Trade Show Marketing Tip: Custom Badge Ribbons

4 min readJun 16, 2017

Trade shows and conferences are expensive for small business owners.

I’m always on the lookout for great low-cost marketing hacks to generate attention.

I saw GEICO using these custom badge ribbons at a recent conference and was impressed.

This is a low-cost, innovative, and admittedly gimmicky thing you can do as a trade show exhibitor to attract attention for your brand and visitors to your trade show booth.

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The setup

Name badges like this are distributed at almost every trade show and conference:

*Sample conference badge from a visit to the Google NYC HQ. (I have no idea what “Nick Gray Media” is, they picked it, but I like it.)*

The badge ribbons

These trade show name badges often have attached ribbons that proclaim someone’s status.

Such as Press, Exhibitor, Buyer, etc.

*An example of a trade show ribbon. As an amateur blogger, I always ask for Press, and usually always get denied. GOALS.*

The marketing hack

Step 1: Make custom ribbons, or order pre-printed humorous ones. I’ll show you where to easily and cheaply buy these below.

Step 2: Hand the custom ribbons out at your booth.

Step 3: Profit. Or, at least enjoy the increased foot traffic as people visit asking for your funny swag.

*An attendee’s badge I snapped a photo of, just starting his ribbon sash!*

I saw this at a museum conference recently that my company Museum Hack exhibited at and was very impressed.

Other attendees were asking people with funny slogans where they got the badge from. The GEICO booth was handing them out. It definitely increased foot traffic to their trade show booth.

Sample trade show badge ribbon phrases

Some that I’ve seen:

Conference Virgin
I know What You Did Last Conference
Plays Well with Others
I’m Making a Sash
Best Dressed
My Ribbon is Better than Yours
Tired Feet
Where’s the breakfast?
Most Likely to Nap
Here for the Freebies

Example case study:
GEICO at AAM 2017

I attended the American Alliance of Museums annual exhibit and trade show in St. Louis in May 2017 with my company Museum Hack (we do corporate training, team building, etc).

GEICO had a booth there, which was interesting because it has nothing to do with the conference topic.

Their booth was WAY out of the way: back corner location with few if any surrounding booths.

But they attracted visitors using these custom funny ribbons.

*The GEICO rep told me all about how she uses these ribbons for word-of-mouth marketing at trade shows.*

The person running the booth, who wishes to not be named, was giving away her own custom trade show badge ribbons.

Here’s what they looked like:

*Some of the custom badges available at the GEICO booth at the AAM 2017 conference.*

The representative said that these types of badges were very successful for her as a marketing tool.

She told me that she buys them on the pc/nametag site.

The Ribbon Funpack from pc/nametag is $25 for 100 ribbons.

Not a sponsored link! Legit vendor she uses. If you know of other custom trade show badge ribbon vendors, email me and I will add to this list.

Potential R. O. I.

If the person wearing your custom name badge walks by 200 people, and if 5% ask where they got the ribbon, you could easily attract 10 visitors to your booth for $.25 each!

OK, that’s a crazy estimate… but you get the idea.

This is a low-cost way to bring some smiles and word-of-mouth foot traffic to your trade show booth.

More examples

My friend Amanda Ferri said:

These have been all the rage at cons (ComicCon, Blizzcon, etc). Kids lose it over trying to create the longest trail of ribbons and even come with their own to trade with people they meet. I made rainbow Tumblr because they looked great and were a nod to our queer fandoms. Here is a good example from a Harry Potter con I went to.