You put so much time, energy and money into securing a booth or speaking engagement at conferences and tradeshows. Don’t skimp on the materials that will reinforce or introduce your brand to potential customers.

After all, your banners, postcards, table stands, posters and presentation materials will impact how event goers remember you. So, follow this advice to make a memorable—in a good way—impression:

Go with clean and simple

When it comes to the materials you will use to decorate your booth or set up during your presentation, it’s always better to keep it simple. You don’t want to overload visitors with too much text. In fact, a strong, relevant image with minimal text and a direct Call to Action is all you need to grab people’s attention.

Most important, however, is that your materials should have a consistent look with your website and other marketing materials.

Invest in quality images

Blurry, dated and generic images look cheap and unprofessional, and they can put in to question the quality of your products and services. If possible, hire a professional photographer to take pictures of your employees, building and products and services, and incorporate those into your materials. That shows you take pride in your organization and want to share it with the world.

At the very least, purchase high-resolution, unique stock images that are relevant to your brand.

Create handy handouts

You want passersby and audience members to take your branded materials with them. More than that, you want them to review them and share them with others later. Here are some simple design rules to encourage them to hold on to your handouts:

• Don’t go overboard with text. Use concise, succinct copy, and break up the text with photos, illustrations, graphs and charts. You don’t want to provide every detail about your products or services. Instead you want to pique people’s interest. Focus on a few powerful benefits and features, and then encourage people to contact you for more detailed information.
• Make materials scannable. Integrate bullet points, headers, subheaders and bold face to make materials easy to scan. You might also want to leave plenty of white space and wider margins in case people want to jot down notes. It’s tempting to use up every inch of space you pay for, but more often than not, you’ll just end up with a crowded, cluttered look.
• Include a special offer. Include a coupon, discount or a freebie so people need to reference the handout later.
• Don’t print on cheap paper. Glossy, heavy paper looks and feels valuable, and people are more apt to hang on to it. Additionally, potential customers could see your choices as an indicator that your business is successful enough to invest in more expensive materials, and that could be enough to convince them to do business with you. On the contrary, put forth cheap looking materials, and customers could assume your business is failing.