One of the trends I’ve been picking up on is the opportunity a trade show presents for creating fantastic promotional material in its own right.

You want to make a great splash – launch a product or service at the trade show and make a big noise – no holding back now, we’re talking press release (simple and easy to do and distribute); mass emailing prior to the show, buy some great giveaways, hire some booth entertainers and hot looking girls and make sure you have the whole event recorded with photographs and video.

For less than $500 you can buy a high end digital camera AND a web enabled video recorder such as the Flip – you can use these tools to record the launch or “splash” and then play it back using your web presence to host the content you have created.

By taking the opportunity to create promotional content from a promotional event itself you are maximizing the ROI on your entire trade show investment.  You also are adding attraction value to the trade show event itself – if you invite people and let them know they are going to be getting some exposure too, you are more likely to get a better response when you ask people to come and attend.  Almost everyone likes to get their face on TV and that’s another thing – if you have a big enough launch, or a product which means more jobs are being created to cater for demand – this is potentially newsworthy for local TV and press (remember those press releases!)

You are getting the best of both worlds here and only paying once but that is the point – think outside the box and you will find trade shows give you so many different ways to make them work for you – you just have to leverage the opportunity they represent with all those eyeballs watching you but be careful; attention can be fleeting so play the crowd as much as you can and make sure you give them what they want.