5 Essentials for Your Travelling Business

For businesses of any size, exposure is everything. Increased exposure leads to more interest from prospective customers, which in turn leads to more business. If you are looking to increase exposure for your business, traveling is one of the best moves to make. Attending conventions, trade shows and a myriad of other events in your area and beyond is an excellent way to display your brand to a greater audience. In fact, many businesses—such as craft fair vendors, food vendors and farmers market retailers—traveling is an essential part of the job. Without travel and event attendance, these businesses simply would not survive.

If your goal is to thrive (not just survive) while traveling with your business, this is the guide for you. Here, we discuss a number of essentials every traveling business should invest in to ensure that each event is a success. Read on for five essentials for your traveling business.

 

Travelling Business Essentials

Smart Shelter: Branded Tents and Canopies

Starting with the biggest essential first, one thing that no traveling business can do without is portable shelter. No matter what type of event you’re attending, you need a “home base” to house your staff and inventory while attracting potential customers. If space permits, invest in an instant canopy or event tent for your traveling team. Here are just a few reasons why investing in canopy or tent is an absolute essential for any traveling business.

• Upgraded Weather Protection. Attending an outdoor event? You’ll want a place for your customers and employees to congregate and stay protected from inclement weather. Canopies and tents add welcome protection from both rain and excessive sunlight. Setting up indoors? Canopies and tents provide organizational shelter for your belongings. It’s much easier to keep your goods and equipment organized and safe when they’re housed inside a clearly-defined space.
• Extra Space. Speaking of space, one of the biggest advantages to buying a canopy or tent for your next event is the amount of room you’ll create for your setup. Canopies and tents provide surplus protected storage space—and they also help you take up as much room as possible. This helps catch eyes, which sets your traveling business apart from the rest.
• Supercharged Sturdiness. Every traveling team needs a sturdy setup. Though your storefront is temporary, it still needs to function without fail. With commercial-grade frames and weatherproof fabric, high-quality canopies and tents provide a level of sturdiness that simple booths cannot attain. Plus, instant canopies are portable and easy to set up and pack up, making them a great choice for businesses on the go.
• Increased Exposure. At every event you attend, your business is competing with others for potential customer attention. Even if you’re set up on the side of the road as a standalone food vendor or one of many vendors at farmers market, you still need to catch the eye of passersby to do business. To this end, canopies and tents are an excellent choice. These all-in-one shelter and advertising solutions take up a considerable amount of space, which makes them more noticeable to potential customers. Plus, they come in a wide variety of shapes and colors, which further helps them stand out.
• Eye-Catching Customization. The best way to increase exposure with a tent or canopy is to order it custom-made. Some manufacturers offer custom-printingoptions that allow buyers to outfit their tents with custom text, printed logos and even photographs. Having your tent or canopy’s roof and sides display your brand leads to better brand recognition among potential customers—an absolute essential for traveling businesses.

 

Portable Onsite Advertising: Flags and Banners

The goal of your traveling business is to attract customers and make sales. To accomplish the first step—attract customers—you want to be sure that you are advertising as much as possible to increase exposure and generate interest. Once you’ve set up shop at an event, street corner or other temporary location, the best way to attract customers is to advertise with clear, vivid signage. However, as a traveling business, you can’t exactly go carrying a billboard or heavy neon around with you everywhere you go. For an eye-catching, space-efficient alternative that you can pack up and take with you on the road, flags and banners are an excellent choice.

Advertising flags are simple yet effective free-standing signs that can be used in both indoor and outdoor settings. Flags are made of synthetic fabric and attached to a single-legged base of steak for easy setup on any type of terrain. Some of the most popular types of advertising flags include feather flags, which have a billowing feather shape, and teardrop flags, which have a sturdy and distinctive teardrop shape.

Advertising banners are classic branding solutions that can be used virtually anywhere to attract customers. Banners can be hung like posters or can be designed as free-standing advertising objects. Available in a wide range of shapes, sizes and styles—and often manufactured from durable vinyl or polyester—banners are great for traveling businesses for their versatility, reliability, space-efficiency and overall ease of use. Some of the most popular banner styles include pull-up banners, pod pop banners, custom table covers, and custom hanging banners.

 

Super Small Advertising: Flyers, Stickers, and Business Cards

For any traveling business, space always comes at a premium. To get the most of the space you have and reach as many customers as possible, you want to invest in advertising that you can pack up and take with you without breaking your back in the process. We’ve covered pop-up canopy tents, banners, and flags—now, we’ll go even smaller. No traveling business is complete without super-small advertising.

Super-small advertising is defined as anything you can easily hand out such as flyers, stickers and business cards. With these forms of print media, the same principles of effectiveness apply: You want to make them as innovative and eye-catching as possible while maintaining a degree of professionalism. This will attract customers and help convert their interest into action.

Want to take super-small advertising a step further? Keep up with today’s tech-driven market and advertise your social media accounts. Even better, develop a free-to-download app where customers can explore your business.

 

Seating and Surfaces

While it may be tempting to try and fit your traveling business into a box, there are a few big-ticket items you can’t avoid. Shelter is the biggest, but seating and general surfaces are also essential. Bringing chairs to set up around your premises will prompt customers to sit and stay awhile, which can lead to increased sales and fruitful relationships. Surfaces such as tables and shelving are essential for holding your media and merchandise—which brings us to our final essential for traveling businesses.

 

Merchandise

Sure, merchandise may seem like a no-brainer for any business—but for traveling businesses, there is a certain kind of merchandise that can pay extra dividends for increasing exposure and profit. This magic kind of merch is simply anything you sell that is not your primary good or service. For instance, if you are a food vendor, selling t-shirts is a great way to build your brand and give your faithful shoppers something different to take home. If you offer a service, such as repairs, custom projects or consulting, investing in products like apparel or bags can also increase exposure and legitimacy for your company. Lastly, if you are already selling merchandise as your primary good, bring the widest selection possible of “display items” with you on your travels, but backstock only the most popular goods. That way, customers have a number of things to choose from and you aren’t weighed down by too much surplus.

 

Shop Essentials for Travelling Businesses at Extreme Canopy

Ready to outfit your traveling business with essentials for success? Start at Extreme Canopy. Our industry-leading manufacturers proudly design, engineer and distribute an incredible selection of instant canopies, inflatable tents, banners, flags and more. We’ve developed a worldwide reputation for our high-performing designs, high-quality materials and huge selection of custom options. Follow the links above to explore our wide range of best-in-class products, and build your traveling business with our trusted team today! Questions? Contact us here.