1) Always Get Interactive
One of the foremost secrets for getting attendees to pay attention and stick around is to make your booth as interactive as possible. Share information through touch screens or put on regular demonstrations that encourage audience participation. Interactivity attracts more trade show attendees and lets them build a more reciprocal relationship with your brand and your products/services. Besides kick-starting the relationship between visitor and brand, interactive features also give attendees an invaluable first-hand understanding of what your brand has to offer. Contact Image Group for advice on ways to make your stand interactive.
2) Feed Those Masses
Food is a tried-and-true magnet for trade show attendees. People get tired and hungry while trawling a big trade show, so laying on a refreshing spread of food and drink can do a lot to make your booth memorable. Catered food, packaged snacks, and bottled water will all be appreciated. If possible, customize the packaging of the food and drink you offer. Add brand and contact information so that your snacks function as business cards as well as a bit of much-needed trade show refreshment.
3) Help Visitors Help You Via Social Media
Social media can be a huge promotional tool for your trade show booth. One of the best ways to put it to work is to offer a selfie-ready attraction (e.g. a local celebrity) for people to take pictures with. Arrange your booth so that your logo gets into the shot — if you have the money for it, hire your own photographer to get the best possible framing. For even further benefits, come up with a snappy, relevant hashtag for your booth visitors to use when they post their pics on Twitter and Instagram. Social media platforms have a powerful multiplying effect; a few dozen posted photos will translate into an audience of thousands seeing your booth.
4) Be Creative With Tight Confines
Between the constraints of the venue and the exorbitant fees you have to pay for a trade show booth, you’ll likely be dealing with some sharp space limitations. You can still build an attractive, flexible display that’s easy to set up and take down if you just plan in advance for limited space. Two pop-up banners side-by-side are enough to make a classy-looking backdrop. Use a branded tablecloth designed to accommodate both six-foot and eight-foot tables.
5) Use Online Advertising Wisely
A big part of having a successful trade show experience is letting enough potential visitors know in advance that you’ll be there. Online advertising is a terrific way to do this because you can accurately target people who are explicitly looking for information about your trade show. Putting your ads in front of people who are more likely to attend makes them far more effective, and the ads are surprisingly cheap.
6) Use A Giveaway Game To Spread Your Brand
If you want to project your brand throughout the trade show and into the real world, stock up on promotional giveaway items that prominently feature your branding. T-shirts, pins, stickers, bracelets — anything can be used as a promotional tool. Of course, trade show attendees will realize that you’re enlisting them in your marketing efforts. How to get them to play along? Turn your promotional giveaways into a game! Give away something much bigger and more attractive at the end of the show, with access to the giveaway tied to wearing your merch. Spreading your giveaways around with a solid motivator like this can have a snowball effect, leading to more and more attendees clamoring to wear your gear.
7) Install A Photo Booth
People love to take photos and to have their picture taken. A photo booth is a self-contained attraction in its own right. It’ll do a great job drawing people in and breaking the ice, and it produces personalized mementos of its users’ visit to your booth as a byproduct of its service. Set up the tech to make the booth’s pictures easy to post to social media (see social suggestions above) and you can make it even more powerful.
8) Create — And Exploit — A Charging Station
Keeping devices charged up at an all-day trade show can be a challenge. Cater to the obvious demand by setting up a wireless or USB charging station. Once you’ve got people’s devices, make the most of your captive audience! Have a compelling, educational slate of activities ready for visitors who are waiting for their device batteries to refill.
9) Swap Value For Booth Visits
Give booth visitors a concrete bit of value to repay them for their attention. This doesn’t need to be anything physical, though! It’s easy to create a special invite-only landing page on your site for booth visitors. Here, offer them one of the classic value-boosters — e-books, videos, white papers, and so on. Besides setting up a quid pro quo to encourage more booth traffic, value incentives extend your relationship with visitors beyond the trade show.
10) Debrief Your Team Afterward
Get your whole team together after the show is done. Review what worked and what didn’t and look for ways to improve before your next event. This is also a good time to look at the ROI you’re getting from your efforts to create social media engagement and generate leads. A team debriefing is also a good time to distribute responsibility for following up; you need to effectively touch base with every visitor you got contact information for.
