How to excel at your next trade show
Your first trade show is coming up. This is your chance to garner a lot of new customers, talk with potential buyers and get your brand out there. You have one booth and a few days to sell your products for the whole year. That sounds like a lot of pressure right? No worries. You can feel confident and excited going into your next exhibit hall armed with these tips and products from Gold Image Printing. With us as your trade show partner, you will do more than survive this trade show, you will excel.
Banners and Backdrops
Let’s start by catching your customer’s eye. At your last trade show, did everyone seem to just stream by your table, not noticing you at all? We can fix that. You need something that beckons the guy all the way at the background of the room. Your products and brand are amazing so we don’t want anyone to miss them. Announce your presence with a nice background display. These displays are a great investment as you can print them in your brand colors, add any and all relevant information printed right on their surface and use them show after show. We offer a variety of trade show displays:
All of these high quality displays are fabric with attached pop-up frames that allow you to arrive not long before your expo and be set up and ready to wow your customers by the time the doors open. With their dye sublimation, washable, full-color surfaces, they provide you with a solid, professional backdrop for your booth or table. No place to set up a giant backdrop? We got you. Set up a standing banner or table top retractable banner or even hang a fabric banner from the wall behind you as a constant reminder of your company’s message as you talk to customers. These displays are a necessary part to a great trade show.
Table Dressing
With a professional and alluring backdrop behind you, let’s focus on the table in front of you. Now we get to the meat of the trade show essentials. Your table is the foundation of your trade show success. An organized, well-dressed trade show table will set the tone for your conversations with all comers. Make sure you have covered your table. No one is going to think highly of a naked folding table on their first impression. Cover your table with a Stretch Table covering or a Table runner or any of our washable, polyester, full color table covers. Is your event outside? Make sure to keep your employees and customers comfortable under a shady event tent. This way your customer won’t hurry away to find shade and make you lose the chance to tell them about your upcoming sale. Print your company colors and brand right onto your table coverings to match your backdrop for a seamless brand look. A well-covered table will be approached much more often than an uncovered one.
Promos
Order metallic shimmer business cards for your table at your next trade show. 
Now your backdrop is set, your table is professionally covered and your elevator pitch is memorized. What’s next? While we do live in the age of the internet and most information now exists in the “cloud” physical, printed material is still king at trade shows. The chances your customers walk away remembering your company and its products are much higher if they leave carrying some promotional material. Organize your table with standard flyers, brochures, business cards, or postcards. Fit all these products in sturdy folders your customers can walk away with. For our trade shows we would recommend our classic presentation folders that give a great first impression. Don’t just bring standard types of these though. Check out all our specialties that you can add to many of our products. Try white ink, foil stamping, digital foil, letterpressing, embossing, velvet lamination, die cutting, spot UV coating and much more! If you have these special products at the ready, you can easily show pictures of products you are explaining to better help convince your customer to buy. You can point them in the direction of your online store or your next promotional event by handing them business cards and flyers. Your table will be much more attractive with beautiful promotional material nicely laid out, like a feast ready to be devoured.
Don’t just bring standard types of these though. Check out all our specialties that you can add to many of our products. Try white ink, foil stamping, digital foil, letterpressing, embossing, velvet lamination, die cutting, spot UV coating and much more! If you have these special products at the ready, you can easily show pictures of products you are explaining to better help convince your customer to buy. You can point them in the direction of your online store or your next promotional event by handing them business cards and flyers. Your table will be much more attractive with beautiful promotional material nicely laid out, like a feast ready to be devoured.
Freebies and Handouts
The customer is walking from table to table, their hands are getting full of paper products they most likely will recycle on the way out. How can you get them to remember your table in particular? Free stuff. No one keeps a flyer for more than a day, but a decorative sticker with your company’s name on it, a nice notebook branded with your logo, or a convenient bookmark listing your contact info, or even a beautiful coaster, you can’t go wrong. Please your potential customers with things they will actually keep that hint at your company long after they threw away their last brochure from the trade show.
Outdoor Advertising
Check out our other outdoor advertising in our Large Format Printing Services
Lastly, your presence inside is killing it with your great display, your impressive table set up and your customers happily walking away, arms full of promotional material. But how did they even get into the trade show? They may have gotten an email, but what about the passers-by? Don’t you want everyone coming in? The more the merrier when it comes to new customers, right? So how do we get them in the door? Set up advertising flags at the door, line the street with giant flags, and accent the street corners with teardrop flags calling customers to come see your newest products at the trade show. These sturdy and colorful advertising will bring in a host of people to your next tradeshow.
It’s so important to take advantage of your trade shows. They only come once or twice a year and you have such a small amount of time to talk up your business. Let your surroundings do the heavy lifting, with beautiful displays, well-set tables and flashy promotional materials, your customers will say, “you had me at hello”.