One problem every company runs into when planning their exhibition displays is what to include. Your company undoubtedly has numerous aspects that would resonate with your prospects, but fundamentally, you don’t have much floor space. You’ve probably heard the old idiom or saying, “everything but the kitchen sink” – at trade shows, you can’t include everything,and generally speaking, a more open and uncluttered design is better for attracting visitors anyway.
So, given that less is generally more, how do you narrow down what goes into your exhibition displays?
Here are a few suggestions for strategies to try:
Focusing Your Trade Show Displays
- Start with your customers. Since you’re trying to attract people to your exhibition displays, the first question you should ask is not “What do I want to show off?” but rather, “What do my customers want to see?” If you have a lot of products to show, do some market research beforehand on the show’s attendance to see what will fit best.
- Do what your competitors aren’t. Keep track of what your competition is doing with their trade show tables and displays. If they tend to do the same thing all the time, do something different so that you can stand out. Don’t compete head-on unless you can help it; more indirect methods are generally better.
- Show off your newest products. This one is simple and straightforward. If you’ve got a brand new product on the market, make your exhibition displays are focused on it. If you go this route, the bulk of your materials should focus on the new product, rather than other areas of your company.
- Showcase future designs. Every now and then, mix things up and focus on what you have in the pipeline, rather than what you have right now. It’s good for getting people talking about your company, and is also effective if you’re looking to hire and want to find people who are excited about the work you’re currently doing.
- Pick a theme. Pick one aspect of your company, and show that off. If you don’t have any new products, perhaps this is a good time to make a booth design that revolves around your innovative manufacturing processes, or your people skills and customer service expertise. Remember, at a trade show you’re advertising yourself as much as you are your products. Consider adding new graphics, or use an inexpensive Waveline display or some new trade show banners or Xpressions skins to showcase the new focus.
- Rotate your themes. If you attend several trade shows a year, have a different overall theme or message for each show. Focus on your current product line in one, your company’s vision in another, future products, for the next, and so forth. Vary it up, and see which approaches get the best results. Trade show displays with tension fabric graphics can accomodate swapping graphics easily – for example,Xpressions displays are ideal for this approach.
- Integrate tablet displays. Having a few touchscreen tablets, like iPads, on kiosk displays can be a great way to flesh out and supplement the information on display. They don’t take up much floor space, so you can have a few without it seeming cluttered, and they can host a wealth of information that would be hard to fit into any other format. (Plus, all but the most jaded technophiles still like playing with them!)
Stand Out By Being Focused
The key takeaway here is that your exhibition displays should always try to have a single unified message. Leave the sink at home and don’t throw things into your booth willy-nilly; try to have a single coherent message that all the booth elements contribute to and focus on. If you were to quiz a visitor after the show as to what your booth was “about,” they should be able to answer correctly in one or two sentences.
Focusing in this way helps ensure that your visitors leave your trade show display with a clear idea of who you are, boosting your lead rates later on.