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7 Thrifty Ways to Incorporate Tech in Your Trade Show Booth

In trade shows, you are one of many trying to court distracted and tiring attendees. You need a way to stand out in their minds without causing too much damage to your wallet. Swag can work, but is expensive, and can attract people just intererested in what you’re giving away, who are not at all interested in your product or service. Another great way to wow a beleaguered trade show attendee is through technology, especially if it focuses on and highlights your offerings. Here are seven ways to catch their eye without assaulting your budget.

iPad or Tablet

Offering product demo’s or exhibitions is important in your trade show booth, but there is something intimate about gathering a prospect around a smaller screen. Laptops are bulky and can be hard to handle while you’re juggling a demo and a keyboard.

If your product is one you can show, an iPad works well. If not, you can use your iPad to illustrate your point, show them pictures of your team/facilities and so much more. Placing iPads on iPad kiosks helps as well. 

While most trade shows offer badge scanners of some sort, having attendees fill out a landing page questionnaire from your iPad is a quick way to add their information into your customer relationship management system (CRM). They’ll be immediately available to your sales team without any exporting and importing into the database upon return. It also allows you to ask questions that might be valuable to your company that scanning a badge won’t answer, such as check boxes indicating the amount of time in which the attendee sees his or her company making a purchasing decision.

Charging Station

This is a relatively inexpensive service you can provide for attendees. It allows them to get a fast charge, providing you have quick chargers of course, and be back on their way. However, it allows you to talk to them about your offerings while they get the juice they need. To offer a complete charging station make sure you take into account both i-products and androids and have plenty of quick chargers for a variety of phones and tablets.

Social Media

You can’t get any more thrifty than free so make sure you are using social media to its fullest at your next trade show. From Tweetups to scheduling appointments to contests and posting social media flash offers, there are some exciting things you can do while using your platforms. Post pictures of the fun you’re having from the show floor or put up a poll about the trade show or the town that’s hosting it. The more creative the better.

Also, make sure you are taking advantage of the trade show host’s social media hashtags, pages and contests. Positive tweets about what a great show it is will generally be retweeted.

Don’t forget to mention your booth number and ask people to stop by. Use a lot of personality in your posts and make it about the attendees’ experience, not as much about you.

For more information about Twitter, check out our article on using Twitter at your trade shows.

Electronic Product Information

As many trade show attendees see the need to go green, or reduce their baggage they transport back from the show, there’s a preference for electronic product information. Themain ways to provide this are through posting a QR code they can scan on their phones or providing a thumb drive with your company and product/service information saved to it.

Both of these options are fairly inexpensive. The main cost behind QR codes is the printing of the posters or banners on which you display them. Thumb drives, or USB flash drives, can be purchased for a couple of dollars, depending on the storage size and the quantity in which you purchase them. The data transfer would be extra if you had to do a large number of them. Keep in mind, the thumb drives are also nice giveaways because they can be imprinted with your company logo and contact information and they are something the attendees will use long after they get back from the show.