What Information Do Promotional Staff Need Before an Event? How to Get the Brief Right

You might hire experienced promotional staff who fit your brand and have a great event planned, but if your team shows up without the right details, their job becomes much harder. A good staff brief doesn’t need to include everything about your company. It just needs to give promotional staff the key information they need to represent you confidently from the start.

A Good Promotional Team Still Needs a Good Brief

Experienced promotional staff are used to stepping into new places, meeting new teams, and talking to people they haven’t met before. This adaptability is important, but it doesn’t mean they automatically know what you expect from them.

Every event is different.

One week a member of promotional staff could be representing a consumer brand at a busy shopping centre activation, and the next they could be supporting a business at a trade exhibition. They might be sampling a new product, generating leads, greeting delegates or helping launch something that has never been seen by the public before.

The skills may transfer, but the information they need changes every time.

At Envisage Promotions, we brief staff using information supplied by the client, and the quality of that information can make a noticeable difference to how quickly a team settles into an event.

This doesn’t mean clients need to create an enormous briefing document. In fact, a huge document containing everything anyone could possibly want to know about a company can sometimes make the important information harder to find.

The aim is to answer a much simpler question:

What does this person need to know to do a good job for us today?

Once you start there, building a useful promotional staff brief becomes much easier.

Start With Why You Are at the Event

Promotional staff should understand the purpose of the campaign before they start learning the finer details.

Imagine being told that you are working on an exhibition stand and your job is to “engage with visitors”. What does that actually mean?

Does the client want as many conversations as possible? Are they looking for a particular type of business? Is the priority collecting data? Do they want people to try a product? Is there a new service they particularly want to promote?

Without context, promotional staff have to make assumptions.

A better briefing explains the objective in plain English. For example, you might tell the team that the business is launching a new product and wants as many relevant attendees as possible to see a demonstration. Alternatively, the aim could be to identify decision-makers and introduce them to the client’s sales team.

Those two objectives require very different behaviour.

In the first example, promotional staff may need to create plenty of short interactions and encourage people towards the demonstration. In the second, they need to ask enough questions to establish whether somebody is a useful prospect before making the handover.

When staff understand why the client is there, they can make much better decisions about how to interact with people.

Tell Them Who They Are Representing

It sounds obvious, but promotional staff need a clear, simple explanation of the brand they are representing.

Not the full company history.

Not every product or service.

Not a collection of paragraphs copied directly from the website.

Think instead about what a member of staff should say if a visitor walks up and asks:

“What do you do?”

Ideally, they should be able to answer naturally and confidently in a couple of sentences.

If your company provides a highly technical product or specialist service, promotional staff don’t necessarily need to become experts in it. Their job may simply be to understand enough to start the conversation and recognise when it is time to bring in somebody from your permanent team.

That distinction matters.

Trying to teach temporary promotional staff everything about a complicated business can create uncertainty because they become worried about saying something incorrectly. Giving them a clear explanation of the company, the relevant product and their boundaries can actually make them much more confident.

What Are You Promoting Today?

A company may offer twenty services, but if the event is focused on one of them, that is where the briefing should concentrate.

This is particularly important at exhibitions.

Visitors may ask broad questions about the company, but the promotional team needs to know what the client particularly wants to talk about at that event.

Perhaps there is a new product launch, an introductory offer, a competition or a service being demonstrated. Maybe the company is entering a new market and wants to meet a specific type of customer.

Give promotional staff enough information to explain the key proposition without overwhelming them with details they are unlikely to use.

A useful test is to ask yourself what you would want a member of staff to say if they had 30 seconds with the perfect potential customer.

What are the two or three things you would really want that person to hear?

Those are your key messages.

Who Do You Want the Promotional Staff to Talk To?

This can completely change the quality of an event.

“Speak to people” is a very different instruction from “We’re particularly interested in speaking to independent retailers.”

At a consumer event, the target audience may be broad. At a trade exhibition, it can be much more specific.

If your promotional staff know who you are trying to reach, they can use their time more effectively. They can ask better opening questions and recognise when somebody should be introduced to the client’s team.

You don’t necessarily need to give staff a complicated customer profile. Often a few simple indicators are enough.

Perhaps you want business owners rather than suppliers. Maybe you are interested in people responsible for procurement, HR or marketing. You could be looking for retailers with physical stores or companies operating within a particular industry.

Whatever matters to your campaign, tell the staff.

This also helps prevent one of the common problems at busy exhibitions: spending ten minutes having a perfectly pleasant conversation with somebody who was never a potential customer while a valuable prospect walks past unnoticed.

Promotional staff should always be friendly and professional to everyone, of course, but knowing the target audience helps them understand where to invest more time.

Give Them Conversation Starters, Not a Script

Clients sometimes worry about exactly what promotional staff will say when approaching people.

That is understandable. These people are representing your brand and could be the first human interaction somebody has with your business.

However, there is a difference between giving staff guidance and asking them to memorise a script.

A rigid script can make conversations sound unnatural, particularly when repeated hundreds of times throughout an event. Experienced promotional staff are usually good communicators, so give them the information they need and allow some personality into the interaction.

What can be useful is providing a few examples of appropriate opening questions.

At an exhibition, rather than simply saying, “Can I help you?”, perhaps there is a question that immediately relates to the problem your business solves.

For a sampling campaign, staff might need a simple product introduction before offering the sample.

If there is a competition, there may be a clear way you want it introduced so that the terms aren’t misunderstood.

The aim isn’t to control every word. It is to make sure conversations start in the right direction.

Make the Boundaries Just as Clear as the Key Messages

Knowing what not to say can be just as important as knowing what to say.

Promotional staff may be asked questions they cannot answer, particularly when representing technical products or services. That is completely normal.

The problem comes when somebody feels they are expected to know the answer and tries to improvise.

A good brief removes that pressure.

Tell staff which questions should be handed over to the client’s team. Pricing, contracts, technical specifications, medical claims, detailed product comparisons or commercially sensitive information may all fall into this category depending on the campaign.

There is nothing unprofessional about a member of promotional staff saying that they will find the right person to answer a question.

In fact, it is far more professional than guessing.

Give them a clear route for escalation. If somebody asks a technical question, who should they introduce them to? If a visitor complains, who deals with it? If the staff member isn’t sure about something, who is their point of contact?

Knowing the boundaries gives people confidence to work within them.

Explain What a Good Lead Looks Like

If promotional staff are supporting lead generation, this deserves particular attention in the briefing.

Simply telling people to “collect as many leads as possible” can produce impressive numbers without necessarily producing impressive results.

A lead isn’t automatically valuable because somebody allowed their badge to be scanned.

If quality matters, tell staff what makes somebody interesting to you.

It could be their job role, business size, location, sector, current supplier or the timeframe in which they are considering buying.

Promotional staff don’t need to conduct a full sales interview. A couple of well-chosen questions can often establish whether a visitor should be handed over to the client’s sales team.

The internal team can then spend more of the event speaking with people who have genuine potential rather than trying to qualify every person who steps onto the stand themselves.

Be Clear About How Data Should Be Captured

If you want promotional staff to collect customer information, don’t leave the process until the event is underway.

Will they scan visitor badges? Use an app? Complete a form? Enter details onto a tablet? Encourage people to scan a QR code themselves?

Make sure the team knows.

If there are specific pieces of information that need capturing, explain those too. A name and email address may be enough for one campaign, while another client may need company name, job title and an indication of what the visitor is interested in.

There are practical considerations as well. Who has the devices? Are logins required? What happens if the Wi-Fi is unreliable? Is there a backup method?

You don’t need promotional staff troubleshooting your entire technology system, but they should know the process they are expected to follow.

There is little point having a brilliant conversation with a potential customer if nobody records who they were.

Clothing Is Part of the Brief Too

What promotional staff wear can have a significant impact on how they represent a brand, so clothing information should always be clear before the event.

Sometimes clients provide a complete uniform. At other events, staff may be asked to supply their own clothing within a particular dress code.

“Smart” can mean very different things to different people.

If you require black trousers, a white shirt and smart black shoes, say so. If you want clean white trainers rather than formal footwear, make that clear. If branded T-shirts will be supplied at the venue, tell staff what they need to bring to wear with them.

Think about practicality as well as appearance.

If people are working outside, what happens if it rains? If they will be standing for a long exhibition day, is the footwear realistic? If they are sampling food, is there anything additional they need to wear?

Clear clothing information avoids unnecessary stress for everybody on the morning of the event.

Don’t Forget the Practical Information

The promotional part of the brief may be the most interesting, but practical information is what gets everyone into the right place and ready to work.  Staff need to know where they are going, when they are required and who they should meet.

Large venues deserve particular attention. Telling somebody they are working at the NEC, ExCeL or a major festival site may not be enough when there are multiple entrances, halls and registration points.  Where possible, provide the hall number, stand number, meeting location and any access information that will make arrival easier.  If parking has been arranged, explain where. If staff need an accreditation pass, tell them where to collect it. If they need to use a particular entrance, include it in the information.

None of this is glamorous, but a five-minute delay caused by somebody searching for the correct entrance can become much more significant when several staff are involved.

What Will Happen When They Arrive?

This is something clients can easily overlook because they already know their own event plan.

• Promotional staff don’t.
• Tell them what to expect.

Will there be a client briefing before the doors open? Do they need to collect uniform? Will there be product training? Is somebody going to demonstrate the data capture system?

For more complicated campaigns, an on-site briefing can be invaluable even when staff have already received information beforehand.

It gives everyone an opportunity to see the space, meet the client’s team and understand how the event will actually operate.

It is also the moment to communicate any last-minute changes. Events evolve, and something agreed a week earlier may have changed by the morning itself.

Who Is in Charge on the Day?

Every promotional team should know who they are reporting to.

For a smaller booking, that may simply be the client’s event manager or marketing manager. For a larger team, there may be a designated team leader working alongside the client.

Whatever the arrangement, make it clear.

If staff need more leaflets, who do they ask? If a member of the public raises an issue, who should they tell? If they need to take a break, who coordinates it?

A clear chain of communication helps the event run smoothly and prevents five different people asking five different members of the client’s team the same question.

It also gives the client a clear route for making adjustments. If they decide halfway through the morning that they want the promotional team to focus more heavily on one activity, that instruction can be communicated quickly.

Briefing Doesn’t Mean Removing Personality

There is a balance to be struck.

Clients understandably want control over how their brand is represented, but one of the reasons for hiring experienced promotional staff is that they are comfortable communicating with people.

A good brief should give them confidence, not make them frightened of saying the wrong thing.

Tell them what matters, give them clear boundaries and then allow them to interact naturally.

Different visitors respond to different approaches. One person may be happy to stop for a longer conversation while somebody else only has 30 seconds. A confident promotional staff member can recognise that and adjust.

That human element is an important part of live events and something a script can never completely replicate.

How Much Information Is Too Much?

There is a temptation, particularly when a campaign is important, to send everything.

The company brochure. The website. Product specifications. Brand guidelines. Presentation decks. FAQs. Previous campaign documents.

Some of that may be useful, but ask whether promotional staff genuinely need all of it.

A strong staff brief should make the most important information easy to identify. If somebody has to search through 20 pages to discover the three key messages they are supposed to communicate, the brief isn’t doing its job.

As a general rule, concentrate on what staff need to know, say and do.

You can always provide additional background information for anyone who wants to read further, but the essential information should be obvious.

The Takeaway: Give Your Promotional Staff the Answers to Five Questions

A good event brief doesn’t need to be complicated.

Before your next event, imagine you are one of the promotional staff arriving to represent your business for the first time. Could the information you have provided confidently answer these five questions?

1. Who am I representing?
2. What are we trying to achieve today?
3. Who do you particularly want me to engage with?
4. What do you want me to say and do?
5. Who do I go to when I don’t know the answer?

If the answer is yes, you have already covered much of what matters.

You can then add the practical details: where to go, what to wear, how the activity works, how information should be captured and what will happen when the team arrives.

At Envisage Promotions, we can provide experienced promotional staff, brand ambassadors and event teams, but even the best staff benefit from knowing what matters to the client they are representing. The more useful information we receive about the campaign, the better we can communicate that to the people working on it.

And remember, a good brief isn’t about trying to prepare somebody for every question they could possibly encounter.

Events are live environments. Unexpected things happen, visitors ask unusual questions and plans sometimes change.

The purpose of the brief is to give promotional staff a strong enough understanding of the brand, campaign and objective that they know how to respond when those things happen.

Before sending your next event brief, therefore, don’t ask “Have we told them everything?”

Ask something more useful:

“Have we told them everything they need to do a great job for us?”

That small change in thinking can make a very noticeable difference once the doors open.