Melissa Colton, project manager at DD Exhibitions, provides her top five tips for attracting more visitors to your exhibitions booth.
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The world of exhibitions is an exciting and stimulating one, full of competing sights and sounds. It’s no wonder you’ve been left scratching your head, contemplating how you can possibly stay ahead of the pack and get noticed.
The main key here is effort and consistency: if you put the time and planning into making your exhibit as profitable as possible, you’ll be creating the best opportunities for yourself. In this guide, we’ll share five tactics to help you create a healthy traffic flow of quality leads, and generate a buzz around your stand.
1.) HAVE AN AESTHETICALLY PLEASING STAND
Designing an exhibition booth that stands out and leaves a lasting impression can be an intricate process. Your stand will act as your shop window, representing your company and your product, so its presentation is a paramount task.
Even with a high-quality product or service, if your space has no visual appeal, your potential customers may choose to approach your competitors. Some key concepts to follow are:
Avoid having signage that is text heavy, as this can be overstimulating for a viewer. A mission statement or slogan will be sufficient in adding clarity to your stand.
Have an appropriate colour scheme. Colour can be the first piece of visual stimulus our brains process when viewing something. Develop a colour scheme that accurately represents the feel of your products.
Make full use of the space you have booked. Double-check the restrictions (including height) on what size your booth can be. In addition, try to keep an open display area: ensure the flow of your display area is unobstructed, with no barriers to entry. Keep seating areas and furniture at the back or sides of your stand to create space.
2.) PROMOTE YOUR ATTENDANCE PRIOR TO THE EVENT
Once you’ve had a stunning exhibit designed, don’t be scared to brag about it!Letting people know that you’ll be exhibiting at a show will help promote interest.
Draw up some banners to include on your website and email signature, inviting customers to swing by your stand. Making use of the event organisers’ marketing (such as using their hashtags on Twitter) will allow you to benefit from the publicity they are generating, and align yourself with the event. You could even mention your attendance as part of your email campaigns running up to the big day.
3.) STRATEGISE HOW YOU WILL APPROACH PASSERS-BY
Pick a strong team to promote your products, using their strengths as your strengths. You should bring staff that are outgoing and comfortable approaching strangers, as well as initiating conversations about your product. Teach them about the correct way to approach attendees, and encourage attendance to your stand without pushing a hard sell.
When approaching attendees, staff should use opening questions that encourage a conversation and engagement, in a natural way. For example: “have you heard about our product?” or “has something caught your eye?”
You may want to pick one member of staff to act as the “hook”, with their main job to bring people into the stand, and the rest of your staff attending to those who visit.Staff should always appear friendly and approachable - even the visual cue of seeing staff frowning can be off-putting to prospects.
It’s also better to bring too many staff members than not enough: no one should be waiting to be attended to. Every person ignored is a lead lost, and proper staff trainingprior to the event can really pay off on the day.
4.) BE INFORMATIVE IN YOUR PROMOTION
If you’ve attended an exhibition before, you’ll know that it’s commonplace for exhibits to give out freebies. Don’t fall into the trap of giving out freebies for the sake of it: make it an engaging process and profit from the interaction, by gaining an email address or taking the opportunity to talk through your product line. Most importantly, make it relevant to your company and give meaningful information about your product.
Better yet, run a contest, raffle or quiz to encourage attendees to engage with your sales team rather than just picking up a free pen and going on their way.
Having prizes that give insight into your product is a great way to provide value to visitors without breaking the bank. Gift vouchers, free samples or goods that complement your products are all ways of doing this.
Finally, to show your confidence in your product, offer demonstrations to allow potential buyers to see what you have to offer, and how it could benefit them.
5.) INCENTIVISE YOUR STAFF
Your staff are a huge factor in your success when it comes to generating leads at an exhibition, so it’s logical to reward them for their hard work!
Come up with objectives or goals for staff to strive for, and reward staff who reach their goals. You could even run a competition between staff members (friendly, of course...) with a prize for the person who registers the most interest. Giving staff something to strive for will help keep them dynamic and focused throughout what could be a long day.
Furthermore, equipping them with an understanding of how the company as a whole will benefit from their success on the day, will help instigate a good team spirit.
By implementing these five tactics, exhibiting at a trade show can be a hugely profitable venture which can, in turn, provide you with surges in sales. Covering all your bases from staff training to booth design will allow you to have a rock solid strategy, and make full use of the investment in your stand.
You can check out DD exhibitions at either of the links below:
Instagram: @dd_exhibitions
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DD-Exhibitions-Ltd-171008733026442/
