It’s Halloween while I write this. Tonight half of San Francisco will stand in a doorway handing candy to strangers, and nobody will mistake a single one of those kids for a qualified lead.
Trade show floors forget this every spring.
The articles that rank for trade show giveaways are mostly written by companies that print logos on things, which is fair, since they know their product better than anyone. They run seventeen ideas, or fifty, sorted by item: totes, socks, phone chargers, little succulents in branded pots. One of them values a trade show lead at $200 to $500. I believe that number, and it’s exactly why I’d never spend the good money on someone who stopped for a charger and kept walking.
Split the Swag Budget in Two
I run two piles. The aisle pile is for anyone who walks past, and it should be cheap and generous and ask for nothing back. The conversation pile is for the person who stayed past the first two minutes and told your rep something real, and it shouldn’t be at the booth at all. It goes in the mail the week after the show, with a note.
I would never scan a badge for a mint.
Every scan you trade for a free thing lands on the same list as the CISO who asked your rep three hard questions about her renewal, and the rep working that list on Wednesday can’t tell them apart. That’s the whole reason I tell booth teams to tag the swag-only scans the night before the show opens. It’s also why the badge-scan number on the recap slide means so little to me compared with what happened ninety days later, which is how I measure trade show ROI.
What I’d Hand Out, and What Each One Actually Buys You
| Giveaway | Best for | Cost per person | Scan a badge for it? | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A bowl of good candy or mints | Anyone in the aisle, all day | Lowest | No | Starts no conversations by itself, and it isn’t supposed to |
| Pens, stickers, lip balm | Name recall at a show you’ll return to | Low | No | A lot of it stays in the hotel room |
| Tote bag | Big expo halls where attendees collect paper | Low to mid | No | A walking logo for the afternoon, competing with every other tote in the hall |
| Charging cable or phone charger | Long show days, at a booth with somewhere to sit | Mid | No | People stand at your booth looking at their phone instead of your rep |
| Raffle for one big prize | A scan count that has to hit a number by Thursday | Mid, for a single unit | Yes, that’s the mechanic | The list fills up with people who wanted headphones |
| Gift mailed after a real conversation | Buyers who stayed and said something specific | Highest per person, fewest people | Already scanned, with a note attached | Somebody has to own it the week after the show, when everyone is tired |
| A seat at your customer dinner | Accounts you already know will be in town | Highest | Invited by name | Only works once you can name the guests |
Where Each One Fits (and Where It Doesn’t)
A disclosure first. Before I ever stood up a booth I ran two sunglasses shops in San Francisco, which means I spent years watching what people actually carry out a door and what they leave on the counter. It made me a snob about objects. Read the next part with that in mind.
The candy bowl is underrated.It costs almost nothing and hands a rep an easy first line. Because it asks the visitor for nothing back (no badge, no form, no “can I just grab your email”), I think the conversations that start next to it tend to be the honest ones.
The raffle wins in exactly one situation,and I’ll concede it. If your VP reports raw scan count upward and the number is due Friday, a raffle gets you there faster than anything else on this list. Just tag every raffle scan so nobody in sales mistakes the pile for pipeline.
The mailed gift wins nearly everywhere else,because it can be about the person. If the buyer mentioned a kid starting college in the fall, the gift can know that. It’s the same habit as keeping guest notes on the concierge side of events, and it loses only when nobody on the team will write the notes down at the booth. Then you’re mailing a nice blanket to a name.
The dinner seat beats all of it for the accounts you already know. A customer dinner during conference week is the most expensive thing on this page per guest, and the only one that gets you two uninterrupted hours with the person who signs.
The Sixth Tote
By the afternoon of day two, every tote in the hall is carrying four other totes.
What I’d Put on the Booth Order
For a show like RSA Conference, where I ran Arxan’s booth three years in a row on a floor of forty thousand people, I’d keep the aisle pile boring on purpose. Good mints. One small thing with the logo, if the brand is new to the room. Put the rest of the swag line into the mailed gifts and a dinner, and let the booth design do the job a giveaway gets blamed for, which is making a stranger slow down.
If you’re building next year’s booth budget right now and the swag line is already half spent in your head, come talk to me! I’m looking for an in-house events team, and I’d happily argue with you about lip balm.