ideas
Samuel J. Smith
June 30, 2019
The good news: You’ve discovered how interactive trade show games can boost exhibiting results with significantly more booth traffic and leads, and you’re eager to try games in an upcoming event.
The bad news: Your boss doesn’t share your enthusiasm. At least, not yet.
As you would expect, we want to help you be persuasive about this. Therefore, here are 5 points you can share with your boss, written from your perspective:
We won’t get enough booth traffic without an activity. Just standing in the booth doing nothing will not bring in the visitors. Attendees have become too reluctant and time-starved to walk into every booth. We need a compelling activity to grab their valuable attention and pull them in. A popular activity will multiply our overall results far greater than their additional marginal cost.
You or someone on your team has proposed that you host a game in your trade show booth. That’s great, because games can make your booth come alive. But what really makes a trade show game successful?
The best trade show games succeed for many reasons, which are given below in a 10-point checklist. Use it to compare ideas you’re considering.
But at the highest level, the best trade show games do two things: They appeal to attendees AND provide marketing benefits to exhibitors. Let’s look at both areas of value.
Savvy exhibitors know that exhibiting at vertical market shows can be the best strategy for improving trade show results.
These smart exhibitors understand which industries their most valuable customers come from – and then exhibit at shows were those valuable customers attend.
For example, if you sell a software product for professional services firms, you may exhibit at a big software trade show. But once you know that ad agencies and engineering firms buy three times more than your average client, you can instead exhibit at shows where ad agency employees or engineers attend.
Adding a trade show interactive has become one of exhibitors’ favorite tools to getting today’s more reluctant show attendees to cross from the aisle and into and their booth space.
Why are trade show interactives more necessary than ever? Let me count the ways:
For all these reasons, trade show interactives are more popular than ever.
What actually is a trade show interactive? It can have many elements about experience, senses, journey, and more. Here is our definition:
A trade show interactive takes attendees beyond just looking at displays or conversing with booth staffers. With a trade show interactive, attendees interact in a staged, planned, personalized, multi-sensory way with objects, technology, games, and people to more memorably experience the exhibitor’s marketing message or story. A trade show interactive can be as small as a trade show game on an iPad or as large as an entire island booth.
Interactive trade show games do a great job of driving more traffic to your booth. But they can also keep that larger crowd of attendees in your booth longer, too.
Here’s how two of our interactive trade show games increase attendee dwell time:
When your booth visitors play the “three strikes and you’re out” version of our Challenge Bar Trivia game, it can take up to 10 or more minutes as they answer up to 25 questions. That fun experience keeps them in your booth for an extended period. And as they answer questions, they learn about your products and services, plus get to know your booth staffers who helpfully give them hints on quiz questions. They also can stay a longer time when they play the Game Show version of our trivia game.
A glass fishbowl is an icon of old-school trade show exhibiting. But it’s time to retire it — for something better.
Most likely you’ve seen an exhibitor put a glass fishbowl on their booth counter for visitors to toss in their business cards in the hope of winning a prize. Exhibitors draw a card for the winner, and keep all the cards as potential leads.
But, like rotary phones and carbon copies, using glass fishbowls to gather trade show leads leaves you at a severe disadvantage compared to what’s possible with today’s technology.
What do you get when you choose a SocialPoint interactive trade show game? More than fits on a single screen!
There are actually 4 kinds of digital screens that come with each of our trade show games. The 4 kinds of screens not only come in different sizes, but also help you achieve different key trade show goals: Attract attendees, engage and capture leads, and measure your results.
The big flat screen TV monitors main goal is to attract attendees into your booth. They present intriguing, game-generated content that tells passing attendees that something cool is happening here, and they should check it out. Our games output digital content that display on a large screen of your choice.
