Drawing people into a specific booth is often the main focus at any exhibition. This can be more easily achieved if you choose a theme for your exhibition table. You don’t have to go over-the-top, but themes allow people to equate your business with certain characteristics and help you embed your company name in their memory. You can use your Exhibition gifts to emulate a theme. Here are just a few great ideas for the next time you need a booth theme and gift ideas for an exhibition.

* Beach/Luau: A sunny beach theme, complete with Hawaii shirts and leis gives people the idea that you’re fun, laid-back and friend. You can decorate your booth with sand and pool toys, and choose gifts that go with your theme. Instead of pens and pencils, try sunny yellow highlighters, and instead of key rings, try coasters, for holding your favorite summertime beverage of course. You might also try lifesavers and umbrellas for larger exhibition gifts.
* Vegas: A gambling theme is great because you can easily incorporate games to wine exhibition prizes, large or small. You can decorate with neon lights, sequins, and fuzzy dice, and include pries that only the “high-rollers” win. A Vegas theme seems glamorous and decadent to exhibition-goers, so your company will remind others of one that has high-quality items, as well as a business that isn’t afraid to take risks. You can even use these ideas to could up with a fun tagline for your company during the exhibition.
* Western: Yee-Haw. Purchase a few plastic cowboy hats and some rope, and you’ll be ready to go. A country-and-western theme is great because it shows people that you’re down to earth and no afraid of a little hard work. Cowboys are also equated with honesty and loyalty, other good qualities to associate with your business. Some great ideas for exhibition gifts with this theme include animal shaped stress toys and plastic bottle openers.
* Sports: Most people like some sport or another, and for inexpensive prices, you can choose gifts that emulate this theme, like themed stress toys and water bottles. You can also throw together this theme fairly easily by using a few pieces of sports equipment and wearing baseball caps or jerseys. You can even narrow things to a particular sport. Golf is a good choice. You can use a tiny putting game as a game for giving away exhibition prizes—offer personalized tees to people who play and personalized golf balls to people who get the hole in one.

The sky really is the limit when it comes to themes and your exhibition booth. Exhibition gifts like pens, mugs, and magnets are given at almost every exhibition booth, so it is really important to set your company apart from the rest. Creative exhibition gifts can help you do this for a low price, so at your next exhibition, consider spending some time planning gifts centered around a specific theme for you booth. This way, you’ll attract more attention from exhibition-goers.

If you are opening a dollar store, or any other business for that matter, one of the challenges that will present itself is to continually growing your business. Yet building your business is just what happens with effective marketing. You don’t have to break the bank to develop and execute a successful, high-impact marketing program. You do need to take the time to develop a marketing plan and that plan must be supported with a reasonable marketing budget.

How do you go about establishing a marketing budget when first opening a dollar store? Actually one of the easiest ways is to make your marketing budget a percentage of total store sales. Then dedicate that percentage of sales to marketing activities that will continually grow your business.

There will be trials and tribulations as sales grow and then retract periodically. Keep the marketing going no matter what the economy is doing. To keep your business healthy money must be invested in marketing irregardless of the economy and whether it is thriving or not. In fact, when opening a dollar store you should expect the ups and downs of the economy to occur.

If your store sales and profits are down reduce your marketing budget across the board. Let every marketing activity share the burden of the reduction. However don’t get into the mentality of totally eliminating your marketing budget when opening a dollar store. Reduce the budget and then spread the reduction across all of the marketing activities that you have planned.

Likewise as sales increase be sure to increase the amount invested in marketing and growing your business. When opening a dollar store don’t allow sales growth to lull you into believing that continued focus on marketing doesn’t need to occur. The best rule is to never be satisfied with current sales levels. Continually strive to grow sales and profits ever-higher.

To Your Dollar Store Success!