General Business and Finance Blog

After putting the New Years Eve noisemakers away in storage, it’s time to unleash the trade show giveaways. Following the holiday season is the busiest bundle of big business trade shows of the year. Chances are you’ve already reserved the best booth space and have chosen the most qualified employees to represent you. The coming weeks will be filled with important planning from what apparel your representatives will wear to what prospective clients you’re most interested in speaking with. Of course, one of the most important aspects to any trade show is the awesome swag you’ll be giving out.

The trade show giveaways that you select can help to boost traffic to your booth and block out the competition. But with so many items to choose from it can be hard to narrow down the selection. For those that can’t put their finger on the perfect giveaway, there’s an alternative option for you. Consider all of the giveaways you’ve used in your company’s past and choose the ones that were most profitable. Once joined with trade show favorites and other unique items, you’ll be ready to make your very own trade show giveaway wheel.

The brilliance of a trade show wheel will be seen as your booth quickly becomes the place to be. As attendees approach, it’s important to engage them. Have a representative out and about mingling with new visitors and controlling the crowd. Meanwhile, another representative can man the wheel and one more can network with serious inquiries. Depending on the number of company representative you have, more attendees can be spoken to at once. The important thing is to keep that wheel spinning.

Instead of running by your booth and grabbing a giveaway, attendees will focus a good amount of time exploring your company’s services and products. Not to mention, they’ll also go home with a wonderful gift. Depending on the construction of your trade show giveaway wheel, you can have anywhere from two to ten potential products. Using four items on your wheel is a sure fire way to attract attention without going overboard. For the sake of trade show tradition, include promotional tote bags and trade show snacks. These items will satisfy the needs of trade event connoisseurs but you’ll also want to throw in an exciting new item to generate a buzz for your business. You can use promotional electronics to create the hype and use your favorite all time promotional item to fill in the fourth slot.

As potential clients wait in line you can glance at their name tag and check your list to see if they’re an important prospect. Once they approach the wheel you can introduce yourself and welcome them into a friendly conversation. Because of your personable and professional approach to networking, they’ll be likely to stick around and converse with your other representatives. Even if attendees leave after receiving their prize, they’ll have an imprinted trade show giveaway with your logo on it. The fact that the giveaway went from their hands to yours to theirs also helps to rectify your services.

Using a giveaway wheel at your next appearance is a fun way to draw attention to the awesome services and products you supply. They’re perfect for businesses with surplus trade show items from the last few events and can even include further promotional slots like a special discount panel for more incentive. No matter what items you choose, rest assured that you’ll achieve awesome branding success. There are many possibilities to explore and yes, that’s right. You can give that trade show giveaway wheel a spin of your own, too.

We have all heard it, recession proof franchise. It is being used by hundreds of franchisors now in their marketing material but what does it really mean?
Quite simply it means a business which is not affected by slow growth and cuts in spending. This sounds as simplistic as it does stupid, how can a business not be affected; surely all businesses must be affected to a certain extent? It is however possible that where someone may not pay thousands of pounds for a holiday, instead they may pay a few hundred pounds on a new TV (home luxuries), and if we go down the line a bit, someone with less resources may not pay hundreds of pounds for a new TV but may pay for a new Xbox game, and one step further, someone who can no longer pay £30 for a new Xbox game, well, in all intents and purposes is broke.
There is no such thing as a recession proof business. Every business is going to be affected in one way or another, the recession proofing of a business is entirely dependent on the upper management’s ability to adapt to current spending and demands. This however was not the subject of the article.
How can the franchise industry benefit from an economic downturn? Again we have a simple answer:
As more people are being made unemployed, many with redundancy packages, there are more people available for employment and purchasing a franchise, a ready made business to take the place of their old job and one with a track record of success. In particular B2B franchises are taking off as seeing an increase in sales due to more small businesses being set up to cope with the demand of higher unemployment
Is it as simple as that though? No, of course not. Although franchise sales “may” rise, and I am expecting this to be the case come the summer of 2009, the income that it is possible to generate per franchise is likely to drop. This does not mean the franchise business is not a viable option but it does mean that the expected turnover figures for each franchised business should be modified accordingly. This drop in turnover for each franchise outlet will mean a decrease in the overall turnover for the franchisor, a drop in their monthly % of profits and despite the expected boost in franchise sales cutbacks are likely to be made in areas of IT, and staff. The only area I foresee staying the same is marketing. Marketing gets pride of place in franchising, most franchisors get a monthly marketing fee from their franchisees and as such their overall budget “should” stay on a relative plateau.
All franchises are based around expansion and branding, if the expected increase in franchise sales happens, along with it comes increased brand awareness as the network grows. This is good news for franchise buyers and existing franchisees as more money gets added to the marketing pot and due to the increased presence across territories the brand goes through a burst of organic growth.
The Good News
For the franchisor
An upsurge in unemployment and redundancy packages could lead to higher franchise sales
For the franchisee
It could well be that despite a change in peoples spending habits; organic growth and paid for marketing could be a real boost for franchise owners and buyers.
The Bad News
For the franchise buyer
For those franchise buyers who do not have the required capital, and/or are experiencing negative equity on their house, raising the capital through the normal method of bank loans could prove tricky.
For the franchisee
Expected turnover could see substantial drops in 2009/10
For the franchisor
% of profits from franchisees are likely to drop over the next 2 years (boosted however by franchise sales)