0

Use These Easy Ways to Boost your Trade Show Booth Success

In my business, I go to a lot of trade shows. I’ve collected a couple of trade show planning ideas that I noticed exhibitors benefiting from. I wanted to pass them along to you here.

These ideas won’t all apply to your brand, your product or service, or even to the kinds of shows where you exhibit.

But I’m sure a few will work for you—or at least get you started thinking in new directions.

Trade show managers are like brand directors. Both are constantly looking for new ways to engage with prospects.

This means finding ways to make prospects remember your marketing messages. We hope these examples that helped other exhibitors will help you too.

Get our Trade Show Marketing Playbook

1. Useful Apps:

There may be some good apps that show producers provide. I haven’t seen many.

Exhibitors need apps that help attendees navigate the show. The app should also help attendees network and connect with exhibitors.

We’ve recently run across a couple commercially available apps that can help you. These focus on helping an exhibitor do a better job of telling your story and moving the sales process forward.

We’re not connected with, or selling, any of these apps. There may be other apps that are just as good, or better – if so, please let us know in the comments below.

Fatstax (www.fatstax.com) works with an iPad. It helps salespeople walk visitors through your product catalog  in a highly visual way.

They can share information about specific products with those attendees. It can provide that info to the attendees in a variety of formats (video, PDF, PowerPoint and HTML).

It can even help close sales at the show. The user can customize it to feature your company’s logo and images.

It also has on-board analytics, so you can track the ROI of every show you attend.

QuickTapSurvey (www.quicktapsurvey.com) is another useful app. It allows you to quickly and easily create surveys for booth visitors.

It works on virtually any device (laptops, tablets, phones, etc.). If you lose your internet connection at the show, you can still use it without that Internet connection.

Attendees’ responses are securely stored within the app. You can export contact information to many popular CRM programs.

It also offers real time survey results, and you can analyze results as soon as you’re done collecting data.

Have you ever used a “Spin and Win” wheel in your booth? iPrizeWheel (www.iprizewheel.com) is an app that can make your life much easier!

It replaces the traditional spinning wheel with an electronic version, played on an iPad. It is complete with sound effects and realistic spinning motion.

You can customize it with your logo and theme. You can use its HDMI output to hook the game up to a large TV screen for a more eye-catching presentation.

2. Social Media That’s Customer-Focused:

So many companies’ social media efforts are inwardly focused, and not about the customer at all. Don’t be like them!

Think about your target audience before you begin blogging or tweeting. You need to build social connections based on mutually beneficial relationships.

If you post irrelevant content recipients may have already seen elsewhere, you’ll become irrelevant.

Instead, post info that they may not know about already. Post info that is harder for them to access (such as an at-the-show sale or new product introduction).

Here’s another way to build on your social relationships.

Quiz your audience (QuickTapSurvey can help).

Design a survey for your post-show email list.

Ask them questions like “What kind of information could we provide that would be most valuable to you?” or “Is there an ideal frequency or time of day you’d like to receive information from us?”

Be judicious about posting tweets and Facebook status updates that link back to your site. Sure, this is the reason you leverage social media.

But make sure your social media audience sees good information coming from you. Don’t be just another stream of online chatter.

3. Face-To-Face Interaction:

Getting face time with prospects is every exhibitor’s dream. Accomplishing that is difficult.

There is an old-time approach that works quite well. Don’t just dismiss this idea as just a gimmick. Instead, think about how you can use this technique to connect with prospective customers.

We’ve written about hosting live presentations in your trade show booth. If these focus on introducing your product or service in an amusing way, they can be enormously helpful.

One step away from live product demos is to use public figures to draw crowds. They’re not  helping to qualify the crowds, like the carefully choreographed product demo’s do.

But they still draw crowds!

I’ve seen exhibitors use caricature artists. Or a celebrity from the world of sports or entertainment. Even a videographer or photographer. This approach works with anything that people will want to queue up for.

Visitors will patiently wait in line to get their drawing, autograph, video clip or photograph. In the meantime, your sales force can work that line.

They can ask qualifying questions. And present product-specific answers (using an iPad app like Fatstax) to the qualified prospects.

4. Make Life Easier:

As an exhibitor, you know how tough a day on the show floor is: your feet ache, your cell phone is dying, and you’re hungry and dehydrated.

The attendees have the same problems. Help them out!

• Provide a comfortable quiet place to sit for a while.
• Perhaps add a chair massage.
• Be sure to have a charging station for their electronic devices.
• If the show allows it, provide a cookie tray or beverage cart.

And be sure to have a lot of padding under in your trade show carpet – that will help energize your staff AND your visitors!

Helping tired visitors to relax for a moment gives you some face time with them. You’ll have to cull through some unqualified visitors to find the prospects among them.

But when you do, you’ll have plenty of time to discuss their needs and explain what your product or service can do for them.

5. Get A New Booth:

I wouldn’t be worth my salt if I didn’t remind you of the drawing power of a brand new exhibit. If your current booth has a lot of mileage on it, consider refurbishing it.

You might want to add new accessories, graphics or extra modular components.

Or maybe it’s time to start from scratch and build the booth you’re dreaming about.

Are you tired of exhibiting with a tired exhibit?

Are prospects passing you by because they’ve seen the same booth graphics at every show for years?

If you’re searching for help with your trade show planning, and need to find innovative ways to connect prospects with your brand, get out of the box! You’ve got to think a bit differently.

And if it’s time to refresh your trade show booth, let us help. American Image Displays can help you breathe new life into your exhibiting program.

We offer a broad range of products. Everything from huge trade show island booths to the smallest accessories.

And, best of all, FAST and FRIENDLY Service!

For more, check out how to solve the mystery of successful trade shows or how to niche your way to success.

To learn how we can help, call us at (800) 676-3976 or email [email protected].

Get our Trade Show Marketing Playbook