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5 Ways to Maximize Your Trade Show Booth

by Ryan Taft in Event Marketing

Attending the right trade shows for your business, and securing a trade show booth at those shows, is only the first step to trade show success. Brands must also execute the right tactics in order to maximize your trade show booth in order to obtain the highest possible return-on-investment for your trade show marketing tactics.

Trade shows provide businesses with a unique opportunity to interact with target customers, partners, suppliers, etc. In an increasingly cluttered world, where product & service options seem almost limitless, you must take advantage of the opportunities trade shows provide.

In order to get the most from your trade show experience, you must take time to go deep with your booth visitors. Engage them in meaningful conversations that are mutually relevant. Use experiential marketing initiatives to get them to interact with, and learn about, your brand, products, and services.  Leverage digital technologies to collect data and capture leads in your trade show booth.

Booth execution is critical for your trade show success. In order to dominate your next trade show, here are the 5 things you must include to maximize your trade show booth:

  1. Engaging People
  2. Anticipated Activities
  3. Friendly Contests
  4. Remarkable Prizes
  5. Exquisite Refreshments

Staff Your Trade Show Booth with Your Most Engaging People

Priority numero uno for all businesses who have booths at trade shows is to staff your booth with your most engaging employees. Above we talked about all of the “clutter” at trade shows. Everyone with a booth is vying for attention from trade show attendees. Many things differentiate, but staffing your booth with engaging people will be the biggest reason why you have more success than others at your next trade show.

Engagement leads to Connection. Connection leads to Conversion. In order to begin the process of capturing quality leads at trade shows, you must first engage those prospects in highly relevant and meaningful conversations which are mutually beneficial to both the prospect and your business.

5 Qualities of Engaging Trade Show Booth Staff

  1. Conversational personality (ie. a people person)
  2. Exceptional communication skills
  3. Extremely knowledgeable about your business, products, and services
  4. High energy
  5. Tech savvy

Go Viral with Highly Anticipated Trade Show Booth Activities

Trade show attendees, your prospects, attend trade shows to learn. It’s been proven that when it comes to retention of information, we humans retain new information & skills best when we are actively interacting with the information we are either reading or listening to. Put another way, we learn best when we engage. A great way to engage trade show attendees is to set up fun activities in your trade show booth.

Maximize Your Trade Show Booth with These 5 Fun Activities

  1. Generate buzz for your trade show when you have a fun booth activity to promote. Use social media and other marketing channels to promote your activity before and during the trade show. If there are any social channels that the trade show has set up, use those to generate buzz for your booth activity.
  2. Buzz leads to visitors. If you’ve ever been to a trade show where there has been one particular company giving away a wicked prize or hosting a fun activity, you know how quickly word spread from attendee to attendee. Attendees talk. That’s why they are there. Why not make sure they are talking about you?
  3. Busy booths generate even more interest from observers, which in turn leads to more traffic stopping by to see what all of the buzz is about. Booth traffic begets more booth traffic.
  4. Trade show attendees tend to spend more time in the booths where they are actively engaged in fun activities that are educating them about topics which resonate (for the attendee AND your business)
  5. Generate awareness from social sharing. These days, everyone is capturing pictures and videos with their mobile phones and sharing those experiences on their social channels. Leverage this natural human tendency to share and provide trade show attendees with a reason to capture pictures and videos of themselves engaging with your brand.

Friendly Contests at Trade Shows Spark Friendly Competition Among Booth Visitors

Remember those fun activities we just spoke about, well one of the best activities for a trade show booth is running a contest. People love contests for a few reasons:

  • Competition among peers
  • Prizes that are usually involved
  • It’s a fun way to learn and engage

lead capture banner blog post

Contests will drive a lot of attendees to your booth. One way to make sure those folks come back again and again is to display a leaderboard. Leaderboards foster that competition. People will constantly come back to your booth to see how they are maintaining their position on the leaderboard. If this is part of your strategy, you can advise those who are working your booth to have a plan for building their conversations over time. This way folks don’t feel like they have to get everything out when someone first enters the booth. If you have a strategic way to generate return traffic to your booth, you can plan for that.

Remarkable Trade Show Booth Prizes Get Socialized

One key to running a great contest is offering the right prize or mix of prizes. People love prizes. Not only that, but people love to share pictures and videos of themselves winning prizes. Just as the contest itself provides many opportunities for attendees to create and share content, the giveaway of great prizes offers yet another opportunity to generate awareness through attendees’ social channels.

5 Keys to Great Contest Prizes for Trade Shows

  1. Relevant to the contest and trade show
  2. Valuable to trade show attendees
  3. Portable and easy to travel with
  4. Share worthy via social media
  5. Branded or somehow clearly ties your company to the prize

Exquisite Refreshments Keep Trade Show Booth Visitors Coming Back for More

Food is the key to your prospects hearts. Keys unlock doors. Make sure your trade show booth is stocked with relevant and tasty snacks. Don’t kid yourself, when it comes to attending trade shows, your prospects are constantly on the lookout for the booth with the best food. Talking with other attendees people hone in on the top booths and visit them much more frequently. Not only do many attendees re-visit booths with the best food, but oftentimes it keeps them in your booth for much longer. This provides opportunities for your engaging employees to develop strong connections with your prospects, ultimately increasing your conversion percentage from prospect to lead, and lead to customer.

5 Foods & Drinks to Stock In Your Trade Show Booth

  1. Cookies or any kind of chocolate
  2. Fruit
  3. Granola bars
  4. Hot pretzels (the smell lures in attendees)
  5. Energy drinks, soda or coffee

Trade shows offer businesses a great opportunity to generate leads and make connections with prospects. A lot goes into executing a successful trade show so it is critical that all businesses maximize ROI for your trade shows. By including these 5 things in your trade show booth you will absolutely set yourself up to maximize your trade show booth ROI.

So with these 5 things in mind, go dominate your next trade show. Reach out and grab it! This is how you win at trade shows!