Considering the limits of the human attention span, designing an effective trade show booth can be a daunting task. You might be asking yourself:
How can I make my booth stand out?
How can I capture and keep the attention of visitors?
And how can I convert visitors to leads with my booth design?
And while these questions might seem difficult to answer, with the right strategy, they don’t have to be.
In this post, we’ll review the essential design considerations to keep in mind during the planning phase of your trade show booth so that you can create an impactful exhibit! We’ll also reveal a fool-proof way to ensure your display hits the mark and meets your return on investment (ROI) goals.
Let’s get to it!
Do Some Pre-Design Investigation
One of the best ways to get started with your trade show booth design is to visit some relevant trade shows and take notes. Here are some things you should look for:
What booths stand out to you?
What about them caught your attention?
What booths are getting the most attention? Why?
What design elements do you find most striking and appealing?
Take notes on everything that stands out to you. This can help not only to inspire you during the planning phase of your booth design but also with prioritizing your budget. You may find your budget maxed out at some point and that you must decide what to keep and what will be less impactful, and thus, worth letting go of.
Let Your Goals Inform Your Design
It’s time to get super specific about your goals for attending a trade show. If this is something you need help with, we’d be happy to help, but in the meantime, here are some commonly used trade show goals:
Brand Awareness
Lead Generation
Product / Service Promotion
On-site Sales
Once you’ve established what your end-goals are, you can reverse engineer your booth design to accommodate those goals. Do you need bigger and better signage to maximize brand awareness? Or, perhaps more meeting space to facilitate on-site sales?
Use Your Budget to Prioritize Booth Elements
It’s no big secret that trade shows are a major expense for an organization. There are design costs, exhibiting costs, travel expenses, etc. Therefore, it’s important to make sure you are maximizing your design budget by prioritizing the elements that are most likely to achieve your trade show goals.
If properly stored and maintained, trade show booth assets can be used again and again, especially if they have proven to be effective at generating traffic (something we’ll discuss later on in the post). So take the lifetime use of your exhibit into account when calculating costs.
Qualify Leads with a Clear Message
Contrary to what you might initially think, the goal of an effective trade show booth is NOT to attract all people - it’s to attract the right people. To do this, signage with eye-catching copy that is clear, concise, and persuasive is critical.
You want visitors to read and interpret your message instantly. Try to keep your headlines to a 6-word maximum that will tell visitors what your brand is about and attract qualified leads.
Incorporate Design Elements That Stand Out
While your design assets will vary depending on your goals, there are certain elements that you will find universal amongst all active trade show exhibits. Here are a few to keep in mind:
Bold Colors
Eye-Catching Graphics
Demos that Captivate
Interactive Components (Tactile Elements, Virtual Reality, etc.)
Now that you have a good basis for designing a successful trade show booth, it’s time to share our final, fool-proof element that will ensure your exhibit is not only a hit but that it is custom-tailored to your goals and your visitor behavior.
Incorporate FastSensor’s Revolutionary Experiential Marketing Insights
FastSensor is a proprietary technology that tracks visitor behavior and foot traffic to help you maximize engagement and improve your ROI. With FastSensor’s experiential marketing insights, you can:
Attract Attendees
Identify and engage with visitors across all sections of your booth.
Collect data on visit frequency, dwell time and attraction to improve your layout.
Increase Conversion
Explore how visitors navigate your exhibit to optimize your floor plan.
Tailor the visitor experience to boost lead capture.
Boost Traffic
Analyze foot traffic, conversion rates, and visual appeal.
Use insights to improve engagement and interaction with visitors.
Say goodbye to time-consuming, labor-intensive methods of analysis. FastSensor is efficient and automated and removes invalid records to ensure that you receive accurate, actionable data with 90% passive penetration.
What You Get with FastSensor Insights
Conversion Rate
FastSensor will track the total number of unique visitors against walk-by traffic, so you get an accurate conversion rate for engagement with your booth.
Visitor Journey Mapping
Our technology will also show you the most common route through your exhibit so you can optimize your floor plan for lead capture.
Outreach Funnel
FastSensor will breakdown the total number of foot traffic into unique stages of the marketing funnel (Impressions, Passerbys, Visitors, Engagers) so you can see where you’re most effective and where the most potential is.
Display Attractiveness
We track visitor behavior and dwell time to pinpoint which aspects of your exhibit are the most attractive and impactful to potential leads.
Equipped with a well-designed booth and the ability to track, measure, and optimize your exhibit, you’re guaranteed a fool-proof plan to design a successful booth that attracts qualified leads. Contact us today to get started!