So, you work hard to plan and design and build your booth. It perfectly represents your brand, and is inviting and engaging for show attendees.
Now what?
The most important part of planning for a trade show is preparing to have good, productive conversations with show attendees.
Your trade show booth, while important, can only do so much. It displays your products, engages attendees, and physically represents your brand. For it to really work you have to build relationships with show attendees. We’d like to share how we plan to do that at ExhibitorLive 2017.
Trade shows are, of course, a huge undertaking for any company. Some people estimate that trade shows affect as much as 75 percent of a company’s annual marketing budget.
Those numbers vary, of course, but when you add up the cost of the booth, fees, events, promotions, literature, travel, and everything else that’s involved with a trade show, it’s not hard to believe.
That makes planning crucial. You have to understand your goals, your customers, and what specifically you want to accomplish at a show. You can then move on to the design process to determine how the physical space of your booth will help you reach your goals.
Standing out from the competition at a trade show is a big challenge. You work hard to design just the right exhibit, display your products in the best way, and make sure your people are prepared to engage customers at the show.
But are you doing enough to stand out before the show even starts? I mean, long before the show starts -- several weeks or even months.
For many startups, participating in trade shows and expositions can be a major step in getting their companies off the ground. It can expose them to venture capital, put them in front of potential clients and partners, and help create publicity.
Anyone who’s been to a trade show knows this scene.
There’s always that one booth that’s crowded with people, all gathered around a particular display. You hear gasping, cheering, yelling, laughing, as if they’re watching an exciting craps game. Everyone’s smiling. The company’s booth workers are engaged in conversation with some attendees, while everyone else is gathered around the craps table, or whatever it is.
In one of his most famous speeches, on May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy promised America, and the world, that the United States would put a man on the moon before the clock struck midnight on December 31, 1969.
He literally asked for the moon.
Nobody knew for certain it could be done, yet he still made the promise. It was then up to the engineers at NASA to figure out how to do it.
That’s the same approach companies should take when working with an exhibit company like Zig Zibit. Ask for the moon, then let us figure out if and how it can be done.
In other words, never hold back. Don’t temper your expectations, assuming something can’t be done.
The Clean Show is the largest trade show U.N.X. attends and when they moved up to a larger booth space it meant stepping up their booth design as well. The solution was a 20 X 40 custom rental with a distinct high tech feeling. U.N.X. are pioneers in the field of surfectant technology and featuring the legacy of their technology prominently in the booth was important.
Okay! So you are now ready to have a killer exhibit next year. You are tired of watching your potential customers bypass your exhibit for the cool one down the aisle.
You want the cool exhibit. Next year, you will have a custom exhibit!
So, now what do you do? Let’s look at what is involved in the creation of an exhibit.