Shopping for trade show giveaways can be an overwhelming experience. One catalog is jammed with custom printed pens, another showcases mouse pads. Your boss mentions that last year, everyone was giving away really nice tote bags. The sales rep really wants you to buy keychains that can play MP3's of your marketing message set to popular tunes.

But what happens to all this stuff after the show? Let's follow one attendee, a buyer from a mid-size manufacturing firm. Tired after spending three days at the show, he's returned to his office. He's toting two bags jam-packed with trade show tschokes, which he upends on his desk.

All those fancy pens? They get jammed in a cup on his desk. Mouse pads go into a general office supply cupboard, on the off chance one of his office staff wears their mouse pad out. That seems unlikely – two or three are still in there from last year's show. His secretary snapped up the tote bag – it'll be perfect for her daughter to carry her ballet clothes in. And the MP3 playing keychain? He's giving it to his teenage son.

But what's this? A booklet slides out of his tote bag. It's small – just 3 ½ x 8 ½, somewhere between 16-24 pages. It fits perfectly in his pocket – or in a purse, as he discovers when he hands it over to one of his co-workers. The information contained in the slender volume – tips, techniques, and strategies all related to your products and services -- is just too good to keep to himself.

Of all the trade show giveaways, only the booklet has done its job. Without being overpowering, it has educated the buying public about your products and kept your company name and logo in view. When the buyer needs to make a purchase, he'll think back to what he read in your booklet – and he'll know exactly who to call.

Giving out booklets heightens your company's credibility as an expert in the industry. When prospects read your information, they perceive you as knowledgeable. Booklets also clearly signal that you're interested in pursuing a business relationship. Giving away coffee mugs signals that you hope your prospect enjoys his morning joe.

Booklets offer a lot of bang for the buck. Anyone in an industry who is selling or exhibiting at a trade show is a candidate for using booklets as a promotional tool. They are very cost effective. A company can create their own booklets, have someone else produce them, or purchase someone else's booklet on a topic of interest for their audience and have their contact information printed on. No matter what method you choose, booklets simply don't cost much to produce. They also don't have an 'expiration' date. One print run can easily and effectively carry you through the show season and be integrated in other sales & marketing efforts.

To get the most use out of your booklets, be sure to pack them full of common sense, grass roots, basic, practical, how-to information. Your customers won't turn to a booklet for dry, theoretical information, so don't waste time and money printing up journal articles. Keep it current, relevant, and important. Address everyday concerns in your industry. Sometimes the silver bullet answer everyone wants turns out to be information that is known but simply forgotten. The booklet serves as a reminder and reinforces your position as an expert in the field.

Once you have produced your booklet, you can often find other organizations that can benefit from it. Selling booklets – to your distributors, for example – can not only help recoup your production costs, but actually generate new revenue while continually marketing your own company.

Other ideas to consider include direct mail campaigns or licensing the rights to your booklet to another company. If you license the rights, you grant the client specific, limited production rights to the booklet manuscript that your company owns. Successful booklets often have to be translated into several languages to meet market demand.

Prospects for your booklets include the vendors, suppliers, and manufacturers in your own industry. Each is a marketing niche, with individual, specialized needs. Approach them in a common sense way. These booklets provide solutions to many of their problems!

Last and definitely not least, distributing booklets helps you garner a better ROI on your tradeshow participation Some industries, such as the pharmaceutical industry, are now making a concerted effort to pull back on money spent on excessively expensive and inappropriate giveaways with educational value. A booklet is perfect in these situations because is helps you create better-qualified leads. This in turn leads to larger sales over a longer period of time with well-educated clients. When your company makes one more sale because someone reads the booklet you gave them, the investment of purchasing or creating the booklet pays off handsomely. Buyers are far more likely to make a purchase based upon information they've read than upon any number of fancy-printed pens – even if they write with sparkly gel ink!

Written by Susan A. Friedmann,CSP, The Tradeshow Coach, Lake Placid, NY, author: “Meeting & Event Planning for Dummies,” working with companies to improve their meeting and event success through coaching, consulting and training. For a free copy of ExhibitSmart Tips of the Week, e-mail: susan@thetradeshowcoach.com; website: http://www.thetradeshowcoach.com

Copyright Susan Friedmann - http://www.thetradeshowcoach.com