Key Factors for Choosing the Perfect Trade Show Booth Location

When you decide to participate in a trade show, the location of your rental booth matters a lot. It generates a blend of psychological and perception advantage to have the booth as near to participants as possible. Here are some benefits offered by having a trade show booth positioned at a strategic location.

Trade Show Factors that Depend on your Choice of Booth Location:

• Traffic: Prime locations at a trade show get the maximum traffic, which impacts your overall ROI.
• Traffic flow: The location should allow a smooth flow of traffic to make on-site activities convenient for you.
• Visitor engagement: The location decides whether you can engage your visitors in the activities or not.
• Visitor experience: A wrong location can easily impact the overall experience of your visitors.
• Gross impressions: The registration of gross impression can reduce simply because your location is not able to attract and engage visitors.
• Brand image: Visitors create an image of a brand, depending on the kind of location it acquires at a trade show. This image reflects the brand expectations.

How to Conduct a Qualitative Assessment of a Booth Location?

1. Proximity to the Trade Show Signage

First, it makes enormous good sense to choose a location that allows your brand and marketing team to become synonymous with the trade show.

For visitors at the trade show to visit your booth, they must be led into thinking and believing that the trade show is synonymous with your brand. They should feel that a visit to the trade show location is incomplete without a visit to your booth.

Choose a location that is is in close proximity with the primary digital signage carrying the names of the trade show and the sponsors. Get as close you can get. What if your booth is located right next to the digital signage of the trade show?

People are highly likely to remember the location, get curious about your brand and more likely to visit your booth. Remember that a location close to the primary digital signage of the trade show shall make your brand synonymous with the event itself.

2. Immediate Booth Neighbors in the Same and Opposite Row

The reputation and relevance of the brand near your booth matter as well. You should assess the type of brands in the same and opposite booth rows.

The nearby brands decide the club you are associated with when visitors arrive. Visitors look at nearby brands as well to decide the reputation of your brand. This happens to each and every booth. Which is why every brand tries to associate with a renowned name in the same industry.

3. Booth’s Position in the Designated Row

In a row, you should try and acquire a corner location instead of a middle location. A corner booth enhances brand memorability. A visitor either sees your brand first or visits the booth at last. So, the mind creates a strong memory of your brand.

Along with brand memorability, a corner location also increases the chances of a revisit. Visitors can go through all the booths in a row and come back to engage once again. This allows you more chances to score on-site leads and generate sales.

4. Lighting and Color Scheme

The lighting you use in your booth should align with the lighting in the background. The same goes for the color scheme. A wrong combination of color scheme and lighting can reduce the overall impact of the booth.

Here are the background color scheme and lighting factors you should care about:

1. What is the general color scheme and lighting across the trade show venue?
2. What is the color scheme and lighting used by the exhibitors in the same as well as the opposite row?

• Intense Background Color-Intense Color Coding of the Booth: If the background color scheme and lighting are intense, you should not choose an intense color scheme and lighting for your booth. An intense-intense combination fades the USP of your presentation. The booth fails to create a strong memorability.
• Intense Background Color- Light Color Coding of the Booth: If you create contrast by keeping your booth’s color scheme and lighting light against an intense background, it benefits your presentation. The booth stands out and increases the level of memorability, experience, and engagement.
• Light Background- Intense Color Coding of the Booth: Against a light background, you should create the contrast with an intense color scheme and lighting of your booth. This will also enhance visitors’ memory, experience, and engagement.
• Light Background- Light Color Coding of the Booth: This scheme fades the presence of your booth as the booth blends with the background color scheme and lighting.

5. Advantageous Busy Intersections of Rows

If your booth’s location is right at an intersection of rows, it can be beneficial. Such a location allows more traffic to visit your booth. They can conveniently see a complete signage view and engage. Hence, it would be smart to try and set your booth at an intersection of 2 or multiple rows.

6. Proximity to the Forum Area

Trade shows and conference organizers usually dedicate a space for hosting professional learning activities, deliberations and discussions. The proximity of your trade show rental booth to such a “forum area’ can be substantial importance in determining the flow of visitors and should impact your choice of booth location.

It is a statement of the obvious that events in the trade show and conference schedule like keynote address, talk shows, forums and panel discussions involving industry stalwarts are sure to attract the attention of visitors and draw big crowds.

That does not have to mean that business at all trade show rental booths shall come to a grinding halt during such times. However, choosing a booth location close to the forum area is likely to be impacted by the use of microphones, deployment of large digital signages showcasing the itinerary of such events and large screen monitors telecasting such events in real time and drop the interest of visitors in your booth.

A little distance from the forum area while keeping in mind the itinerary of the trade show always helps in choosing the right location for your booth.

7. Support Column Proximity

Any location that hides your brand banner or the digital signage is not good for you. Support columns can hinder the lateral or the front view of your brand representation.

Think as if you are creating a temporary shop or store. This will help you understand the bad elements of the surrounding area.

8. Cognitive Skills of Local People

The cognitive skills of people in the locality also matter. For instance, the location of your booth should be aligned in accordance with people’s driving habits in the country.

In left-hand drive countries, people tend to focus more on their left while visiting a location. This can help you get better brand memorability and more visitors.

Pro Tips for Securing the Best Location

1. Be the First Mover

Start researching as early as possible about the trade show locations. Inquire and secure the most effective location for your trade show booth. This will save you from making compromises due to unavailable locations.

2. Interact with the Organizers

Understand more and more about the organizers’ point of view of the trade show. Collect insights and plan your location, color scheme, and lighting in accordance with the conclusions of your interactions.

3. Send in your Reconnaissance Team Ahead of the Trade Show

If possible, send a team of professionals to gather visual information and observe the arrangements. Use the obtained insights to decide which location you want, at a trade show venue.

4. Integrate with your Digital Campaigns

You can expand the ROI of your trade show participation by utilizing the location for digital campaigns. Integrate the location of your booth with all digital functions of marketing.

So, you can align the location with email marketing, social media marketing and SMS marketing as well. Use the location of your booth to create interesting social media posts and feeds on your LinkedIn profile, Twitter profile and Facebook profile.

5. Add your Location on AR Google Maps

For advanced walking directions, Google has decided to include Augmented Reality into maps. You can include your trade show booth location on AR Google Maps to make the accessibility easier for the traffic. The Augmented Reality map will pinpoint your location and allow people to reach your booth without any hassle.

6. Indulge in Pre-Trade Show Marketing

Organize a team of personnel to offer support to people who want to inquire about your participation at a trade show. This team should be available for real-time support during the trade show as well.

Provide bulk messages, emails and feeds on social media to help your personnel market your trade show participation in advance.

Give them the proper authority to communicate with potential visitors via emails, messaging and mobile phones. This way, you can inform about the booth location to as many people as possible.

7. Offer Trade Show Concierge Facility

During your trade show participation, have people working as an on-site concierge at the location. These people should help invitees to reach the booth location easily. Place your on-site concierge at prime locations of the trade show. From there, such professionals can bring the invited visitors straight to the booth location. This way, you can offer the much-needed convenience to preferred visitors at the trade show venue.

Conclusion

You should make every possible effort to find the best location at a trade show. Then, give your best to design the booth according to the elements of the surrounding area. But, even with all these efforts, it is possible to face some compromising scenarios.

That is when your staffers have to pull up their socks and find ways to conquer the location-based issues of your booth. Hence, you should plan your strategy with respect to the advantages and disadvantages of the booth location you have acquired.

From there, make proactive strategies to get the most out of a trade show participation. Now, you can concentrate on the factors and tips offered to choose a physical location of the trade show presentation.

Work on the booth’s color scheme and lighting and maximize your visibility. It is all about setting clear objectives and organizing everything in advance.