6) Design your booth with an eye to keeping shipping costs low. Oversized or heavy displays can be very expensive to ship to trade show, and may also require that you hire expo personnel to bring them into exhibit hall and help you set them up. Opt for smaller, collapsible, lighter weight displays as much as possible.

7) Plan to secure your expensive items so that they can't be stolen at a trade show. If you use a laptop computer for a multimedia presentation at your booth, be sure to have it securely locked to your display, and take it with you at night if it's a multiple-day event. Display samples of your more expensive products either well inside your booth where they can't "walk off" as attendees stroll by, or inside a locked display case.

8) For most professional image, create a unified appearance for your displays. Choose no more than three colors for your display elements and table coverings - such as gray, white, and blue. Each exhibit component should be one of your three colors. Also, choose no more than three textures - such as brushed metal, matte vinyl, and clear acrylic; each display element should be one of these textures. This creates a professionally pulled-together booth that lets your products stand out in display.

In summary, although it's tempting to go all out when designing your first trade show booth display, it makes more sense to keep your first booth small and simple, and focus your energy on marketing your products and networking at your first show.

During event, learn as much as possible about how you'd like to alter your exhibit for show next show, and write down all your ideas either during or immediately after show.

Once you have your first trade show under your belt, you'll have a much sharper idea of what you do - and don't - need in a trade show display to make each successive show your most profitable one to date.

7. NEVER STOP TESTING

Continually test and evaluate effectiveness of everything you use or do to promote business. Here's a highly effective 80/20 guideline you can use. Invest 80 percent of your advertising budget and effort in proven promotions and 20 percent in testing new variations. Most businesses using this system continue growing -- even in a highly competitive market.

Take a few minutes to evaluate how well you're implementing each of these seven marketing principles in your business. A small improvement in just one of them will boost your sales immediately. An improvement in several will generate a big increase in your total sales volume. I hope this helps in your future marketing decisions.

David Bell is Manager, Online Marketing, at http://www.wspromotion.com/ , a leading Search Engine Optimization services firm and Advertising Agency.