There are tons of reasons why you should involve your business in trade shows. Not only does it improve your brand’s visibility, it also enhances your credibility. It doesn’t matter whether you’re just starting out or if you’ve been in the business for years, trade shows offer great opportunities for your brand to increase your client base and make your business known.
If you are about to join an upcoming tradeshow, you have to carefully plan your trade show exhibit booth. Remember that your trade show booth is part of your marketing process and above all it represents your business. Since you will be spending a great amount of time, money and energy on it, might as well make it worth your while.
Being strategic about your design is crucial because that’s how you’ll make an impact on your customers. Keep in mind that the purpose of your booth is to attract as many customers as you can to increase your client base. If you don’t know where to start or how to plan for your booth’s design, read on.
Your Trade Show Booth Should Show Your Visitors Who You Are
Put yourself in the shoes of your visitors. When they leave your booth, they have to have a clear understanding about your business. That is what you should aim for. A clear understanding of your brand does not simply mean knowing what your products and services are, it’s about developing a clear picture of your business as a whole. Consumers want to be able to relate to you and they want to understand why your business exists. In other words, they care more about your story than the products and services you have in store.
Your Trade Show Booth Should Hit Consumers’ Pain Points
Virtually every product in the market aims to solve a problem. For instance, keratin treatments aim to fix brittle and dry hair and facemasks aim to solve breakout woes. Before you start designing your booth, identify the pain points of your target market and think about the solutions you can offer them. Again, try to imagine yourself as a consumer and start designing from there.
Your Trade Show Booth Should Make Your Business Stand Out
All businesses strive to emphasize what makes them unique. By emphasizing what makes them different, they are convincing their customers to choose them over their competitors. The uniqueness of a business is what makes them attractive in the eyes of consumers. With this in mind aim to make your exhibit booth unique and show your customers why your brand is the best choice. One question you need to ask yourself is what can you offer to your customers that your competitors aren’t offering? Is it a low price? Is it convenience?
Your Trade Show Booth Must Present A Call-To-Action
Assuming that you have successfully piqued the interest of consumers and have convinced them to know more about your products, how can you then lead them to take action? Sure, you can instruct your employees to talk to customers but you can’t possibly expect them to have one-on-one discussions with everyone to talk about the products, services, prices, shipping details, etc. To ensure that you are leading your visitors to click on your site, subscribe or make a purchase you should include an action step like print out your site’s address in one of your booth’s wall or ask them to like your social media pages to get regular updates or hand out business cards.
Other Helpful Tips
If this is your first time putting up a trade show booth, we recommend that you rent the smallest space to save money. Consider it as a learning experience. For first timers, save your money! During the exhibit you will learn a lot from the experience and you’ll get to see what others are doing as well. You’ll identify what works and what doesn’t. Use your learnings from your first booth exhibit and apply it to the next. As you learn, we suggest you keep your expenses to a minimum and when the time is right you can spend them on a perfectly designed trade show booth.
It also helps to have an open layout design because when the crowd starts pouring in, it can be suffocating if they can’t move around freely. Design a booth that is comfortable to walk around in. A poorly designed layout will not entice customers to visit.
Also, make sure that your booth is neat and organized. No one wants to visit a booth that is in chaos. Declutter and make sure that you are only displaying what’s important to your business. Design it in a way that when visitors approach your booth, they will know exactly what you are promoting.
Don’t display expensive things in your booth as these might get stolen. If you really need to use your laptop to display a presentation, don’t leave it behind or prepare a locked display case in case you are going to go somewhere.
Designing a trade show booth will require careful planning, strategizing and designing in order to achieve your business goals. If you are planning to put up a trade show booth any time in the future, we encourage you to apply these tips.