Trade shows offer opportunities to build brand awareness, network, and generate leads. Offering promotional apparel and other giveaways expands your influence at a trade show. If you doubt us, look at the busiest booths at your next show--they’ll be the one’s offering the best promotional items.
A trade show resembles grown-up trick-or-treating, and with every booth offering some type of giveaway, competition is fierce. To stand out, you need to offer high-value promotional items that reflect well on your company. To continue the Halloween analogy, you want to be the house giving out the full-size candy bars, not the boxes of raisins. Often, the most popular giveaways are promotional apparel--t-shirts, hats, and outerwear.
Choosing the Best Promotional Giveaways
Choose your promotional giveaways with care. The best promotional giveaways have four things in common:
- Relevance: The gift has something to do with your company and your product or service.
- Usefulness: Will potential clients or customers use the item?
- Stickiness: Will the customer use the item often, and will they see your brand or message when they do?
- High-Quality: People are more likely to look on your company favorably when you provide high-quality gifts. Cheap, easily damaged items do not reflect well on your brand.
Promotional T-Shirts
Promotional T-shirts fulfill all four of the criteria for effective trade show giveaways. A t-shirt is useful and likely to be used often--if the design and quality match the gift recipient's expectations. Link your logo to the brand of a well-known shirt company like Nike and Adidas and the chance of the shirt being used increases dramatically. Possible promotional t-shirts include:
- Nike’s Men’s Core Cotton Tee: A comfortable spun cotton shirt with the Nike Swoosh logo on the left sleeve.
- The Ladies’ Dri-FIT Cotton/Poly Scoop Neck Tee by Nike: Sweat-wicking fabric helps keep the wearer cool and comfortable. The Swoosh logo is on the left sleeve, with a Nike Dri-FIT logo on the right, leaving the back or front free for your own brand.
- The Under Armour Men's Locker T-Shirt: A brand name alternative to Nike, Under Armour promotional t-shirts include anti-odor technology and a signature moisture wicking system.
- The Women's UA Tech Crew by Under Armour: Made from quick-drying ultra-soft UA Tech fiber, this t-shirt features a relaxed, natural fit and anti-odor technology.
Promotional Hats
Like promotional t-shirts, promotional hats are useful items for spreading your message to large audiences. Unlike t-shirts, promotional hats are more likely to be worn immediately by booth visitors (the easiest way to carry a hat, after all, is to wear it). High-quality promotional hats include:
- The Trucker Snapback Max Hat: Premium heavyweight brushed cotton fabric and a pre-curved visor make this classic trucker hat a popular gift.
- The MV3 Realtree AP: Offers a pre-curved “all-weather” visor with either velcro, snapback, or buckle straps.
- The Curved Bill Solid Cap by Under Armour:This low-profile unstructured cap conforms to your head and is built with HeatGear sweatband to wick away sweat. It includes the Under Armour logo on its side so it won’t detract from your own logo on the front.
Promotional hats don't need to be golf or trucker hats. Visors are also popular pieces of promotional apparel, especially when the sun’s glaring outside the trade show location. Possibilities include:
- SPORT-TEK Dry Zone Colorblock Visor: Moisture-wicking technology and sporty color blocking add to this visor’s appeal.
- Adidas’ Golf Performance Front Hit Visor: A dark underbill reduces glare, while a moisture-wicking headband helps keep the wearer comfortable. The Adidas logo is located on the side panel.
Generating Interest
Giving away high-quality items certainly brings people to your booth, but to keep them there you need to generate interest (if you don’t, they’ll wander off). In addition to promotional hats and t-shirts, provide a select handful of extremely high-quality and attractive promotional items, such as a desirable piece of branded outerwear or timepieces.
To qualify for these top-end giveaways, booth visitors have to fulfill certain criteria, such as signing up for a mailing list or taking part in an in-booth survey. Those who do so get their name entered for a raffle, with the winners announced at the end of the day. This sets your highest-quality giveaway apart from the competition and encourages people to interact with your booth attendants. Creating a sense of competition for a piece of promotional apparel increases its perceived value, and helps you stand out from the trade show crowd.