For this month’s My Best Promotion, we’re going to do something a little different. Instead of focusing on a distributor’s success, we’re going to feature a trade show idea from the supplier Fey Promotional Products Group. The company has been using its Reflectix Tabber Bracelet as a way to drive traffic to its booth at several recent industry trade shows. Similar to what you’d wear as a wrist pass at a big concert, festival or other high-attendance event, the vinyl bracelet features three removable tabs which the company wove into a raffle-based promotion at its booth. Ron Williams, director of marketing for Fey Promotional Products Group and Reflectix, explained the details of the promotion.
Promo Marketing: Could you describe what you did with the bracelet?
Ron Williams: “With promotional success at the PPAI Expo a couple of weeks earlier, I wanted to conclusively determine if viral marketing was a legitimate option with a promotional product. Once again, I chose to use the Reflectix Tabber Bracelet (item #V-1305) as the tool for the ASI Orlando show.
When a distributor visited our booth we scanned their badge and placed a Reflectix Tabber Bracelet on them. Each bracelet was sequentially numbered and each of the three tabs also had the identical bracelet number on them. We removed the first tab immediately after the scanning and placed it into our drawing chest.
After we took off the first tab and entered it into the drawing, the distributor had two tabs remaining and we told them if they wanted to have those additional tabs entered into the drawing that was going to be held the next day, all they needed to do was bring to our booth two other distributors who were not wearing that bracelet. When they did, we would remove one tab for every new distributor they brought and enter that into the drawing. The Reflectix Tabber Bracelet was then placed on the new distributors and the cycle repeated itself.
PM: What was the promotion’s goal, and what did you do to make it happen?
RW: The goal of the promotion was to accomplish a few things. One, confirm earlier findings that viral marketing with a promotional product is possible, two, prove beyond doubt that a promotional product could produce measurable results rather than hang its hat on the “ad impression effectiveness” coat rack, and three, increase my company’s scan rate, request for quotes, request for samples and decrease our cost per scan rate which are measurable advertising metrics that any company exhibiting at a trade show monitors.
PM: What made this a good promotion for you?
RW: Booth traffic increased 225 percent, requests for quotes increased 175 percent, sample requests increased 85 percent, and catalog/information requests increased 295 percent. Our cost per scan, which includes the total of all costs to attend the show, decreased 87 percent.
PM: Any other advice or insight you’d like to give related to this promotion?
RW: The advice I can give any industry professional concerning the effectiveness of promotional items is to look past the “ad impression” gold standard. That benchmark is difficult to accurately measure and it takes a leap of faith to make the connection between ad impressions and bottom-line results.
While I know many distributors have clients who display at trade shows, marketing effectiveness is far more than giveaway items. It’s about using a product that produces measurable results. From a pure sales standpoint, products that produce measurable results are easy sellers and will win every single time over products that can’t produce measurable results.
Want to be considered for a future segment of My Best Promotion? Contact Michael Cornnell at [email protected] or (215) 238-5449 for a list of questions and other details.
