Tradeshow season is here, and that means its time to start planning and strategizing for your next event! Industry trade fairs provide incredible opportunities for networking, lead generation, competitor research, and more. Keep these simple tips in mind to help you prepare for a successful presence at your next show:

Don’t neglect your booth’s appearance! Nothing is sadder than a tradeshow booth that consists of a plastic folding table and a few ratty chairs someone dug out of their basement 20 minutes before the show. It’s important to create a space that looks inviting, friendly, and professional. This can be easily done on a budget by investing in some logo table skirts and a custom booth sign or two. While you’re at it, make sure your booth team looks professional too – they are a reflection of your company’s image. A couple of embroidered polo shirts ought to do the trick!

Have plenty of tradeshow freebies on hand! Tradeshow giveaways are the most looked-forward-to part of any event. Make sure to capitalize on their popularity and effectiveness by stocking up on unique items that will help you achieve your goals for the show. Whether you want to attract more traffic to your display, make sure people remember your company after the show, or just increase brand exposure and awareness, tradeshow freebies are the way to go! Looking for some items people are guaranteed to love? Check out our Top 10 Tradeshow list – all of the best-selling giveaways and show supplies in one convenient list!

Do some lead follow-up BEFORE the show! Get the most out of your presence at the tradeshow by speaking with leads beforehand and letting them know where you’ll be. Writing a personalized letter and enclosing a small promotional gift is a great way to ensure a positive reaction and high response rates. Even something as simple as a promotional pen can be enough to get leads to pencil in some time to visit your booth! Getting people warmed up before the show starts is a much easier way to work a lead than to start from scratch at the show when time and attention are limited.

Looking for ways to boost attendance rates at your next event? Here’s a tip: get creative with your event invitations! Tangible event invitations and reminders are more memorable than your everyday print invites, especially if they are relevant to the event itself.

At The Brazilian Motorcycle Fair, the largest motorcycle event in Latin America, this strategy was used to attract more attendees and get them engaged and excited about the show. To create the special invitations, organizers contracted one of the most popular tattoo artists in the country to create three tattoo designs. These designs were used to create temporary tattoos that would serve as admission tickets for the event.

The custom tattoos were sent as part of a direct mail package to the target audience, who had to wear or display their custom ink at the venue entrance in order to get in. To keep things running smoothly, special optical scanners were used to read the tattoos right off of peoples’ skin.

As one event organizer put it, the tattoo invites let “anyone who had the passion for motorcycles running in their blood to also show it on their skin!”

Watch the custom tattoo invitations in action here.

As smartphone use continues to grow, QR codes are quickly becoming a marketing tool worthy of your attention. These barcodes have been around for more than 15 years, but up until now haven’t been useful for most businesses.

CEO of ShareSquare Matthias Gallica explains why:

Nearly every year since 1994 has been hyped as the year that QR codes pierce the mainstream, but in 2011 the hubbub is finally reaching a fever pitch. This is thanks to a confluence of factors: Critical mass in smartphone penetration, a large installed base of many barcode-scanning apps, and an approaching social tipping point of awareness.

In other words, QR codes should definitely be considered if you’re looking for ways to drive offline-to-online interactions.

One interesting way to put QR codes to work for your business is to incorporate them into your tradeshow, conference, and event marketing strategies. By imprinting QR codes on promotional products and event literature, you can send visitor traffic to mobile sites that reinforce your message and call to action.

It goes something like this: a visitor approaches your event booth and picks up some tradeshow giveaways and company literature, both of which include your QR code. With their curiosity piqued, people scan the codes using their smartphones and are sent to mobile sites optimized to reinforce your message. These sites can include whatever information you’d like, but are most useful when they drive conversions by encouraging visitors to do things like opt-in to your mailing list, bookmark your website, request more info, etc.

Here are some tips for using QR codes during your next event:

• Don’t link to websites and landing pages that aren’t optimized for mobile phones. You want the experience to be as user-friendly as possible!
• To encourage scans, put a call-to-action (i.e. “Scan to Win”) near the QR code wherever you use it.
• Test scan your QR codes before you print them on thousands of products and handouts!

You can create your QR codes in seconds using this handy online QR code generator.