Want to build your brand at trade shows? So do 83% of exhibitors, according to CEIR, which found that “building or expanding brand awareness” is exhibitors’ #1 marketing objective at trade shows.
This blog post originally appeared on the CEIR blog.
As a developer of interactive trade show games, we’ve participated with hundreds of exhibitors as they research, select, and execute their in-booth activities. And while we’ve seen many succeed, along the way we’ve unfortunately seen exhibitors repeatedly make the same 7 avoidable mistakes. I want to share those with you, so you can avoid them:
Because trade shows require an astounding amount of details, exhibitors are notoriously overworked and time-starved. As a result, some exhibitors wait until it’s almost show time before looking for an in-booth activity. By then they are so anxious to have any activity in their booth, they jump on the first passable idea they find. With better planning, they could have taken the time to brainstorm and select a better in-booth activity. Even worse? They may have waited so long that they throw up their hands and do nothing.
Many of our exhibiting clients tell us they crave trade show ideas on how to attract more visitors to their booth. They want an attraction that makes their booth irresistible for attendees walking down the aisle.
Exhibiting at trade shows – how hard can it be? You just show up and talk to people, right?
Actually, exhibiting is surprisingly harder than it looks. That said, trade shows still remain very popular (and even keep growing) because they can produce great results when done right.
If you’re exhibiting for the first time, we want to help shorten your learning curve with these 8 tips you need to succeed:
Everything you do at trade shows should support your main sales and marketing goal. So if you don’t know why you’re exhibiting, there’s no way to succeed. Discover or decide if your trade show goals are (most likely) to boost brand awareness, generate sales leads, or strengthen key relationships, or something else. (This advice is good, even if you are not first time trade show exhibitors.)
When Merck Animal Health Conference & Event Manager Amy Gregory called her boss just after the start of the 2018 Veterinary Meeting and Expo, and said, “We have a problem,” it made her 3D Exhibits Account Executive George Furman surprised -- and at least a little nervous.
We recognize that our trade show games, while a powerful addition to an exhibit, are by no means meant to take over your entire exhibit – especially with island booths.
What we’ve heard from our clients is that by adding our games, they get many, many more people into their island trade show exhibit, and which then produces larger visitor counts, all along the buying cycle.
Several of our largest clients have followed this buying-cycle exhibit design strategy, dividing their exhibit into up to 6 different areas:
When you are in a 10 x 10 foot booth space, you have to work even harder to stand out from the crowd. That’s because there are so many other 10 x 10 foot exhibitors, plus all the other exhibitors are in larger, presumably more attention-getting spaces.
That’s why adding an interactive trade show game to even your smallest booths makes a lot of sense.
Even in a 10 x 10 booth space, your game needs to reflect your brand, engage your target market, and advance your marketing goals. However, there are specific issues to including an interactive trade show game to your 10 x 10 booth. Here are those issues, and how to ensure your interactive game is a success:
Trade show games are a proven, yet dramatically underused activity to get more potential customers into your booth. After hundreds of client game implementations, we know trade show games attract a crowd and get attendees engaged with your booth staffers.
But, if using games in your booth is a new idea for you, you understandably need more info. So, in this article, I will share with you several kinds of games and game aspects to consider in your decision.
The first factor is that your game must be fun! You want people to be magnetically drawn into your booth because you are hosting a game that looks like fun, that their friends have told them is fun, and that they can see people already enjoying to play. And, not just any people, but your target customers. Be mindful that what you think would be fun as a 25-year old man may not be fun to your target audience of 45-year old women – or vice versa. Make it fun for your customers, not you.
Pardon the sports metaphor, but our interactive trade show games are a marketing buzz word triple play!
If your marketing department has plans to implement Gamification, Content Marketing, or Experiential Marketing, 3 of the hottest trends in B2B marketing today, you can get the benefits of all three at once with our interactive games.
Let’s look at how our digital games are at the convergence of all 3 trends:
According to Wikipedia, “Gamification is the application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts …. to improve user engagement …”
