Tradeshows, Partner up and cut your costs by 50%!

TRADESHOWS (home & garden,golf,landscape,ect.) are a great way to gain exposure in your local market. Sometimes, the expense of booth rental and set up make it impossible to participate. Until now. We have developed a program that cuts your booth cost by 50%.

Find a local Pond/Water Feature Installer to share your booth space. You will be able to save money and show your potential customers how beautifully ponds and greens compliment each other. You may be thinking to yourself, why would I want to share my booth with another company offering a completely different product? These products are very different, butcompliment each other very well in a landscape. Many people,who have a green, tend to have or want a waterfeature and vice versa. You are targetingthe same income demographic and thesecustomers can afford a putting green,a water feature or both. The great thing isthat you are not sharing in the amount ofsales or profits. They go hand in hand.

As far as ways to save on materials we have found that retaining wall block companies are a great choice for donations,because you can work a deal with a local retailer. You can offer to promote their block to your customers and send referrals if they donate their block for the tradeshow green. You can even offer to put a small sign near the green stating that they furnished the block. Hardscaping is just another complimentary element to a great green installation. Garden centers are also great partners. They can supply plants,flowers and sub-base for the same agreement. Potential customers love to see an installed green and if your display is well thought out and looks great they will be prone to want to use the same materials in their own yard. So,as you can see there are definitely incentives for suppliers to help you with display materials. The more greens you sell the more installation supplies they will sell.

Recently in Atlanta,GA,Steve Vandervest with Turf Management LawnCare,Inc. found that partnering our putting green with water features attracted quite a bit of attention for both products. They rented a 50’x 50’booth at the Home Show in Gwinnett. The booth consisted of a water feature with two waterfalls that flowed into a 5000 gallon pond. This display was complimented with a pond-less waterfalland a 12’x 8’All Pro green. They had great booth location where everyone who came into and out of the show had to go through their booth. They hadseveral local suppliers donate materials including pavers,retaining wall block,shrubs,bushes and even a gazebo in the middle of the pond to use during the show. They saved an estimated $10,000 in material cost! Once all was said and done they had a great looking booth forless than half the cost of renting and paying for installation materials. If they sold this entire booth,it would cost the customer around $50,000. They wereable to rent the booth and set it up for around $ 4,500. From this they gave out over 3,000 magazines and over 800 Build A Green Day brochures. They were able to get 32 solid leads that paid a show special of $65.00 each for consultations and so far,an additional 50 calls from interested attendees. This also gave them the opportunity to talk to each person about a Build A Green Day or turn-key installation. With an average profit of around $1,000 per Build A Green Day,you can definitely see some serious income potential in that alone. If they convert only 10% of those leads into sales they have the potential to make around $80,000 just from Build A Green Days! Not to mention the potential turn-key installations and additional landscaping and hardscaping. Wow! Not bad for a minimal investment and a couple of days at a tradeshow. The money they saved in booth rental and supplies now can be used for additional tradeshows and/or additional advertising to further promote their business.

Building a working relationship with local pond installers,block companies,and garden centers can benefit you both in the long run with product and installation referrals. We want you to succeed in this business. Because of this,we have developed a program to help you with tradeshows. Here is how it works: Log into our website and fill out the form www.allprogreens.com/tradeshows. Our staff will locate and partner you with a complimenting business in your area –for FREE. This program is free will be offered on a first come,first serve basis. Don’t wait until the last minute. Even if the tradeshow is 6 months away or a year away, go ahead and register. Also,you will receive special pricing and product & sales material for the show.

If you are working with an extremely tight marketing budget and need to build some sales before you can afford to go out and rent a tradeshow booth,you can always contact your tradeshow coordinator to inquire about vendor tables in the entryway where you can place brochures. Most shows allow you to do this at no cost. A lot of people entering the shows will pick up materials that are of interest to them from these tables. This is an excellent way to gain some added exposure for your business.