Introduction
Hey, today we’ll discuss the ultimate guide to setting up a booth at a trade show.
startups and small and medium enterprises participate in various exhibitions around the world and with our own experience, here we have listed some of the stuff that we have learned.
How to Prepare while setting up a booth at a trade show?
1: set up smart objectives
Decide what you want to achieve;
- Leads
- Customers
- Downloads
- Resumes
- Ideas
- Product
- Feedback
- Social buzz
- Partners, etc.
list all those things very specifically while setting up a booth at a trade show.
you will have visitors at the exhibition. identify your target audience in who you are interested and then prepare tools to manage your audience and your objectives.
it can be social channels, it can a paper sheet, it can be feedback forms, it can be visiting cards, brochures, etc.
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2: invite and social awareness
Send invites to specific companies and persons in that particular geography.
send the invoice whole email or LinkedIn or social media but don’t spam at all.
You also should put some sort of social media post on your own channels so that will be awareness as well as a better brand for you.
prepare a smart checklist of everything that you need at the exhibition so you don’t run here and there on the last day for some sort of preparation.
if you are giving some sort of giveaway of merchandise, have some strategy. This is an important point in setting up a booth at a trade show.
3: Environment
When you are at the exhibition, prepare the environment and decorate your booth very smartly so people should get attracted to your booth.
Network with your co-exhibitors. They are actually your real partners and customers to start with the exhibition so be very good with them.
4: have a big team
have a big team. always have four five or six people coordinating with you during the trade show. Greet each and every person those are passing by your booth. Don’t forget this point while preparing and setting up a booth at a trade show.
5: follow up
Always follow up. don’t wait for the event or the exhibition to end. prepare your segments. Send relevant messages. you can use any sort of marketing automation tool.
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Marketing Advice: How to set up Trade Show Booth?
Let’s discuss how to set up a booth for a trade show.
In any sort of marketing plan, you’re most likely going to go to trade shows or conferences, or events where you can display your goods or services among a whole crowd of other people selling similar items.
And you want to somehow stand out from the rest so that the potential customers will come to your booth instead of to somebody else’s.
Now at a trade show, you don’t necessarily need to have the biggest most expensive booth in order to attract customers and attention but you do need to have a couple of basic items. Here are points on setting up a booth at a trade show;
Number 1: good location
you need to have generally a good location. And this doesn’t have to be the biggest booth again, but if you’re in a good location, a small booth works just as well because generally if you’re near the entrance or near some sort of common meeting area like maybe the food court or some other general meeting point within the entire trade show, these are good locations so that you’re not buried in the back in an aisle or in a row that somebody doesn’t normally come to while setting up a booth at a trade show.
Number 2: decoration
you need to have a colorful inviting booth. Basically, this comes down to decoration. Nobody wants to go to a boring drab booth that looks like nothing is going on.
So any way that you can to attract the attention of people walking by is basically good decoration.
So having bright posters, colorful plants, good lighting, and almost anything that you can think of that would make a home or an office inviting, works just as well with a trade booth.
Number 3: traffic flow
When you are setting up a booth at a trade show, you want to have a good traffic flow. And what we mean by this is once you get a large number of people standing in front of your booth, you need to be able to give them information and collect information from them in a quick and efficient manner so that they can move on and you can get new customers.
If everybody in the front is bunched in front of your booth and nobody behind them can see what’s going on, most likely they’ll leave and go on to somebody else.
So these three points are a good start for setting up a booth at a trade show and once you get going and experiment, you’ll find out which areas work the best for you.
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3 Tips on setting up a booth at a trade show
1: be friendly
be friendly and optimistic no matter how others react.
if you’ve ever stood in a booth at a trade show then you know what I’m talking about.
people pass by and barely look at you don’t want to acknowledge your presence or if they come into the booth are not as friendly.
see our job is to always be optimistic and helpful. all we want to do is share our knowledge, share our product knowledge, and our service knowledge with them, so always be optimistic
when you’re demoing something.
it’s always about how can you help the attendees with your trade show set up ideas.
2: Identify your audience
Know who you’re targeting. qualify with good questions.
when you go to a trade show make sure that you know who you’re looking for. you know what the ideal profile of that client is. you know that they have to have a certain title work in a certain department, maybe a certain demographic budget, whatever it may be.
you have to determine what that profile is. remember this tip when setting up a booth at a trade show.
3: interaction matters
know specifically what you want from the interaction.
know who you’re targeting, be optimistic and know what you want out of the interaction.
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5 Recommendations for Setting Up a Booth at a Trade Show
now if you’re gonna set up a booth at a trade show, there are five important key tips that can help you achieve your goal.
1. Have a TV or screen
the first thing is if you’re gonna have a TV, the best thing to do for setting up a television screen at your booth is to put it behind you on a level.
the reason why you do that is so that when people walk up to your booth, they’re not blocking your demo.
have that TV also attached to a DVD player that’s on a continuous loop with Clips
of messages from the founder, anything that you want to show while people are just standing there trying to figure out what is this company.
2. Divide tables
the next thing you want to do is you want to divide your table into two.
one side has to be like your giveaway items. things where once the conversation starts. you can kind of move people off too, to kind of have them pick up their free item.
And the other side is the demo area so that when you’re actually having a conversation with somebody, you have that area clear so that you can move people from the demo area to the free product and then kind of get them on their way.
this will really help you stay focused while setting up a booth at a trade show.
3. Have a Greeter
another thing you want to do is you want to have a greeter.
now, this is a person that you actually need. Their whole job is to meet every single person and be the first person that they interact with.
they need to understand who this person is. is this a person that the CEO needs to meet? is this the person that just walks around and looks for free products? that person needs to then let the rest of the team know who they should talk to. Don’t forget this tip when setting up a booth at a trade show.
4. Have 2 pockets
the next thing you need to do is you need to have two pockets.
the reason why you have two pockets is that one pocket is for the business cards of the people who you absolutely have to follow up with.
the other pocket is for the business cards which you can give to general people who come to your booth for any reason.
5. Tweet and social connection
the last thing you need to remember is that for every single person now it is an opportunity to really reach a bigger audience.
so everyone has a smartphone in their pocket everyone is tweeting.
the key is getting them to either check at your booth or tweet a picture of your booth to their community because that one person has on average 130 friends on Facebook.
you meet 10 people, that’s 1300 people that you have the potential to meet and tell about your business.
so understanding that you’re not just talking to this person, you’re actually talking through them as well out to their community.
so if you can kind of keep that in mind, realize that your potential at a trade booth could be pretty significant.
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Trade Show Booth Set-up Ideas
now it’s about time to get into some technical tips about trade booth set-up ideas.
when you’re trying to expand your footprint and when you try to open your brand or product that’s in new markets, so I’m giving you guys quick tips to have a better and more successful show when you go into events and try to gain a footprint in a new territory.
let’s go and take a look at what you guys need to do when you set up your booth for an international event.
in order to have a successful trade show, you gotta do homework, and prepare when setting up a booth at a trade show, and early preparation even before the show kicks off right, and probably several weeks, one month or so before you decide to register for a show and events are moving space.
the first thing you need to do you need to have a membership in the organization’s body.
whatever exhibition or trade show you want to attend, you’ve got contact with the organization body and have a membership to take advantage of the perks and discounts.
another important step you guys need to take is to check the exhibitors beforehand and take a look at the floor plan. how big is the show? how many exhibitors are going to be there? what were the previous statistics? and how many attendees are expected to visit the show? etc.
this way you can adjust your budget and calculate and exploit how many prospects you can generate and how many leads and prospects you can have up to the show.
this way when you do the homework like checking the floor plan in a number of the attendee’s previous stats and the number of exhibitors’ floor plans the size of the show, you guys will be able to calculate your marketing budget spending and expected return from the shows in terms of leads prospects new business.
when you’re at the show, the most important thing you gotta execute is driving more traffic to your booth and being in a position to be able to speak to as many as prospects you can.
so you can build a belief and then you can follow up with those leagues and build a funnel and feed those leads into a funnel and try to get prospects opportunities and growth deals out of those.
it takes three stages;
- prepped pre-show preparations
- Showtime execution and
- follow-up after the show
Of those three steps, the most important two of those are prepped pre-show preparations and follow-up after the show.
Wrap up on trade show booth set up
if you can do those and if you can convert as many leads into opportunities and close deals, then you’re gonna get a nice ROI of your show investment out of your marketing budget.
then you start up the product. it will have a nice foothold and new market.
if you’re trying to penetrate into new territory or you’re going to expand your existing business in the existing region that you’ve been competing with other products. Share this blog on how to set up booth for trade show with your team and have a successful trade show event.