Attract More Visitors to Your Exhibition Stand Using These Sneaky Tips

Trade shows and locally organized market events can be a major source of leads and exposure for your business. Like with all other forms of marketing, though, your objective is to get solid results.  So how do you do just that? Attract a massive number of attendees to your stand. This way, you’ll reasonably attract more leads. To get you going on the right note, below are a number of 7 fantastic tips to attract more people to your stand this year.

  • Get in touch with publications – in the lead up to a trade show, local or industry trade publications are a great way of promoting your businesses. So before the show, make sure that you contact these and furnish them with any information that they could be interested in. Anything newsworthy will work great. Many journalists are responsive to interesting content. And if you have some extra cash, don’t shy away from booking some little column space to promote your brand.
  • Get the right look and feel – have it in mind that your stand is your shop window. You want to cultivate a look and feel that directly invites customers to ‘come on in!’ This is very important. Invest some time and effort to make sure that you choose the right signage, posters, and products to display the kind of image that you’re looking for.
  • Beat the competition – it’s natural that there are going to be a lot of your competitors competing for the same audience that you’re looking for. So how do you beat them? By being small and personal! Before you even design your own exhibition stand, look up your competitors on social media to see what they had for the last exhibition. Was their stand impressive? Was it large? Was it small but approachable? Think above the cut, and focus on what your competitors aren’t already doing.
  • Run a contest – when most people hear the phrase ‘trade show promotion’, the first thing that comes to mind is freebies. True to that, most businesses give away a lot of merchandise branded with their logo to people who visit their booth. This is actually a good strategy, but people will get the freebies and leave. So how do you get to engage them more deeply? Run a contest! Quizzes and raffles require that attendees converse with your sales team and leave their information for an opportunity to win a prize. The prize could be a gift voucher, free samples, or anything else that’s valuable enough to attract people. So make sure that you create a reasonable challenge with a fun quiz. This way, you’ll most likely have no problem attracting more people to your marketing booth.
  • Find out whether it’s worth it – trade shows are great, but let’s face it – not all of them are worth it! You don’t want to spend your money and time for insignificant results. So before you decide to attend a niche or industry market event, make sure to visit in advance to see if they’re actually worth it. Attend at a guest and mingle with the crowd. See what attracts your target audience and learn from that. This way, you’ll be able to prepare better for your own attendance.
  • Give your attendees a place to recharge – trade shows can be exhausting for both attendees and exhibitors. There’s a lot of walking around, talking and interacting taking place. This leaves the average attending feeling very tired. Instead of being just another exhibition stand that people want to walk past when they’re exhausted, provide a little place to relax. You can easily do this by setting up a comfortable sofa or armchair where people can rest while they chat with your sales team. You could even provide free Wi-Fi and coffee.
  • Contact online influencers – trade publications are the gold medal when looking for beneficial coverage for your business, but bloggers and online influencers can be very lucrative. They are more publicly accessible. Be sure to contact them a few weeks or days before the trade show and let them know that you’re been attending. Furnish them with some details about what’ll be going on at your stand, and make it interesting. Like journalists, bloggers can be very responsive too!

Have you ever been to a trade or market even before? Did you use any of the strategies that we have listed in this blog post? Let us know what worked best for your audience