Be sure to let your clients – and future customers – know where you are speaking and what special events your company is participating in over social media. Increasingly, conferences create their own Twitter hash-tag, so participants can communicate with one another from the showroom floor.
"Individual show exhibitors are using twitter too – saying, hey, I just sold my first widget, or I just attended a great talk," Stephens says. "A lot of them are gaining more attention for their booth by just tweeting around."
Dig Deeper: Tips for Trade Shows
Drawing Traffic to Your Trade Show Booth: Be Aggressive, Not Abrasive
If you're debuting a product, and actually want a lot of general buzz and interest in your product and brand, the golden rule is: "If you have a product people can play with, make sure you can bring it," Brull says. "The whole point of face-to-face marketing is so people can touch and feel things."
For small companies with small booths, just remember that for every 10' by 10' booth you have, you have approximately four seconds to engage someone that's walking by. And distractions are aplenty: "The trade show environment is easy to get overwhelmed, it's easy to go into this zombified state and it's so easy to not be able to take anything in," Friedmann says.
Brull suggests to draw in people, create a clean, warm environment they can step into. "In some way, it's your retail store. You need to think of it as your home for a few days, and inviting people into your space should be pleasant," he says.
Having the right people in your booth can also make or break the quick impression your company makes on passers by. For the weekend, remember, the employees in your booth are your ambassadors. While Friedmann says they should never hawk to people from the aisles, they shouldn't be hidden behind a table. They should ask engaging questions off the bat to find out in a non-intrusive way whether the person stopping by is a potential customer or business partner – or just might be curious about your brand.
David Maskin makes a living drawing people into trade show booths. He creates personalized nameplates by bending aluminum wire as giveaways from the company who takes him on to sit in their booth. While Maskin – who goes by "The WireMan" – markets himself as a traffic magnet, he tries to go beyond collecting business cards and creating cold leads.
"The way I like to do things is to go beyond just drawing people into a booth. The big word free is one way to get people to come in. Others will come in just to see what I'm doing," Maskin says. "And when one person comes in, their colleagues come and stand around, which gives the booth staff time to come and mingle with the crowd."
Stevens says: "To me the most important thing to keep in mind is quality. It's really easy to waste a lot of money on a show – it's an expensive environment on a cost-per-contact basis. You want to make sure you're attracting and talking to people who are really likely to be buyers or influencers in your world."
Dig Deeper: Smart Questions for Your Trade Show Organizer
Drawing Traffic to Your Trade Show Booth: Look Sharp
It's not just the shiny things inside your booth that can be a draw for attendees. The booth itself can attract visitors.
Aside from the open, warm, retail-style aesthetic Brull suggests, you'll want to make sure you don't box in too much of your space with tables or displays. "You don't want to block your door with a table," he says.
This year's Exhibitor magazine exhibit design awards hailed mostly booths that created a calm sanctuary in an otherwise chaotic exhibit atmosphere. And doing something that stands out doesn't have to be expensive. Autodesk Inc. won an exhibitor award for creating an 18-foot-high double archway or cardboard tubing that soared above its and custom-made walls and desks. The cost? Thirteen dollars per square foot.
"One of the most effective booths I've ever seen was a 10' by 20' booth with a back wall of boxes or all colors and shapes," Brull says. It was for a box-shipping company. "It was neat, and eye-catching, but it wasn't expensive."
That said, design options can be pretty restricted when you only have a 10' by 10' or 15' booth.
"The most important thing in booth design in a small booth – or any booth really – is the signage," Stevens says. "Assuming you've done your work in pre-show promotions, you want to attract the people who know you."
The way to attract them, Stevens says, is with a "benefit-oriented" sign. It should:
- Be visible and legible from down an aisle on the showroom floor
- Have words that give a potential client a good reason to stop.
- Answer the question for a client: What's in it specifically for me?
- Not use a lot of jargon, such as "exceptional interface."
- Include a solution to a business problem.
Don't be afraid to be specific – turning off a segment of the trade show audience who isn't your target is just fine.
"If you're offering specific software for accountants, say so," Stevens says. "You do in fact want to repel unqualified prospects. The real value of show exhibiting is to develop valuable contacts with people you might do business with, and you only have x number of hours to do that."
Dig Deeper: Trade Show Advice for Start-ups
