You know you can get more out of your booth presence. You are working hard to find an edge to make your brand shine a little brighter getting your booth a more attraction than last event. With a few steps, you are sure to get an edge on your competitors, and increase your ability to make a sale.
I’ve assembled a comprehensive list of techniques to help you take your booth to the next level. Arm yourself with a fresh perspective on brainstorming your booth design. And most importantly, impress trade show attendees by highlighting your brand’s purpose vividly.
Start with a 30000 Foot View
Before you start picking out tablecloths, funky chairs or professional easy grip pens, step back and conduct a planning phase. Rushing into cobbling together a booth is a recipe for blending in with the masses. With a little planning and audience understanding your brand’s booth stand out at the next trade show.
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The Approach.
Get out a sheet of paper to answer the points on this post page. Understand that it’s best not to jump right into trade show planning and purchasing components. Plan your booth design with the same approach as you would a communications project. Every element should have a purpose for being in your booth. Take a systematic approach to arrive at the appropriate objectives and contents for your booth.
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Understand Your Audience.
Define the target audience. If you need a clearer understanding, create personas categories for each user category. This will insure you can anticipate your booth attendee’s needs.
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Problem, action, solution.
Define the problem your booth will solve. What was the shortcoming of last year’s booth? What branding problem or product communication problem is going to be remedied by your booth design?
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Define Objectives.
Define what the objectives of the booth are. Anticipate the successful outcomes by meeting booth objectives. Are you trying to create brand awareness? Are you focused on reaching out to the audience with the problem your product solves? Are you focused on creating qualified leads? If your budget is on the smaller side, you need to give priority to your objectives.
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Write it down, make it happen.
How can you substantiate your objectives? Write down what tactics you are going to use to reach your goals. Bullet point them out. As you define the right people, design tactics, lead generation software you can start to visualize your goals coming to fruition. Now you can start to act upon your instincts when you start to substantiate your objectives with solutions. Chip away at each one, a little bit at a time. Write this stuff down!
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Analyze the competition.
Are their any competitive considerations to make? Go to a show and write down what your competitors are doing. This will be useful to make your booth design stand out from the norm and the noise. Take cell phone photos to help you visualize a plan of what to do and what not to do. Ask booth operators what software they are using to collect data. By going to last year’s show, you have fish in the barrel access to competitive insight.
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Set the right tone.
List out adjectives to describe the tone or feeling you want your booth to give. Is it clean and professional? Corporate and clinical. Fun and adventurous? How do you want attendees to feel when they approach and are in your booth? This will help guide your booth designers and fabricators.
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100 Ways to Make Your Trade Show booth the Show’s Main Attraction
Next…Environmental Design
Making Your Booth a Destination
Experiential Intelligence
Interactivity
Engineering the Experience
Pre and Post Show Decisions
Design, Art & Copy
Operations
Mastering the Intangibles
I look forward to helping you grow your business with graphic design and branding best practices. Signup for branding and design email updates and I’ll drop you a line when I update my blog.
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