Trade shows and conferences provide immeasurable opportunities to grow your company and highlight your brand.  These events are a great chance to get out in front of prospective customers and collaborators with your business, service, or product.  But with a great chance to get in front of a new audience, comes hundreds of potential vendors all vying for the same attendees.  Making your trade show booth stand out can help you differentiate from all of your competition for attention during the show.  Here are 3 tips from Joni B’s decades of experience in the event planning world to help make your booth stand out from the crowd.

View Your Booth from the Attendees POV

When designing and organizing your booth, the most important view to consider is that of your attendees.  There are many different approaches you can use in designing your booth that can be tailored to the type of conference or trade show you are attending.  48% of exhibitors say eye-catching displays attract the most attendees.  Do you want to tell attendees a story about your brand?  Use your booth as a physical storyboard by placing elements (videos, signage, etc.) in a specific order which attendees follow along.  Do you want your booth to be a more causal and informative space to showcase your brand?  Turn your booth into an open space with small interest points to help you meet and speak one on one.  There are a myriad of ways to design and interpret your booth, but you should always make sure that you keep the attendees experience in mind when developing your plan.

Emphasize Your Brand in All Aspects

Your brand, company, service, or product should be front and center in your booth.  Trade shows help increase brand recognition by 76%.  Make sure you allocate a part of your budget to purchase branded items to give away to attendees.  Having clear and concise signage that helps convey your brand is also essential to create a unique visual identity for your booth.  Create and develop A/V elements to give a visual and auditory touch to your booth presentation.  Anything you can do to make your brand more present will help attendees not only learn about your brand, but also remember your brand after the trade show or conference is over.

Lead Generation and The Importance of Following Up

An overlooked area of trade show and conference booth design is not thinking about the post event follow up.  We have clients who had successful trade show events, but never reached out to their potential new clients and lost all of those leads after the event.  Having effective lead generation strategies is only as good as your follow up to capitalize on those leads.  One easy way to rectify this is to have some type of lead generation activity at your booth such as a giveaway or raffle.  Every entry should include gathering their contact information with the purpose of adding them to your email lists and prospective marketing opportunities post event.

We also suggest taking this idea even further to measure what impact the trade show or conference actually has on your brand.  In your pre-event planning, make a segment or list in your CRM or Email software that is labeled to the specific trade show or conference.  You can even create custom forms that will directly gather contact information and place it into that specific list.  You can then use those lists to track the attendees and the potential impact they have with your company.  This information can also help you decide on which trade shows to prioritize in future years.

In Closing

Trade shows are a fantastic way to market your company, debut new products, and energize your brand with new potential customers.  Taking these tips into consideration can help you create an amazing and effective booth design.

Are you preparing for a trade show, expo, or conference and need additional guidance?  Would you like to find an expert to take care of designing your booth so you can focus on generating leads and finding new customers?  Reach out to Joni B’s today to see how we can be “The Answer to your Trade Show Questions!”  Visit our contact us page to get started today!

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