Trade shows account for 40% of B2B marketing budgets. And for many organizations, this hefty spend pays off, helping to drive brand awareness, attract new customers and engage with current ones face-to-face.

But behind the flawlessly executed booths attendees see lining the exhibition hall is a whole lot of manpower. Sometimes just one to two people have worked behind the scenes, creating the messaging and design, selecting and ordering the booth components, coordinating travel and itineraries for those staffing the event, and sometimes even going as far to set up and tear down the booth itself. This is just a sample of the responsibilities of event marketers today.

On top of these, teams are being tasked with driving booth traffic and collecting leads among a sea of competitors. One tried and true method for attracting attention is to offer visitors some sort of giveaway. We’ve all seen items like gift cards, Apple products and product and services free trials being auctioned off in exchange for a badge scan. But even this seemingly simple tactic is regularly a source of headaches for marketers - who spend hours behind the scenes creating and managing the sweepstakes. Here are a few of the challenges associated with live event giveaways today:

Logistics: Shipping physical prizes to and from trade shows is risky, as is traveling with/being accountable for gift cards, iPads, other pricey physical items.

Compliance: Failure to cover all the bases when enrolling and selecting winners could lead to legal repercussions. This creates a lot of back and forth between marketing and legal departments to build sound terms and conditions for each sweepstakes.

Budget: Many gift cards have purchase limits and buying in bulk could result in credit card flags. Additionally, money is wasted when prizes are over-purchased and winners fail to claim them.

Efficiency: A ton of coordination goes into drawing a winner, notifying them, collecting the right email or physical address, and delivering the prize.

Offer Attractiveness: Prizes are never one-size-fits-all and many people are deterred from entering sweepstakes (and letting you scan their badge) if they don’t want the offer.

Brand Awareness & Customer Engagement: Companies struggle to stand out among growing competition at trade shows as well as connect with leads, who are bombarded by follow-up emails from vendors, after the event.

This had been the experience for my wife, Anne, for many years and when she recently was out thousands of dollars after losing her prizes in the mail, me and my business partner set out to create a solution.

That’s the evolution of Trade Show Prize Co (TSPC), an end-to-end sweepstakes management platform that takes the pain out of running live event giveaways. TSPC will help anyone tasked with running sweepstakes do so efficiently, compliantly, and at a fraction of the cost — all while building brand awareness and offering a better customer gifting experience.

Here’s what our platform offers:

• Sweepstakes Management: Flawlessly create, execute, and monitor your sweepstakes from start to finish in our simple and straightforward platform.

• Prize Marketplace: Choose from 100+ e-gift cards from top retailers and charitable organizations.

• Lead Scanner & Database: Scan and manage your giveaway entrants in the platform’s database and easily export leads to your CRM.

• Random Winner Selection: When it comes time to draw your big winner, use our randomizer to do so fairly and in a matter of seconds.

• Built-In Compliance: We offer editable terms and conditions and require entrants accept sweepstakes terms before entering. We then easily generate proof of compliance for legal teams.

• Frictionless Prize Fulfillment: Tracking down winners, collecting addresses, and shipping prizes is tedious and time consuming. That’s why our team handles fulfillment on your behalf.

TSPC was developed with direct input from Anne and other experienced event marketers, who are all too familiar with this less glamorous but necessary aspect of marketing.

“Trade Show Prize Co addresses a major pain point for event marketers. Our team is busier than ever and can’t afford to get bogged down by tedious, manual event giveaways.”

- Anne Weisel, Event Marketing Manager

Think TSPC could spare your team the time and frustration associated with running event sweepstakes? We thought so. Take advantage of our introductory pricing offer. Get up and running with TSPC for as little as $99 + prizes.