One of the most difficult parts of planning for your trade show, particularly for new exhibitors, is determining your display budget.   When you determine what show to exhibit at the costs are fixed for reserving a space, and while often expensive they are not negotiable.  The displays however range drastically in price.  Ideally everyone wants the high end display at the budget price, but the reality is balancing exhibit needs, professional look, with the best price.

If you spend too much, you might have a successful show but you may have spent thousands more then you needed to.   Spending too much is a rarity.  Most often exhibitors tighten their budget the most when it comes to buying their display.  They’ve reserved the space and they have bought plane tickets and hotel rooms for their sales staff.  They are almost out of money so they cut corners when purchasing a booth.  What happens?  Think of it like this, you are a retail store and you lease a space in an upscale mall that all your competitors seem to have success in.  But in order to balance the high cost of the lease you cut the budget on your store build out.  Result, you end up with a flea market looking space in a top dollar mall, which, in turn, kills your sales and company image regardless of your products or service.

In trade show terms, you are killing your return on your investment.  You are not getting a realistic view of the benefit of exhibiting at trade shows.  Possibly, you shouldn’t be exhibiting, or possibly you should have showed up with a display that legitimizes your company rather than making it look like halfhearted operation.  You obviously believe in your products or services, but put yourself in your potential customer’s shoes, would you use your company?

Here are some suggestions:  When buying booth space be realistic.  Don’t reserve a space that you cannot adequately fill.  A well designed 10×10 exhibit looks much better than a 10×20 exhibit that looks like it was built by a 7^th grade science class.

Take a realistic view of your needs.   If you are promoting software you will probably need to have a display with a monitor mount for demoing your produce.  If you sell apparel you will probably want to display it; but don’t overdo it either.  Your trade show display is not supposed to look like a retail store.   Take a few good examples of what you offer; if you professional and your samples look good, the attendees will be confident of your professionalism and the quality of your entire product line.

Finally, GRAPHICS, GRAPHICS, GRAPHICS!  Think of the old phrase “a picture says a thousand words.”   Graphics are to exhibits as location is to real estate.  A large well designed graphic will legitimize your company immensely and quickly.  The best example is the dot com boom of the nineties.   Companies bought big displays and large graphics and were immediately thought of as big companies.  If you are a legitimate company with a great product or service, the dot com example can show you that a good trade show presence can be just what you need to really take off.