The woman on the left is making a huge mistake (aside from the poorly designed exhibit she is using). When you’re exhibiting with a table top display, you should never stand behind your exhibit. Doing so reflects a lack of understanding about how trade shows actually work. When you exhibit at a trade show, your display serves only as a reference point, and should not carry your entire message. Trade shows exist to allow business professionals with similar interests to get together and network, and you’ll never meet any new people standing behind your booth. My advice: Stand as close as you can to the aisle, and use your exhibit as a reference point only. This will drastically increase your visibility and will almost always result in a more successful event.

News spreads like wildfire on the trade show floor. Unfortunately for many exhibitors, bad news travels just as fast as good news. If you can generate a positive buzz about your booth, you are very likely to increase your traffic and improve the return on your investment. So what can you do to make it more likely that good news about your company’s booth travels by word of mouth throughout the convention center? Here are a few suggestions:

-Offer rewards to attendees who send potential clients your way. If your product/service is interesting or unique and it is directly related to the theme of the event, chances are good that attendees will meet at least a few people who are interested in what you have to offer. You can encourage them to refer these people to your exhibit space by offering them something of value.

-Instead of giving away huge quantities of promotional products (e.g. pens, stress balls), try giving away less quantity and more quality. If you hold a drawing every few hours for a high-end consumer product (iPod works well), attendees will certainly spread the word. Since your goal is to draw attention to your booth, the constant flow of visitors stopping by to drop their business cards into the drawing will provide you with ample opportunity to market your products and services. If possible, give away prizes that relate directly to what you sell (e.g. give away a new cell phone if you are a cellular service provider), as this strategy will help to solidify your brand.

-If you can avoid coming across as gimicky, using prize wheels and cash cubes is a great way to incite conversation among attendees about your booth. Who wouldn’t want to see a professional business man or woman grasping helplessly for dollar bills? These attractions are especially powerful if you can convince a major figure in your industry to participate in your game. If the keynote speaker at your event is willing to get in your cash cube or spin your prize wheel, you have a great opportunity to attract a big crowd.

Trade shows are all about communication. If you can generate positive word of mouth about your company at your next event, you’re well on your way to a successful marketing program.

Exhibiting at a trade show can be a daunting challenge, but through the application of a few basic principles, the process can be very manageable. Even seasoned trade show marketing professionals struggle to manage every aspect of their program, and every veteran will tell you that there is no such thing as a perfect event. If you are in charge of the exhibiting program for your company, you should be focused on increasing the return on your investment through best practices in exhibiting, and some of those practices are listed below:

1- Plan well in advance. Flights, hotel rooms, and exhibit space are all less expensive when you book early. In addition to the huge savings, planning out your exhibiting program well in advance will allow you more time to detect and fix mistakes. The number of exhibitors who wait until the last minute to purchase their trade show display or promotional products is astounding, especially considering the fact that those who plan well in advance usually have a more successful exhibiting experience.

2- Work to attract attendees long before the trade show begins. A good part of trade show marketing occurs even before the event begins through pre-show mailers and press releases. It is important to let your potential clients know that you will be exhibiting as well as what products and/or services you will be marketing. Many attendees only visit booths that are on their itinerary (which they create before the show even begins). If you’re not on that list, even the best exhibit on earth won’t help you make a sale.

3- Train your booth staffers well. Your people will always be the focal point of your trade show booth from the perspective of potential clients, so you need to have knowledgeable staffers who understand your products and your brand. Many successful marketing programs have been ruined when booth staffers unwittingly sabotage relationships with potential clients. Carefully review the basics of your company’s marketing program including your best selling points, competitive advantages, and your branding basics.

4- Invest in a hybrid display with a clean, modern look. If you’ve ever been to a trade show, you know that curved popup displays dominate the landscape. Although popup displays are very affordable and easy to setup, they virtually guarantee that you will blend in with the crowd at your next conference, which is usually not the best idea. Most companies work hard to stand out and differentiate themselves from other exhibitors to attract the maximum amount of attendees.

5- Develop a strategy to collect and follow up on leads you generate at the conference. According to the Center for Exhibition Industry Research, almost 90% of leads generated at trade shows are never followed up on. This means that by developing an effective strategy for following up on the leads you generate, you will increase the return on your investment by over 900% when compared with your competitors. A simple, focused approach to trade show marketing will take you further than the flashiest literature or the most well configured trade show exhibit.

Trade show marketing is challenging, but it doesn’t have to be impossible. Through the application of these simple tips, you should see a drastic increase in the return on your investment at your next event.

If you have ever attended a trade show, chances are good that you have found yourself stuck listening to a boring sales pitch from an unqualified sponsored trade show speaker. At conferences across the country, more and more attendees have been using Twitter to quickly and quietly communicate with other attendees during speeches and panels. When a discussion panel gets off track and ventures onto topics that are not interesting for the majority of listeners, attendees working together can redirect the course of the discussion by collaborative “tweeting” to get things back on track.

According to a Fortune article, attendees have taken drastic steps to redirect boring discussion panels and speakers. In one specific case, conversation in a chat room (during the conference) caused a revolution against the discussion panel. “One person finally stood and requested permission to ask a question. They said ‘No’, and he said, ‘The whole room is behind me. I’m going to ask it anyway’.” When attendees are able to take control of the topics of discussion at conferences, both sides win. The goal (at least in part) of discussion panels and speakers is to relay valuable information to attendees, and when attendees can choose what they want to hear, this only gets easier.

How many times have you found yourself bored out of your mind listening to a speaker at a conference? If so, you’re not alone. Over the past 5 – 10 years, more and more speaking positions at conferences have been given to “sponsors” (exhibitors who pay a premium to have time in front of visitors and attendees to the show). This is a great way for trade show organizers to make an extra buck, but it detracts from the overall experience for attendees. In the long run, I would argue that this practice will drastically decrease attendance and devalue the primary focus of any trade show, which is the marketing efforts of exhibitors put into their trade show booths and literature.

Event sponsors may pay $1,000 – $10,000 for the opportunity to speak to attendees, and they will certainly be looking for a return on that investment. As a result, speeches look more and more like live commercials. Attendees are interested in hearing informative speeches that relay information about the health of the industry, current industry trends, and what to expect in the near future. If you subject attendees to sponsor after sponsor who are relentlessly pushing their own products and/or services, they will quickly become bored and annoyed.

In order to solve this problem and keep attendees interested in hearing the speeches at conferences, it will take a concerted, collective effort on the part of show organizers to prohibit exhibitors from buying their way up to the podium. Speakers should be chosen on the basis of merit alone, not on the basis of how much money they are willing to shell out for a 10 minute long commercial. When speakers are chosen in this way, trade shows will be much more interesting for attendees. This may upset a few exhibitors out there who were used to buying an audience for their company, but they’ll get over it.

Before you take your first steps in the world of trade show marketing, you need to have a clear idea about what you want your company and your brand to represent to potential clients. Flashy graphics and slick marketing material won’t help you grow your customer base unless you have something to offer. Before you waste any energy designing marketing material or graphics, here are some things that should already be decided:

• Type of products and/or services you offer.
• Where you fit into the market (high-end or low-end, consumer sales or business sales, etc).
• A slogan that describes your company in a clear but concise way.

Trade shows are crowded, confusing environments, and it is very important that you set yourself apart from the rest of the exhibitors and leave a memorable impression. However, many exhibitors remember to be unique but forget to tell potential clients anything about what they actually do. Potential clients are not interested in your eye-catching exhibit, they are interested in your products.

With years of experience in exhibit design and graphic design, the professionals at MODdisplays know what it takes to solidify your branding efforts.  Our professional design teams make sure that you end up with an eye-catching booth, but we also make sure that important information about your company is relayed to your potential clients.

Reports suggest that almost 90% of leads generated at trade shows are never followed up. This astounding statistic makes it clear that lead management should be a priority in your trade show marketing program. Many exhibitors focus heavily on their trade show display system and their promotional products, leaving little or no capital or energy to be spend on lead management training and tools.

According to Dave Bailey at TechTarget, the definition of lead management is “to increase the likelihood that a lead will convert into a new, satisfied customer”. This definition highlights an important idea about lead management, which is that every lead must be managed individually. There is no cookie cutter way to manage every lead that will come your way, your company needs to take a personal interest in every qualified lead you receive.

Lead management on the trade show floor should amount to more than business card swapping. Business cards contain contact information, not lead information. In order to collect leads, you need to know what the potential client is interested in, the nature of their business, their timeframe for purchasing, their budget, and some objective measure of the likelihood that they will make a purchase from your company. Without this information, your sales staff back at the office will be starting cold, which appears unprofessional to potential clients. When you have recorded all the information in an accessable way, your sales staff will have no trouble prioritizing which leads they follow up on and picking up where you left off at the conference.

In a recent article in Entrepreneur Magazine, Nichole Torres highlighted a few of the exhibiting practices of Anna Sabino on behalf of Lucid New York Jewelry. According to the article, Sabino spent a good deal of time investigating effective trade show marketing techniques by walking other trade shows as an attendee. This experience gave her insight into what works and what doesn’t with regards to exhibiting and allowed her to make a big impression at her event.

According to the article, simple and clean exhibit design will help your company stand out in the clutter as opposed to busy and confusing exhibit design. Sabino “used mirrors and warm colors to create a pleasant and welcoming atmosphere” according to the article, which is textbook exhibiting practice. It is always important to make visitors to your booth feel welcomed and comfortable before you begin your sales pitch.

On top of all her efforts, Sabino offered a valuable service to her potential clients. She took the time to do the work for her distributors by creating an attractive display case and picking only her most popular and best-selling products so that her potential clients could easily imagine what it would be like to sell her products in their retail environment. According to the article, her sales exceeded $600,000 this year, which is great for a three-year-old startup company.

The goal of every exhibitor is to initiate contact with potential clients and continue to build relationships with existing clients. Offering a few of your non-core products at or below cost will attract the interest of potential clients who may not have otherwise been interested in your company. The concept of selling a product at or below cost to attract more new customers is foreign to many business-owners, and it certainly won’t work for everyone, but using a loss leader can be a great trade show marketing strategy.

When you sell a non-core product at cost, you leave your client with the impression that your company is price competitive in every area of business. When they suddenly find themselves in need of your core products, they will assume that you are the cheapest because your loss leader was so cheap. This perception needs to be reinforced in reality (i.e. you need to actually sell your core products at competitive prices) in order to keep the client happy with your company.

Here are some things to consider when selling products as a loss leader:

• Your products should be related to what your business actually does. If you primarily sell office furniture, you could offer a few office accessories at or below cost. You want to avoid selling your core products at or below cost so that you do not confuse your customers and devalue your brand.
• Your loss leader product should require little or no customer support after the sale. If you’re already selling a product below cost, the last thing you want is a customer service nightmare when the products break or become damaged weeks after the sale.
• If your company does not keep detailed financial records, you will never be able to make an educated decision about when and if you can use a loss leader in your trade show marketing program.

If you choose to integrate a loss leader into your program, make sure it is well advertised at your event both on your trade show display and in your exhibit literature. If you forget to let people know about your special, you cannot properly evaluate its effectiveness on your target market.

Modern trade show exhibits are almost always outfitted with multimedia components such as monitors or speakers. Adding multimedia and internet connectivity to your trade show booth makes sharing information quicker and easier than ever, which has dramatically increased the profitability of trade shows for companies that do business online.

There are a number of different uses for multimedia at a trade show, and your exhibit space should be oriented in a way that functions best for your needs. If you want to use the internet to share private pricing lists or provide a brief glimpse into the members only section of your website, you may want to put your computer in a more private location to avoid snooping from competitors. If you want to share a marketing video to relay information about your products and services, you would probably want to have your computer in a prominent place to attract attention from passing visitors and attendees. Think carefully about how you plan to use multimedia and let that determine the way you organize your trade show booth components.

When incorporating multimedia into your trade show display, you should be careful to ensure that your multimedia components do not overshadow your exhibit. Monitors, demo stations, and computers should be accessible, but should not obstruct your sales staff from engaging visitors and attendees. Visitors should feel welcome in your space, not crowded and disoriented. Purchasing a trade show display that is designed to hold monitors and manage computer wiring is a great way to make sure that your multimedia has a prominent place in your exhibit without taking up valuable real estate.

Many exhibitors make the mistake of improperly lighting their trade show displays in a way that detracts from the appeal of the multimedia. It is always a bad idea to have harsh exhibit lighting directly shining on your monitor, as this will cause unwanted glare on the screen. If your presentation is hard to see because of improper lighting, visitors and attendees will quickly lose interest and move to another exhibit to find what they are looking for. Lighting your monitor from above is always a good idea, as this draws attention to your multimedia without creating a glare on the screen.

When using multimedia, be sure to correctly adjust the volume to avoid problems with attendees as well as neighboring exhibitors. Many shows strictly regulate the volume of your presentations for the sake of nearby exhibitors, so be sure to read up on the rules before planning your demonstrations. It is also important that your sales staff be able to effectively communicate with visitors and attendees. Your booth staffers should never have to struggle to speak over the sound of your multimedia, as this will make your potential clients uncomfortable and will detract from the overall feel of your trade show booth system.

Using multimedia in your next trade show exhibit is critical if your company deals online in any way. Building a good web presence and effective online marketing material is a great way to show attendees that your company is highly professional and willing to keep up with changing market demands.

About the Author:
Andy Keeler is the President of MODdisplays, a leading provider of portable trade show displays and trade show booths. If you’re shopping online for Exhibit One displays or XRline displays, look no further than MODdisplays for your exhibiting needs.  MODDisplays can be found online at:  http://www.moddisplays.com.