This weekend was a popular weekend for expo's in Sydney. There was an Investment Expo,a Housing Expo, an Optical tradeshow as well as an Organic show. All in the one Darling Harbour location. I went to the Organic conference just for fun to see what products are available. One thing I noticed walking out of the show was a huge huge huge amount of trash. The trash was mostly brand new catalogues and pamphlets. Apparently what many people were doing after doing the rounds at the various shows was to take out and discard every and anything that wasn't remotely interesting. I know a bit about printing, it is very very expensive. In fact printing a glossy catalogue can easily cost into the double digits for short run prints. So essentially I saw huge amounts of marketing dollars being thrown away. Promotional bags on the other hand were all readily kept as well as all products that I saw were available such as stressballs and pens from some of the more savvy stands.

This is where promotional items can make you more memorable. Granted that a typical attendee has a lot of information to digest in a small amount of time you have only a small chance to make an impression. Miss out on this chance and you miss out on a customer. However what if you had the opportunity to gain a second chance? What if the potential customer threw out your pamphlet but kept the personalised post it note pad for use at a later date? (no one I know will ever throw out a perfectly fine custom postit). There is a large chance that the recipient of the post it may revisit your company at a later date by perhaps logging onto your website or finding more about you if they were again exposed to any of your marketing at a later date? This is exactly where promotional items can make you memorable and may give you a better chance and a 2nd shot at reaching your customer!