Have a More Successful Trade Show Experience by Knowing Your ‘Why’

As PRINTING United Expo  rapidly approaches, it’s likely that you are purchasing airline tickets, making hotel reservations, and planning your itinerary. These are all good and necessary things. But in order to have the most successful show possible, it’s helpful to back up a little bit. Why are you going in the first place? At…

Read More

Trade Shows + Social Media = Marketing Bliss

The trade show—one of the main staples of offline marketing. Social media—one of the backbones of online marketing. As marketing continues to evolve and shift, it’s increasingly more important to have a blend of both online and offline channels. And, thankfully, mobile technology has made it easy to do both at once. I’m talking about…

Read More

Would You Buy from You?

Have you ever thought long and hard about what it would be like to be a buyer of promotional products? Put yourself in your customer’s shoes for a while and think about what it would be like to be them. Why would they want to partner with you? When you can answer that question in terms of the benefit to them, you will be well on your way to having a unique value statement and differentiating benefit.

Read More

Measure the ROI at Trade Shows (Using the Right Mix of Creative and Promotional Products)

Every year more and more products are being introduced into the market, and after a while it all looks the same. What if a program was developed that helped generate a true (ROI) return on a trade show investment? During my tenure as a promotional products consultant, I was absolutely amazed at how ineffective most marketing managers were at effectively managing the results of their trade shows.

Read More

Where Are Trade Shows Going?

In our first article on What’s Happening with Trade Shows, we covered the SAAC Show, a strong regional association event, in Long Beach, Calif. There were a couple of anonymous comments bemoaning that the article featured links to product videos from some interesting items we found at the show.

Read More

Trade Shows Are Forever: A Be Bold, Be Different, Be Memorable Thriller

The scent and sweat and stale-roasted almond stench of a trade show at 3:00 p.m. can be deadly. Greene was trying to get out of the massive hall without being spotted by an enemy … or an ex-girlfriend. Someone came up behind him from a darkened booth. Greene felt something cold and hard press into the small of his back. A gun muzzle?

Read More

No Single Raindrop Believes it is to Blame for the Flood

Our industry has been much maligned. We may dislike it, but the proven effective branding strategies we offer have been devalued in many ways. We’ve embraced terms like swag and tchotchkes, because the terms are so commonly used. It may be argued this contributes to the image of our industry as trinkets and trash.

Read More

Good Products… Good Prices!

Recently, I had an “Ah Hah Moment.” Don’t laugh when I tell that I’m just now realizing that at its core, we are an industry that’s based on products and price. …Really?? This revelation came after my wife and I went to a trade show recentl

Read More