By Minal Bopaiah

Ah, the dreaded trade show booth — a staple in B2B marketing, but avoided whenever possible by conference-goers.

But fear not! We’ve discovered a killer way to leverage your trade show booth for subscription sales!

In this week’s Members-Only Case Study on Virginia Lawyers Weekly (VLW), Publisher Paul Fletcher explains how VLW is able to get the most out of their trade show attendance without pushing subscription sign-ups on the spot.

In short, VLW allows its weekly paper publication to serve as its best schwag. Since most of the conference the publication attends runs Thursday through Saturday, VLW will give its Monday-published paper free to anyone who comes by its booth. Then on Friday, VLW will publish a special “conference edition” of the paper with industry news. Then on Saturday, VLW makes sure to go to press early with the following Monday issue, creating a “Hot Off the Press” issue.

Fletcher says the promotion works great, builds brand awareness around their target audience (lawyers) and some people will even give Fletcher a business card to sign them up for a digital or bundle subscription on the spot. But Fletcher and his team never make an active pitch for a subscription — instead they let the product speak for itself.

As we’ve seen this week, other publications, like Politico and Capital, are discovering the marketing value of print editions. But we like this marketing tactic more for legacy publications, who already have print issues to leverage for more digital subscription sales.