Exhibiting is a challenging endeavor, and you should always prepare for the worst. Even the most seasoned exhibitors will tell you that they experience some sort of glitch at every trade show. Given the logistical complexity of trade show marketing, there will always be problems. So what steps can you take to be prepared?

- Call show organizers about a week prior to your event and confirm all the details related to your trade show booth. Make sure that you understand where and when you will be able to pick up your shipment and find out any other last minute details that may be relevant.

- Double-check to confirm your travel accommodations about a week before the show. Make sure that your airfare and lodging is lined up and ready to go.

- If you have time, practice setting up and taking down your trade show display before you ship it to the show. This will be especially helpful if you have a system that is more complicated to set up, such as a truss display or Alumalite display.

- Carry enough trade show literature and promotional giveaways on your person to get by in case your exhibit is held up or damaged in shipping. As long as you can get by the first day, you can have a new exhibit overnighted to your show if needed.

- Take along extra office supplies and tools. You never know when you’ll need a screwdriver or hammer, so be prepared.

If anything can go wrong with your exhibiting experience, it probably will (especially if you’re new to trade show marketing), so be prepared and your show will go off without a hitch.

Have you ever wondered what to wear when you exhibit at a trade show? When you step out on to the trade show floor, you’ll see a wide variety of theories on this subject manifest themselves. It will be immediately apparent that some exhibitors put no thought at all into how they present themselves at a trade show, and those exhibitors are inevitably less successful. So what can you do to make a good impression on visitors?

Start by thinking carefully about the types of products you sell. If you sell children’s toys, wearing a suit and tie might not attract the type of visitors you are looking for. You appearance will reflect what you think about the company you work for, so put yourself in the shoes of your attendee and think about how they might expect you to dress based on the products and/or services you sell.

It is also important that all of your booth staffers dress uniformly. This does not mean that you necessarily need to wear a uniform (personally I think that wearing matching polo shirts is a horrible idea for trade shows), but it does need to be readily apparent that you all work for the same company. Your trade show booth staffers need to be an extension of your display, and the consistent marketing theme you have created for your booth should flow through them as well.

Typically I recommend that exhibitors dress professionally, but not formally. A suit and tie can scare off potential clients, but you want to be as close to that as you can possibly be in order to legitimize your company.

Stephen Wynn, chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts Ltd, recently announced plans to squeeze another exhibit hall onto the Las Vegas Strip. The new upscale convention center is still in the design phase, but preliminary drawings indicate that the new facility could be approximately 1.8 million square feet in area.

Sandwiched between the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Sands Expo and Convention Center, the new development will be positioned well to attract event and meeting organizers. The exhibit hall will take the place of the Fairways on the Desert Inn golf course, which is nestled just off the Las Vegas Strip near two of Wynn’s other properties (Wynn Resort and Encore Hotel and Casino).

According to plans outlined by Wynn at the companies first quarter earnings conference, the development will include two 2,600-room hotel towers, a man-made lake, and fountains (after all, it is Las Vegas). The hotel towers will be connected to the convention space by an underground transportation system, which will make the upscale convention center a convenient place to exhibit or attend a trade show.

There have been no announcements regarding specific dates for ground-breaking or completion of the project, but exhibitors and meeting planners are excited for the prospect of a new upscale convention center in Las Vegas.

For years, every banner stand required its own unique lighting system. All that has changed with the newest banner stand light on the market, the Lumina 2 spotlight. This unique light clamps directly to the pole of your banner stand, and nearly all banner stands use an aluminum pole to support the graphic. This means that the light will work with almost any banner stand on the market, regardless of the brand or style.

In addition to the versatility of this banner stand light, the bulbs we provided are very eco-friendly, and can be used at almost any convention center. Every light we sell is UL approved, which means you won’t have to worry about the light being disallowed at your trade show. We are not merely a sales company, we are a trade show marketing firm. Our primary goal is to provide you with products that will make your trade show a success.

The ReVue Scrolling Banner Stand is the best scrolling banner stand on the market today. The total viewable size of the ReVue at any given time is 30.5″w x 76.5″h, but the total graphic size is roughly 160″h. This allows you to display multiple messages in a simple but attractive way using a single display system.

Click the link if you want to see the ReVue Banner Stand in action!

Movement is a proven way to grab attention at trade shows. With the ReVue, you simply need to plug in to a nearby outlet and your graphic will scroll continuously. Your graphic is printed onto a durable fabric that is specifically designed to resist slippage as it tracks along, which allows the ReVue to avoid common problems with other scrolling banner stands.

Attendees talk to one another during every trade show, and you can use this fact to your advantage to generate more traffic to your trade show booth. In order to generate buzz around the exhibit hall, there needs to be something special about your trade show display or your promotional items (in other words, give attendees something to talk about).

At a typical trade show, a company might give away 1,000 promotional items that each cost $2 to buy and brand, which brings expenses on trade show giveaways to $2,000. You could create much more buzz for the same cost by giving away 5 promotional items that each cost $400. Most modern trade shows provide exhibitors with card readers and attendees with cards, which allows exhibitors to keep better track of who is interested in their products. Tell every visitor you see that every 200th attendee to have their card swiped will receive the $400 item, and you will certainly see a surge in interest to your trade show booth.

If possible, you want to have everyone at the trade show working to promote your booth. If you want to use this type of strategy, I would recommend purchasing a hanging sign as well, because you will need the increased visibility from across the trade show floor if you’re looking to generate attendee buzz.

At MODdisplays, we pride ourselves first and foremost on customer service and support. Our number one goal is that each of our clients experiences the excitement of a successful trade show marketing endeavor, because we understand that this is the only way that they would ever come back to us and buy another trade show display.

We receive a large amount of positive feedback from our clients, and we constantly update our client testimonials page to reflect the latest responses from our happy customers. As striking as our exhibits look online, we believe that you will be even more pleased with our display design once you have seen your trade show booth in person. All of our products are made from the highest quality materials by trained professionals who take great care to make sure you get exactly what you pay for… and more.

Typically our customers are thrilled with the quality of our exhibits, but they are even more impressed with the services we offer free of charge. No other portable trade show display company on the internet offers free graphic design and free custom renderings. Exhibit design can cost your company thousands of dollars, but we offer it free. The truth is that our company can provide more bang for your buck than any company on the internet.

Major companies are ruthless when it comes to protecting their corporate identity. Consistency and brand recognition are important because they legitimize your company and help you to build long term relationships with your client base. In many cases, the difference between a good company and a great company is brand recognition and positive brand association. So what can you do to make your company stand out from the rest?

Apple set itself apart from competitors in the eyes of consumers using a very simple strategy. From the beginning, Apple aimed to produce high-quality products and invest in well-designed packaging. Although this strategy raises costs for the consumer, the finished product has garnered a reputation as desirable, durable, and marketable. Once positive brand association was achieved, Apple leveraged that energy into a campaign directed against its competitors. With the constant onslaught of negative Apple ads pouring in, Microsoft has been forced to sit back and stand still (acknowledging the ads or attempting to combat them would only serve to legitimize Apple’s message, but ignoring them leaves customers confused).

Exhibiting at an industry trade show is a great way to make competitors aware of your presence. It is important that your competitors perceive your company as strong and stable, because you will find that they will do a good deal of advertising for your company when they feel threatened by your company. Unlike Microsoft’s marketing team (which is actually doing a pretty decent job of combating Apple’s onslaught), your competitors won’t be able to resist legitimizing your branding efforts by attempting to attack your company. Remember that you are competing within an entire marketplace, and waging war with your most direct competitors is an indication that you are distracted from your overall goals.

Intel is a great example of a company that has closed its eyes to the attacks of its competitors. The people at Intel simply put their shoulder to the wheel and push forward creating the most powerful computer processors on the market. It’s never wise to ignore your competitors, but as soon as you allow them to consume your thoughts, you’ve lost the battle. So do your best to take Intel’s strategy:

Make better products to generate positive brand association, and leverage that positive brand association to distract competitors and make them feel helpless.

We’re currently constructing a gallery of our most recent trade show display designs. For now though, you can check out our Flickr page to get a taste for what we can produce. Our clean, modern approach to exhibit design has been captivating attendees for years, so check out some samples of our work here.

We promise, when our trade show display gallery is finally released, it will blow away anything you’ve ever seen in the portable trade show display industry. Would you expect anything less from MODdisplays?

It’s easy to get caught up in the world of corporate exhibiting and forget about the little guy, but that’s not what we’re about at MODdisplays. The vast majority of small businesses with exhibiting budgets choose to show off their products and services at small, local trade shows rather than expensive national conventions. The reality is that most businesses operate on the local level, which limits their target market to small chamber of commerce shows and local conventions. So what can you do to make the biggest impact on a tight budget in a small exhibiting space?

 In order to make the most of your exhibiting budget, we recommend focusing your efforts on high-impact graphics. Because we offer free graphic design at MODdisplays, creating powerful images won’t cost you a cent, no matter what size trade show display you purchase. Our experienced graphic designers have created countless table top displays and banner stands, and they understand what is needed to make your exhibiting experience a success.  Free graphic design is a great place to start if you’re looking to make a big impact.

Because local trade shows target the same audiences year after year, you are likely to run into the same visitors and attendees repeatedly. Changing up your graphics and revamping your display occasionally will help keep your content fresh, which will encourage visitors to take a second look at your trade show booth display.