Event Merchandising – 5 Tips for Promotional Success

Planning and hosting events can be time consuming and difficult to keep to budget. 

In the current climate, choosing the most effective event merchandise for your money is vital. 

Sourcing Box work with our clients planning every step of the way. From initial mail outs to merchandise for their events, our aim is help them choose and source merchandise which will fulfil the aims of their event long after the day itself. 

There are lots of things to consider when planning events so to help lighter the load, here are our top five tips to help make your day a big success.

1. The Right Guestlist

Go the extra mile to ensure that the people you want in attendance are there, perhaps with some incentives to attend. If for example, you are planning a charity day, which high profile sponsors would you like onboard? It’s an idea to contact them individually with an invitation and go the extra mile with a themed gift. Think about how you could create an emotional connection with your cause. You could have merchandise printed which represent your charities success stories. Visual content is psychologically more likely to elicit a reaction.

2. Create a buzz

What do you want to get people talking about on the day and into the future? Do you have a tagline or hashtag that you will promote on your social media to generate conversation and reach? You can promote this prior to the day with event merchandising that you can send to prospective attendees or use as prizes for competitions.

3. Name Badges

At conferences, courses and exhibitions name badges can be used to encourage interaction between attendees. These can be printed with names, occupations, and business details. You could even ask each person to submit a sentence about themselves as a conversation starter for people on the day.

4. Event Merchandising Giveaways

It is a fact universally known that everyone loves a freebie. Your event merchandising budget should consider that people may keep a promotional gift for over a year. Think about the type of products that would be most use to your audience and what you want these products to remind them of when they see and use them?

5. Event Merchandising for Charities 

Promotional gifts can be used to generate income at events too. Buying in bulk affords you the ability to apply your own markup and raise money for your cause. Mugs, calendars, cards and keyring are always popular.