How to Stand Out at Trade Shows

Trade show booth ideas that attract visitors don’t happen by accident. They take strategic planning for both the visual impact and the personal connection. This planning starts with designing the booth so that it has maximum impact and then moves to creating pre-show marketing buzz to ensure people want to visit. Then, you need to ensure the booth is designed for maximum engagement by building a booth complete with the interactive elements customers really enjoy. Here’s how you can do this.

Need Help Drawing Attention to Your Trade Show Booth? Define Your “Wow” Factor

As you design your booth, you need to determine how to get noticed at trade shows, which are historically loud, colorful, and crowded. Defining your “wow” factor is a key to making your trade show booth truly shine, and it’s key to standing out from competitors at the trade show booth. The “wow” factor is something that will cause heads to turn, drawing attention to your booth and ensuring people are curious to stop by.  Some keys that can give your booth that “wow” factor include:

• Using lighting elements to draw attention
• Creating an eye-catching, distinctive design
• Adding color that draws attention
• Creating a story that weaves through your booth design and keeps people interested
• Utilizing humor to make people interested in your booth
• Placing interactive elements in your booth design.
• Building a booth that utilizes all of the space, including vertical space, to stand out

Here are some examples Exhibit Options has created in the past:

How to Do Well at Trade Shows? Try Leveraging Pre-Show Marketing to Build Buzz

Another way you can plan for impact at your next trade show is by working on pre-show marketing. This creates a buzz about your trade show and will encourage more people to attend. As you’re working on learning how to get more leads at trade shows, making sure people know about the show and your attendance is key.

One way you can drive traffic to your booth is with video content. Short-form videos, like reels, gain considerable traction on social media. Use small videos to build a storyline that keeps people coming back for more, and in those videos, highlight what guests can expect when they visit your booth at the event. Create content highlighting what you will have at your booth, insider looks at booth design, and product launches that you will host at the trade show. After making your content, post it on Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram with attractive thumbnails and engaging headlines, and make sure it is properly optimized for mobile. All of this will draw the attention of attendees and keep people interested and engaged in your booth.

As you make a list of what to do before a trade show, don’t just focus on how to drive traffic to your booth. You also need a plan for following up with the leads you do get. Creating pre-show buzz and then planning for post-show follow-up is exactly how to do well at trade shows and maximize every lead you get.

Optimize Your Trade Show Booth Design for Engagement

The design of your booth is also a key factor in making your trade show booth effective. Use trade show booth design best practices to create a perfectly branded booth that is engaging and catches attention. Create an inviting trade show booth, and then teach your staff how to engage people at a trade show. By designing the booth to draw people in, and then encouraging engagement once they start interacting with the booth and your staff, you will find your booth even more successful.

Adding Interactive Elements and Gamification to Trade Show Exhibits

Once you have successfully built some buzz about your booth and have implemented trade show booth design best practices, it’s time to learn how to make trade shows fun by adding gamification to your booth space. Interactive trade show booths, particularly if they have prizes at the end, are more effective than those simply presenting information and products. If you want to draw a crowd, add some games. Some crowd-pleasing trade show booth games include:

• Spin the Wheel
• Virtual Reality
• Interactive Quizzes
• Photo Booths
• Giant Games
• Scavenger Hunts

In addition to gamifying trade shows, adding interactive elements will help your booth be successful. Remember, your goal is learning how to make trade show booths fun, and that means giving people something to do. Polling stations, touch screens, interactive product demos, and interactive digital walls are all good options. You can find demo ideas for every budget and size to help you meet this need for your trade show visitors while also keeping your budget needs in mind.

So, how can you know if you were successful at standing out and creating engagement? The secret is in the data. Here are some strategies to measure the success of your show and your show-stopping booth design.

Tracking & Analyzing Engagement Metrics

Learning how to measure trade show engagement is not easy. Trade show engagement metrics can be hard to gather because you can’t measure intangible factors like brand awareness or future customers that come from the event. If you can implement the right strategies into your booth design and the engagement of your staff at the trade show, then you can walk away with some metrics that can help.

After you have good strategies in place for reporting on trade shows, learn to use those metrics to make positive changes for your booth. The metrics will show you if the strategies you implement are optimizing the trade show experience for your visitors and making your booth truly stand out.

The Art of the Post-Show Follow-Up

After the trade show, using effective strategies for following up with trade show leads will mean the difference between a good ROI and a poor one. Some post-show strategies we have seen work well for our trade show booth clients include:

• Send a thank-you note
• Add a personal touch pulling from the conversation you had
• Include them in your email funnel

The most successful follow-up after a trade show will happen quickly after the event and will be personalized to the conversations or activities you had at the event. That personal touch can mean the difference between your follow-up efforts being ignored or turning into fruitful contacts. Converting trade show leads into customers is your ultimate goal, and these post-show strategies will help you get there.