The Edge Marketing

These ideas are for anyone that has a small budget to work with or is just starting to expand into exhibiting at trade shows.

You can even use these tips and techniques whenever you are speaking or presenting -- at Toastmasters, delivering workshops -- or even eLearning activities.

1. Have a visual point at your booth -- like a power point show or a television with a video playing. Put together a workshop video, even if it isn't professional quality. People will usually not look at it more than three minutes before they feel conspicuous and will approach you.

2. Have a picture album with success stories and pictures. Especially great for independent professionals selling a intangible product. Pictures of workshop attendees having fun and doing various projects or eating together or a Christmas party in your office with your clients is very connecting and attractive. Please like to belong to things that they perceive as "successful."

3. Have a drawing for something that is valuable and attractive to them. Don't give away something laying around your office or something that has your ego attached, this very unattractive.

4. Candy bowl. One they have to reach deep. Don't fill it up, let it look like there isn't much left -- that is even more attractive. They want to reach in before it's all gone. They will take less too (chuckle)>

5. Hire a model with brains and a marketing background to assist you. Someone "very attractive."

6. Do what they do in grocery stores, demonstrate how to use your product. Wear a mike and have a small speaker attached. Buy the headset mike like professional singers use. The connection to that alone will attract (second chuckle).

7. Wear clothes with your logo. Name tags are great for participants but displaying your logo or name is important for building your brand. If you can't afford to have them done, create your own. There are transfer materials made for your ink jet printers (see your office supply store), find some nice shirts/blouses, and go create.

8. Don't just stand behind the booth, go in front of the booth and mix and mingle.

9. Stand up behind the booth with a smile. If you get tired go sit somewhere else and have someone there that has an attractive approachable energy. Rule of thumb is to rotate the energy every 30 to 60 minutes.

10. Display your web site name big and bold in the background. Make the name a different color than the "www" and the ".com".

Here's a bonus for you. How about going in with another one-person business and sharing the costs. One that I like to use, is to work with someone like does chair-massages. It is a big attractor to people.

Oops, let me slip in another tip -- let's call it a super bonus -- for getting this far in your the reading and in your mindset. If you are a shy person, a dead way to sell at a trade show, hire a trade show presenter.

A trade show presenter is experienced at attracting people to your booth. Their fee may seem expensive, and I said I was going to keep these tips in the inexpensive realm, yet then if your ROI gains from it, it will pay for itself. And these experts on presenting at trade shows will pull in the people all the time. Find someone training for this type of work and you might even be able to barter.

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