to tradeshow success, but Sehgal says the real benefit of promotional merchandise is on the day, getting potential customers who have previously never heard of you to visit the stand. Using popcorn as a giveaway even brought some unforeseen benefits. "At one point, we had the fire safety people over because of smoke from the popcorn machine," says Sehgal. "People thought something was on fire and unintentionally that worked really well, because loads of people came to the stand to see what was going on." The criteria for assessing the success of the activity were the amount of traffic to the stand and the number of enquiries. "Owing to the nature of our market, sales cycles are very long, so direct business is tricky to assess," says Sharp. But she is confident that  the promotion was a success, and is running the theme again at this year's event. Measuring ROI Setting something on fire isn't the only way to make a success of promotional merchandise. And direct ROI can be measured. This is much easier for a different type of promotion -- those that are targeted and require something from the consumer in exchange, usually contact information or part-payment. APS ran a highly targeted B2B Easter giveaway campaign, promoting its technology solutions to a select group of 50 prospective clients. Crucially, the campaign took engagement beyond the initial freebie. The potential clients were sent a box of chocolate eggs, with one replaced by an egg timer. They were challenged to