Have your Trade Show Booths Gone GREEN Yet?
What if we told you there was a way to make your trade show booths more cost-effective, as well as also giving you a great boost to your PR and attracting more guests?
Well, there is. “Going Green” isn’t just for rock stars and industrialists who want to make themselves look better. Designing your exhibition displays around environmentally-friendly principles is actually extremely viable and can create a true win-win situation!
Here are a few tips for saving money while helping the environment when you’re planning your next trade show booths.
Going Green At Trade Shows: Help Everyone, Including Yourself
Source locally: One major factor that often gets overlooked in “green” solutions is the matter of transportation. If your nifty new trade show booths have to be flown to you cross-country for your single annual trade show, you probably should have considered renting a display stand locally instead.
If you attend more than 2-3 shows per year, purchasing a trade show display makes better sense. However, if you only attend a few shows, look at buying or renting supplies near your exposition’s location. You’ll save a bundle on transportation and reduce your carbon footprint.
Use energy-efficient transportation: Depending on how far away the show is, this may not be viable, but if possible try to rent a fuel-efficient vehicle or even look at riding the trains as an alternative to flying. Again, it’s cheaper and burns less fuel.
While you may not have time – or the inclination – for a long train ride, at least extend this idea to shipping your trade show booths. If you plan ahead and ship ground, it will save the unnecessary costs and wasted energy of overnight shipments.
Select a booth design that is Eco Friendly –Use recycled display materials: Honestly, there is very little you can purchase for your trade show booths that you can’t find a recycled source for. Everything from your (recycled fiber) carpeting, to your (re-cast aluminum) display stands, to your (reclaimed fabric) trade show graphics, to your (re-pulped paper) brochures could be recycled.
We offer an excellent line of Eco-Friendly trade show booths, built from recycled aluminum and fabric – that look awesome! Click the link to check them out.
Every little bit helps, it’ll make an impression on your visitors and, once again, favoring lighter and easily-recycled materials decreases transportation costs.
Go LED rather than incandescent: LED lighting uses vastly less electricity than incandescent or neon bulbs, while also being brighter, more distinct, and easy to put messages onto. LED bulbs are extremely green-friendly, often provide a better color of light, while also being generally better than other lighting forms for your pocketbook.
Advertising Your Trade Booths’ Eco-Awareness
Not to sound cynical, but if you’re going to all this trouble to be environmentalist, you should also take time to tell people about it. Reducing our energy burden and your costs at once is great, but there’s another level of PR you can get from it as well.
Make it part of your message: There are very few cases where integrating environmental awareness into your brand identity can actually hurt you. Make sure your marketing materials mention your interest in environmentalism, but talk about it honestly. It saves you money AND helps save the Earth. There’s no shame in either, and most people today will appreciate you being upfront about your motives.
Give away ecological freebies: If conservation or energy-efficiency are part of your core business practices, work this into your booth’s giveaways. Get cheap fuel efficiency calculators, or make a Tablet app that shows off where you source all your recycled materials.
Promote your eco-friendly nature on social media: Facebook and LinkedIn are especially good for announcing your green initiatives and inviting people to join you in discussing new ways to make your trade show booths more green.
Invite other exposition attendees to join you in a green coalition: Whether the venture succeeds or fails, you’ll get some good publicity out of it. If your initiative is a success, it’ll mark you as a leader in your industry and help you put your own mark on trade shows you attend.
In short, if you haven’t considered embracing a “green” attitude towards your trade show booths, there are a world of reasons to look into it.
For more, check out the cost for booth tables or figure if you should rent or buy your next booth.