I went to a Time Out For Women conference in Portland last weekend. As a marketer, I can’t attend as just an audience member; I must analyze their marketing and look for areas where they should’ve asked my advice [wink].

I actually was impressed with this conference. They did a lot of things right. Here are 4 great ideas the conference did right, their table covers, their use of printed stickers, their giveaway bag, and their use of special conference pricing, and 1 idea to shorten their long lunch lines, a typical conference problem.

Table Covers: Logo or No Logo?

They had nice table covers displaying their products. They hung well, which is a way you can tell they were on the nice side rather than the cheaply made side. These table covers weren’t logoed, but I didn’t think that was a mistake on their part. They had less than 10 tables full of product. They didn’t need their table to stand out among the crowd, which is when logoed table covers earn their keep, because there wasn’t a crowd of competing sellers.

Lunch Lines: How to Make Them Shorter

Unhappily, the lunch lines were very long. Everywhere. I left with a friend to eat at a nearby restaurant, hoping to miss the lines, but with thousands of women needing to eat at the same hour, it made for a long lines. The best arrangement I’ve seen to combat long lunch lines is pre-packaged food boxes. They’re fast—just pick up and go pay. It requires a bank of cashiers, which they already had. To make the lunch more than just feeding people, a logo sticker on the top of the lunch box is an inexpensive way to add to logo repetition. Taking it a step further, make the logo sticker a coupon code for a conference discount on a product and you make the logo sticker valuable. This conference used coupon stickers in their program, which was smart (although it didn’t do anything for the long lunch line).

Stickers: How They Can Supplement Your Marketing

The conference program was a full-color glossy booklet, most of it ads for the conference sponsors and promoted speakers. At first glance, the brochure was pretty standard. It had the roster of speakers, followed by several pages of advertising for books and music available to buy at the conference. What set it apart was the peel off coupon stickers. There were two of them. Midway through the conference, the MC announced that the coupons in the program needed to be turned in for a drawing that was closing in a few minutes. Filled out coupon stickers gave the retailer valuable personal information about the conference attendee; I already received an email offering me a chance to buy the conference speeches on disk. It also increases the visibility of what’s for sale, since it has to be peeled off and filled out. Stickers are cheap! Using stickers for business visibility and personal information gathering is an inexpensive way to promote.

Giveaways: A Cute Canvas Tote

The Conference giveaway, and every conference should have at least one giveaway, was a custom created canvas tote bag. The tote was a red canvas bag with a white border. The white border had a canvas tie threaded through grommets. The red canvas was screen printed in white flowers and polka-dot details, and it turned the plain bag into a fashionable item. The conference staff handed the bags out as women streamed into the opening session. I wasn’t going to take one, I have lots of bags already, but they did a great job on making the bag something a woman would want to use. It has an interior pocket, helpful for all the little items women collect. The conference logo was screen printed on the front,; It was small enough that a woman would still use the bag, and large enough that it would get noticed by anyone admiring the bag. (This Red Cabana Tote is a great example.)

Special Conference Pricing: Creates Buyer Urgency

It’s very important for sellers to offer conference pricing on their products. I overheard a woman expressing the sentiment I felt, “If it’s not on sale, then I’m waiting to buy until I see what I can get it for online at home.” Special conference discounts create urgency, since the price only lasts as long as the conference. Expiring discounts increase the number of buyers. People tend to buy more at conferences, after the emotional experience of hearing a great speaker rather than from home after the memory has faded a little. Special conference pricing helps conference sales increase.

Conferences are a great place for logoed items: lots of people come together in one area, attendees are interested in buying products that connect to what they’re learning at the conference, and giveaways from the conference can have long logo visibility and repetition. Remember when to logo a table cover, how to make long food lines more efficient, how to turn simple stickers into viable marketing, how to transform a simple canvas giveaway tote into a long term promotion, and that conference discounts translate to more buyers.