train your stand personnel so that promotional gifts are widely displayed for everyone and are placed within reach and visible to every visitor. Gifts for “VIPs” should be kept under lock and key and distributed selectively by your employees.

Giveaway ideas for the next trade fair

Distributing inexpensive web gifts at trade fairs is still an essential way to generate leads and increase brand awareness by printing your logo and slogan on a wide variety of giveaways. In order for a giveaway to fulfill this goal, the promotional item must have a high perceived value in the target group despite the low purchase value.

In addition, a recognition value must be guaranteed by the continuation of the corporate design on the promotional item. Below we present a list of ideas for giveaways with added value, which will certainly be used by some of you.

Tip: A giveaway should not only offer added value for your target group, but ideally also have a clear connection to your company. The easier it is to recognize this connection, the more effective and sustainable the image building and customer loyalty will be.

• Notebooks/, Post-Its in your corporate colors
• Ballpoint pens and office accessories
• Umbrella (ideal for outdoor trade fairs)
• Coffee mugs/cups
• Care packages with product samples
• Mini fan for the office in summer
• and much more.

Sustainable giveaways

Sustainability and resource-conserving actions for the environment are playing an increasingly important role in most companies. Accordingly, a company's advertising materials should also reflect these values and be environmentally friendly. From sustainable materials to flower seeds, everything is possible to give your promotional gifts an ecological footprint. There are many sustainable items from a wide range of categories that you can use to get your advertising message across to your target group:

• Flower seeds
• Recycled cups/ drinking bottles
• Plantable pencils

Virtual giveaways

In addition to real trade fair appearances, trade fairs and events are now also being transferred to the virtual world. Virtual giveaways, on the other hand, have hardly been implemented to date. Even if a physical advertising medium achieves a more lasting advertising effect than a virtual giveaway, there is a large selection of products that can be used as gifts in digital form for advertising messages.

1. content elements

In the area of content marketing, there are many different ways to make content elements available as giveaways. It is important that the content elements reflect the interests of the target group and represent sustainable added value through their high quality. Possible formats are

• Whitepapers
• e-books
• checklists
• templates
• Video contributions or webinars

2. vouchers & discounts

For B2C events, vouchers and discounts are particularly suitable as virtual giveaways to reach your target group. These can be sent if the e-mail address is provided. The following also applies here: The giveaway should have a connection to your company and portfolio and only be redeemable for specific categories and products.

3. invitations

Why not send the participants of your virtual event an invitation to your next physical trade fair, open day or another virtual event? This allows you to accompany your target group on their customer journey and build customer loyalty.

Analyze your giveaway inventory

You should always keep an overview of your promotional items. It is important to always be up to date regarding the stock quantity of your giveaways and you should know which of your promotional items are particularly popular with your customers.

You can obtain this information by counting the number of promotional items returned from trade fairs, for example. This will give you an overview of which of your promotional items that have been displayed or distributed are popular and which correspond to the current trend. You may also be able to see which giveaways are no longer of interest and which you should remove or even replace.

Conclusion on giveaways

• Giveaways can be creative, unusual, sustainable and/or virtual and don't just have to feature your company's logo
• Choose your giveaways according to the added value of your target group and create recognition value
• Also think about the environment and present yourself with sustainable giveaways
• Carry out a regular analysis of your (number of) promotional items to know the current stock level
  
  

Find out how you can coordinate your advertising material service online and always keep track of your giveaways in your own portal.   

Coordinate promotional gifts online