Trade Show Giveaways Can Still Serve a Valuable Purpose

Hey Newman, what’s your take on trade show swag? Is it worth doing anymore? – Kenneth in Los Angeles

Back in the heyday of COMDEX, an attendee could come home with literally two suitcases full of freebies—enough for the next five years of stocking stuffers. Companies would spend an extra $5,000 to $10,000 just on T-shirts, stress balls, hats with propellers on them or whatever else they could come up with.

These days, companies are spending more frugally on “swag” and trade show attendees are coming home with less of it. This change is primarily because companies are asking a very important question: “If we lure 2,000 people into the booth with free T-shirts, are these people actually qualified leads?

At Magnet Productions, we don’t think so. We think those are just people who have a rabid desire to get a new T-shirt.

When a salesperson calls those folks two months after the trade show, they’ll have no idea who the salesperson represents or what the product is. They’ll have no compelling interest; they just wanted a free tee.

Now, the T-shirt did accomplish something: It created buzz in the booth. But you can’t assume for a moment that the free T-shirt is also going to be translated into a qualified lead.

We recommend that clients use a different mechanism to attract and identify qualified leads: a two-tiered giveaway. You offer the typical swag on the front end—some sort of stress ball or trinket or USB keychain—whatever will get people into the booth. That will create the necessary commotion to get your booth noticed by passersby. It also means your trade show presenter will be delivering a talk to 50 guests instead of five.

But Phase II must be much more targeted. There are many different possible approaches, but one is to have the presenter follow up with questions and comments that identify qualified leads:

“How many people here are familiar with our technology or use our technology? Well, in addition to all that, we also provide consulting services. An hour-long Needs Evaluation is normally $500, but we’re going to give one away to a lucky person. So, for those of you who are interested, we’re doing a drawing. Just come on in the booth and talk to one of our people. We’ll stamp your card and enter you in the drawing.”

So, essentially the giveaway prequalified the people who had actual interest because the giveaway was directly related to the company’s technology. It wasn’t a DVD player. It wasn’t an iPod. It was something very specific and relevant.

If you don’t have something like that you can offer, you can still utilize a raffle. In order to be entered in a drawing for a high-ticket item, they have to come into the booth and actually watch a demo. And then you can gauge the actual interest of a person.

If you’re just trying to get numbers, you absolutely can do that with T-shirts because they have always been, and always will be, one of the greatest draws. T-shirts (and other gadgets with a “wow” factor) can succeed in getting a lot of butts in seats and a lot of eyeballs on a screen for a demo about the company. It’s just that many of them won’t necessarily be the “right” people.

Trade show swag can still be worth the expense. The key is there has to be clarity about the purpose of a giveaway in order to get the most return on your money.

Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.

Tags: booth buzz, clarity, qualified leads, swag, targeted giveaways
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