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Lets get back to exhibiting your business!

HAD-Print is all about service and support. With decades of experience and specialist partners, who are like ourselves, experienced and skilled in unique disciplines. We bring together a package approach for small and medium-sized businesses to promote themselves in the best possible light.

So after 12-18 months where you’ve had enough of the Zoom meeting, done endless Teams 1-1’s you’re now longing for something different. Yes! The physical engagement. One of the top experiences or highlights for any business is being seen at the right trade show or event.

Here are our top 10 tips to ensure your presence and stand is a success:

Be clear with your objectives

Before you even book a stand be sure of your business goals, ensure the event has the right profile to tick the boxes on the audience’s demographics.  Are you launching a product, promoting your products or services or seeking new business?  Make sure your targets are SMART with your targets and event budget.

The early bird catches the worm

As the phrase goes, “failing to plan is planning to fail”. Booking early will allow you to get the best location and take advantage of early-bird rates. This will also allow plenty of time for the design, production, delivery and installation of your stand and promotional material.

Brand consistency

Exhibiting will require your brand to be reproduced consistently across all.  We can help you achieve this, with specialist print designers and our associate exhibition stand designer, getting consistency is easy with us. We work with your brand guidelines with brand colours, typography, logo positioning and imagery to maximize the results.

Shout about it and spread the word

An exhibition/event is a great opportunity to get seen and build new business. Consider promoting the event on your company’s website, email signatures, newsletters and social media. It’s a great opportunity to send invitations to prospective customers via post – building this into a VIP package for when they attend your stand.

Stand design

Be seen for the with eye-catching media walls/graphics, lightboxes, a bespoke exhibition displays are all great ways to entice visitors to your stand.  Arrange a meeting with our associate exhibition designer to discuss your ideas and develop your concept.

** Top tip **
Even on the smallest of spaces, adding height can help you be seen more. Most exhibition halls do have height and stand schemes that are 2.5m high. Chat with us for some canny ideas on how to achieve some height, on a sensible budget.

Marketing collateral

Make sure you have plenty of marketing materials to give to visitors.  As well as brochures, leaflets and business cards try some fun promotional items.  Items that have an onward life tend to achieve more brand presence moving forward. So items like re-usable shoppers a good start, as they are environmentally friendly and get more use than just the exhibition. 

Choose your team

Choose who you want to represent your business and brand wisely, after all, “People like people like themselves”.  Apparel can also be a great way of putting people at ease, both your staff and potential customers. Branded t-shirts are a good way of making your team easily identifiable to visitors.

Make it fun

Exhibitions are interactive events, so try and make it fun! Dull and boring doesn’t cut it.  Competitions and challenges with prizes can be great ways of enticing visitors to your stand, starting conversations and collecting data.

During the event

Encourage your team to appear friendly and approachable.  Set up a rota to ensure your stand is always manned and don’t forget to collect contact details for that important follow up.

Follow up and connect further

Make sure your team follows up all leads as soon as possible after the event.  Automated omnichannel marketing campaigns can ensure all leads are promptly contacted across a variety of media, such as email, text message and direct mail thank you cards and opportunities to set up valuable 1-1 refresher opportunities.

HAD-Print produces on-site in Halifax, West Yorkshire all of the above to support you with your physical items for exhibitions and events. We have a specialist Exhibition Stand Designer in Wayne Clarke at Clarke Concepts who can further develop the design of your built exhibition stand. Coupled with our partner installer we can support you from start to completion on your exhibition/event journey.

How not to specify and design a flyer for a door drop.

Well if only the businesses knew what I did when they dare to deliver tat to my door.

One local estate agent canvassing for business sparked this, a poorly specified and equally un-inspiring single-sided flyer. So, what did they do wrong and what can you do to avoid doing the same mistakes?

1) It was a flyer! Flyers are not a product for door dropping. Flyers are for handing out and inserting into packages. The 130gsm gloss art paper just spanks of being cheap and nasty, which it is. The first thing which I think is they do a cheap and nasty service, so think about the specification, does it match your service or product?

2) Again, the specification let this down, as to get it through a letterbox, it had to be scruffily folded down to a stupidly small size, so again making the item look insignificant or worthless – I’m sure they don’t offer a service which matches or do they?

3) The most significant part of this campaign probably would have been the distribution, even if they had got their cousins’ son to walk the streets, it’s still a big investment in time and money. So why only a single-sided flyer! You have a second side to tell more of your story or provide another call to action point.

4) On scrutiny and a closer eye reading the flyer, there were 4-5 grammatical errors on the page. Yet again, if you are trying to get a high-value ticket sale, attention to detail matters. All these small points matter as your brand is at the heart of the message, if these small points add up, what is the message you are delivering?

So, what could they of done better….
1) Specified and designed correctly. Understanding how something is going to be used and received is essential to get your message across correctly. We don’t just put ink on paper, we ensure you your message right and it sits correctly for you and what you are doing. Using a thin card stock would have been better, equally, they wouldn’t have needed the A5 size, it could have been A6 or DL, which would have equally worked.

2) Relevance, there was nothing relevant about the flyer to me, or to where I was. Huddersfield is a big place, I could be in Holmfirth or Birkby and I would engage very differently to it. So, think about who is receiving it and what’s important to them. No imagery on the flyer created any sense of locality, you state Huddersfield, but you could be in a back bedroom in Leicester for all I know.

3) The offer showed no sign of being time-limited or restricted, so why do I need to act now. The call for action, was a non-call for action, why should I engage now?

We have many more tools for creating empowering engagements with customers. Estate Agents, we can help you more than you think, as we can bring locality, bring data to convince vendors to sell or let. Unfortunately, this Estate Agent was using a scattergun approach, which equally will not result in any significant return. A keyword in marketing is targeting, if you have a target audience, drive messages to them to convince them, the key is them.

So if this agent was feeling like they wanted a campaign which would have returned them good enquiries and leads we would suggest

–           Localisation, bring it down to the area, Almondbury, Netherthong, wherever. If you want to be more specific and the Estate Agent has a pedigree selling in the area, use the street name. This will further engage the recipient, create a value, show respect and understanding of the area and its properties.

–           Use statistics and facts. People like to know if they are going to put their biggest asset on the market, they are doing the right thing. Demonstrate any increase in value for the postcode, which reinforces their hunches. The estate agent needs to demonstrate their ability to sell the property, so the time from going on the market to sale completion. 

–           Use the right product if you are door dropping, you know the areas, what the values are, so be reflective in the product you door drop. Here we can help you with an array of solutions.

How do we do it, we are a digital print house, and thus can vary data on flyers and door drops. Even if they are short runs with specifics, we are set up to manage and control this. 

So don’t be like the un-educated, be smart marketeers, focussed targeting, use relevant products to engage your audience appropriately to create higher levels of engagement. Which result in better enquiries and sales. Start your smart print solutions journey with us.

Interesting times

Many people are saying the world will be a different place and things will change. However, you can take a different view on how things will progress. People’s attitudes and value sets will have significantly shifted during Covid-19 lockdown. I am watching people “craving” after the smallest of things on Facebook, and much of this is physical things which people have missed. 

We are at a unique point where the button has almost been reset. You can be the individual, business or organisation that shifts thinking or leads, creating the way you want to be remembered for engaging with them. The quote “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” ― Mahatma Gandhi has a real resonance as your actions can be key. Many people would have heard me say, it’s not the “What” but the “How”

We use as the premise of how we talk about marketing as it’s about educating your customers, users, members about what you offer in your product or service. Educationalists often use a framework of Visual Auditory and kinaesthetic learning techniques. So whilst your audience has been bombarded with Visual and Auditory during Covid-19 lockdown, the opportunity lies with the kinaesthetic or physical engagements. In-person is very limited, with social distancing, and hesitance, getting physical with your marketing and communications will fill the void.

Last week, we had multiple conversations around this subject, with some very clever advisors and consultants to some interesting audiences. All with the same views around excessive online had dulled the message that the respective audiences were receiving. In every case the realization to change the communication method was key, yes that is the “what” but in every case, we turned to the “how” which resulted in different methods. All stemmed around the use of physical direct mail. Whether marketing communications or CPD educational programme resources, the need to engage and add value is at the heart of the message. 

Yes, you can follow the sheep, be bamboozled by the rhetoric, understanding how people engage, will only ensure you can get a result from your investment in communications. Speak to any seasoned marketing and communications professional, they will talk about the tools in the toolbox, one tool does not do everything. So if you want to get more physical and kinaesthetic, why not consider a conversation with us to add some magic back in your toolbox?



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