Creating a Memorable Trade Show Experience
In a fast-paced digitalized world, with an array of platforms to communicate and engage with prospects, Trade Shows remain a valuable marketing tool for a variety of businesses in a cornucopia of industries. Trade Shows enable enterprises of various scales to create collaborative platforms for their industries in order to endorse and promote their products and services. Hence, they are valuable tools for both buyers and sellers alike.
What is the purpose of a Trade Show?
Some of the many reasons for choosing to exhibit at a Trade Show include:
- Making Sales – The most important facet of trade show success. Achieving sales targets during tradeshows is the definition of winning.
- Capturing Leads – Generating enough leads for the marketing funnel is a must so salespeople have leads to chase.
- Analysing Your Competition – It’s important to know what your competitors are up to like the technologies they use and the marketing approach they take.
- Engaging with Existing Customers – It’s important to keep building relationships with and offering benefits to existing customers as they are more likely to invest in your new products and services.
- Introducing new Products/Services – Your new products can end up benefiting both old and new customers. Participating in a tradeshow will give you a better idea of the right customers for your new offerings.
- Account-based Marketing – Going into a tradeshow, with a plan of who you’d like to speak with can help you create a strategy that’s most likely to convert them.
- Gathering Feedback – Feedback helps you improve upon your services, sales and marketing efforts. You could even receive revolutionary feedback that transforms your activities.
- Spotting Trends – It is important to spot new trends in advance in order to stay relevant and avoid a one-hit-wonder.
What exactly happens at a Trade Show?
With the participation of a large number of businesses in a tradeshow, it can be difficult to convert the received and collected information into a concrete decision. This is why most tradeshows organize breakout sessions for networking and for creating value for visitors.
Most tradeshows engage in this through:
- Workshops – Discussions and activities revolving around an industry theme or topic.
- Breakout sessions – Usually conducted within a workshop, with smaller teams discussing smaller themes and comparing ideas.
- Media opportunities – These come at an extra cost, but a little bit of extra promotion can go a long way and get you some media attention and increase interest.
- Networking events – These are put together by certain trade shows and trade show partners for networking either during or after events.
- Awards – Some trade shows also honour people who have completed a particular time period of service in the industry, and those that have achieved great things.
- Speakers – These speakers are usually people with a lot of industry knowledge or a unique take on a particular subject and can pull large crowds of people if they’re popular.
Creating a Memorable Trade Show Booth Design
The tradeshow booths that are the most creatively designed – usually by a creative branding agency – are normally the most popular ones at the event. They tend to see a large number of visitors, generate a good number of leads, and have the biggest impact on Social Media.
As the competition increases and more and more complex booth designs are made, you will need to work harder and be smarter to find an edge that will draw crowds.
Some important design tips to make a bigger impact are:
- Make it interactive
The use of passive activities such as watching a video screen to draw people in will not be as effective as using interactive elements to attract visitors. Most visitors at tradeshows love to participate in games that have a chance of winning a prize. When people spend a longer amount of time at your booth, your representatives have more time to interact with potential customers. - Keep key messaging large, brief and higher than waist-height
You will have to ensure that your key messaging is easily legible by placing it higher than 3 to 4 feet. Try to place your company logo in numerous areas of the booth to reinforce your brand. - Don’t get rid of empty and negative spaces
Even if you don’t want your booth to be spartan, you should make good use of empty and negative spaces and keep your booth clean and inviting. Negative space should also be an element of your graphics.
The rule of thumb for tradeshow booth graphics is that they should contain 40 percent empty space. - Ensure that images are properly formatted and high resolution
Trade show images and graphics need to be high-resolution and properly formatted. This is crucial to avoid having pixelated, blurry or stretched items on your printed collaterals. - Keep the focus on your brand
Your booth should be designed with consistent branding throughout the whole area. Banners, images, freebies and more – all should consistently follow your brand’s theme across all your design materials. - Use the element of surprise
To truly grab people’s attention, use something that inspires wonder, amusement or a positive effect within the consumer that encourages them to engage with your brand. - Make use of graphical ‘Real Estate’
Some areas of the booth are more visually important than others. For eg, the back wall tends to be the focal point for small to medium-sized booths. These focal points should be where your most important design elements, message and logo should go. - Make use of the right colours
Colour psychology is a complex and detailed science. Different colours draw different people for a number of reasons. Your booth can stand out and promote your message with the use of the right colours and tones in the right places.
Conclusion
There are a number of factors that go into making a memorable trade show experience – something that can only be done successfully by an experienced exhibition stand design agency. Connect with INSpaces for all your international exhibition stall design, spatial branding and corporate office branding needs. INSpaces is a division of Interics Designs – a multi-disciplinary creative design agency in India – with extensive experience in Brand Strategy, Brand Image Building, Graphic Design, and Environment Branding.
With decades of operations under its belt, INSpaces – an accomplished exhibition stall design agency – has the proven expertise and a storied track record in office branding, brand experience centres, tech centres and other space design jobs. When it comes to environmental graphic design, we are the corporate branding agency that executes projects to transform your office premises into a physical manifestation of your brand. This ensures that when employees and visitors enter, they walk through your brand. With a strong blend of graphic design, interactive design and 3D design, INSpaces uses the complete package to tell a story that extends and elevates your brand experience and engenders a distinct, impressive and inviting experience.
Have a look at INSpaces’ formidable portfolio at www.intericsspacedesigns.com.