So you’ve signed up for the trade show floor and now you need to figure out what you’re going to do with that space and how you’re going to drive traffic to your booth. The size, relevance, and the location of the booth will determine how much organic foot traffic you receive while your design, showmanship, and presentation will be what draw interest.
Trade shows are unique opportunities to mingle directly with potential buyers (particularly in our increasingly digital and virtual world), and demonstrate the virtues of your product or service, raise awareness of your brand, and engage your customer base. As Grant Dudson, master of Experiential Art installations says, “It’s important for brands to take on an artistic and sculptural approach to the way they present their products. Whether it’s a part of an immersive art solution, sculpture or a theatrical moment of ‘wow’ brands need to elevate the way they design retail environments by taking the above approach.”
So how do you enchant your audience? Take your customers on a trip without leaving the trade show floor. Design a booth where sculpture meets utility, that’s sustainable and immersive and authentic to your brand.
In today’s trade show environment, there are so many possibilities to make engagement interactive and fun. Some booths incorporate sporting games including mini golf, shuttle pass, basketball, and the popular money grab booth and couple these with giveaways and prizes. Some create more cerebral challenges along the line of branded puzzles, quizzes or trivia games, product naming competitions, or scavenger hunts that take place throughout the venue. Both are great ways to collect contact information, and it makes the sales aspect of the experience secondary to meeting people on common ground and having positive interactions.
Many exhibitors offer branded swag, with sustainability and reusability being important considerations, as well as design and function. Even vendors whose primary market isn’t food service or production find that offering snacks—from simple mints or chocolates to more elaborate options like cupcakes and branded cookies—can draw a steady stream of potential customers to their booths.
One of the newest trends in booth design is to make it Instagram and TikTok friendly. Creating a space that is magical or graphically interesting will lend itself to visitors taking photographs and videos of your booth in the never-ending search for content that is the world we live in now. This can require quite an investment as the price for one backdrop can run $800-2000 on the low end, up to thousands for a custom-designed setup. If you want to incorporate anything that requires electricity, you will need to pay union rates to the convention team for the logistics and setup. On top of that, there is the price for printing materials, and swag or snacks or whatever other elements you need to market your company. And of course there is the most important part of getting ready to man a trade show booth for several days all day—making sure you have really comfortable shoes!
All in all, however, having a trade show booth, while exhausting, expensive, and requiring extensive planning and execution, can be a great way to meet a large number of people in your target market in an arena where everyone is there to do the same.
PopUp CleanUP is an event cleaning company. We specialize in pre, live, and post event cleaning and offer trash management and restroom attendants for large scale events. Check out our other blog posts in this series on Event Trade Shows to consider if you are in the event industry.
