Exhibitions are an excellent way to promote a company’s brand and services. A display’s graphic design will be the first branded item trade show guests see while walking the convention hall floor. When planning for a trade show, marketing teams must place a priority on instantly drawing attention on the show floor and building interest around their brands. A well-designed booth should be simplistic and clean, but also unique and creative. Talented graphic designers understand that less is good. Trade show signage walls resemble free-standing billboard stands. Like traditional billboard marketing campaigns, brand marketers should create booth design layouts that tell a story without words.
Fundamentals of Effective Trade Show Booth Design
Show off your brand
Your booth must boldly display your company name and brand. Customers cannot walk away from your booth not knowing who you are and what goods and services you provide.
Grab a hold of your audience
Know your audience and develop a campaign to grab their attention with eye-catching pictures and video to engage them.
Lead visitors to your exhibit
Don’t rely solely on face-to-face interaction for educating visitors, since not all visitors will have an opportunity to speak with sales staff. The products need to be prominently featured and visitors should be able to find answers to their questions easily.
Define your goals
Firthermore, the design of a trade show booth should make it clear why a company has chosen to advertise to a specific audience. Whether it is to launch a new product or cultivate new clients, visitors appreciate a transparent and pleasant experience with show staff.
Branded Trade Show Giveaways
Most of all, promotional products that are popular with the expo audience can help increase repeat orders from your customers up to 16%. While most people think of promotional trade show giveaway items as pens, water bottles, and key chains, they can be a wide variety of unique items. A few suggestions from the Indy Displays team are virtual reality glasses, sunglasses, luggage totes, antibacterial travel packs, LED keychain lights, bottle openers, smartphone cases and well-fitting quality shirts. Customers that receive creative useful giveaway products as personal gifts are much more likely to refer others to your company, compared to those who don’t have a tangible reminder.
Trade Show Booth First Impressions
- Brand imagery affects consumer opinion. Therefore, it is one thing that should never be left to chance in planning. Most of all, make your display booth graphic murals stand out.
- The display booth layout and visual branding will reflect upon your business and exhibitor staff. Therefore, an exhibit staff with a sloppy appearance and dated exhibition stand design will make your company look less desirable to prospective leads.
- According to the famous 3-second rule, your booth design needs to engage and attract passers-by traffic in under 3 seconds. Otherwise, they’ll quickly turn their attention to another company highlighting their brand properly and staffing the booth space with knowledgeable marketers.
- Make sure the design theme and booth structure properly represents industry, brand, and company mission.
- Know your target consumer demographics and develop a promotional campaign that caters to them and creates organic interaction.
Importance of Booth Space
The convention floor location of a trade show display is important, no matter what size the event venue. In addition, your company must refrain from employing an incompetent event team. It’s important to book early and secure an available premium space. Because spaces with high foot traffic go quickly, timing is of the essence, regardless of common excuses made for last minute decision making.
Consider LED modular edge-lit light box display solutions to turn your booth design into an eco-friendly backlit trade show wall that requires far less electrical power. Custom modular displays are also reusable / resizable hardware systems, as a result offering companies versatility and unique ways to save on high shipping and drayage fees. Exhibitors looking to purchase a completely eco-friendly “green” exhibit solution, have the option to select recycled fabric and trade show LED lights that produce optimal HD quality printed images and colors illuminated by next generation light technology with up to 50,000 hours of shelf life!
The advantages of occupying an island booth open space are worth the additional investment. Island exhibit floor spaces are located in the middle of the convention hall floor, making island booth rental locations the busiest areas on the exhibit floor for guest attendee foot traffic. As a result, island exhibit structures provide visibility and booth access from all 4 isle facing sides. Unlike standard inline exhibit spaces, open island center floor rental spaces typically do not have height trade show display stand height restrictions. Therefore, this allows exhibitors the opportunity to utilize additional graphic branding space unavailable to their inline exhibiting competitors.
Booth Etiquette Tips
Dynamic exhibition stand design is essential for attracting visitors and trade show staff members are the ultimate company representatives. As a result, exhibitor staffs should always demonstrate the following professional characteristics:
- Respect for the company and its mission
- Genuine product interest
- Extensive knowledge of company, services and products
- Effective marketing campaign execution
- Professional appearance (very important)
- Hospitality and customer service
- Gracious attitude and empathy
Exhibition Booth Interactive Technology Strategies
Incorporating interactive trade show booth technology into exhibition design has become a growing trend in recent years. The past ten years have given way to such rapid advancements, hence trade show marketing teams must adapt to a technology-obsessed consumer market. Consequently, here are 5 excellent ways to engage potential clients using modern tech strategies:
- Gamification: The excitement of games and contests create memorable group experiences. The entertainment can be competitive, like industry related trivia or video games. However, they can also be passive, such as a traditional prize wheel.
- Interactive Storytellers: 3-D storytelling applications on free-standing monitor kiosks or handheld tablets allow companies to create customized buyer journeys and branding assets.
- Virtual Reality: Augmented reality delivers endless education possibilities, as companies can deliver experiences to visitors that they would otherwise never have the chance to experience in a trade show setting.
- Apps: Smartphone applications take advantage of the fact that every single trade show attendee has the technology in their pocket. In addition, apps can be used to track visitor behavior, gather contact information, or compile social media attention.
- 3-D Printing: Custom concepts can become a reality quickly and inexpensively with 3-D printing machinery.
Resources;
- http://www.trade-show-advisor.com/trade-show-booth-design-fundamentals.html
- http://www.trade-show-advisor.com/trade-show-exhibit-design.html
- https://www.thebalance.com/the-basic-trade-show-booth-etiquette-rules-for-staff-1223791
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/promotional-productsgetting-best-roi-heather-rykowski/