Companies have been using collateral at trade shows for years as a marketing technique.  How effective is this and what is it hurting?  Most collateral that is used at a trade show is thrown out.

Why is this?  Well, trade show attendees are walking by all of the booths and collecting collateral from the different companies exhibiting.  They take all of this information with the best intention to read it over, but because of busy schedules and large workloads, most of this material is simply thrown out.  The only hope is that your collateral stands out among the crowd, which leads to marketing departments spending additional time and money to do so.  Also, all of your extra collateral will most likely be thrown out because it will either cost more to ship it back than it would to reproduce it or the material is no longer relevant.  The amount of paper thrown out is staggering and is obviously not good for the environment.  What does this mean to you?  It means that if you use a lot of collateral at your trade shows you are wasting your marketing dollars and hurting the environment.

I’m not saying don’t use any collateral; however use it in a way that is more strategic and effective.  Here are some tips on effectively using collateral:

1^st Don’t have a large amount of collateral at the show.
Just have a little on hand for very “hot” leads.

2^nd If a lead asks for any marketing material, explain to them that your company has eliminated a lot of trade show collateral because so much was thrown away, and the company wanted to be more eco-friendly.

3^rd Explain to the lead that you will be sending the requested information to them through email and direct mail.  This way they don’t have to carry more stuff and you will follow-up with them to make sure they got the information the wanted and answer any questions.  “Is that ok?”  This qualifies the lead, provides you with contact information, and allows you to set up a follow-up phone call.

4^th Record the person’s information and what they would like to learn more about.  Make sure you verify all of the information.

What does this mean for you?  You are sending specific information to qualified trade show leads instead of just wasting money one useless collateral.

For more helpful trade show marketing advice, contact www.TMGExhibits.com

Tags: attendees, booths, collateral, direct mail, marketing departments, time and money, trade show, trade shows, workloads

This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 3:20 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.