Proven Ways to Make Your Trade Show Booth a Lead Magnet

It is no secret that trade shows are a sure-fire way to boost your sales. A trade show, in all its sheer essence, could be considered this meet-and-greet assembly where leads are generated and your brand receives maximum exposure.

Designing and setting up an effective custom trade show exhibits is an on-field marketing strategy that needs execution and implementation. And in the end, like every other marketing strategy, it is the result that matters.

That is exactly why having more and more people attending your trade show becomes important. Having more people attending your show gives your brand a higher chance of generating leads.

When you ask around, you would know that the secret to successful business leads generation and converting them into potential sales.

Why Visitor Footfall at Your Booth Matters?

Naturally, the prime indicator of a successful trade show exhibit is having more and more people attend your booth.

That is where marketers need to channel their focus on. Lead generation is off the roof if your marketers manage to put up a good show for your target audiences.

There are several ways in which audiences can be drawn to your exhibit booth during a trade show. Marketers would tell you that each one of them succeeds at varying platforms, depending on the nature of your audiences.

Not all strategies would yield you the same result. As dynamic your audiences get, the more creative your trade show strategy to attract them needs to be.

How to Make your Trade Show Exhibit a Lead Magnet?

One of the key ingredients to the recipe of an amazingly successful trade show is to give the audiences what they want to see, and not just what you want to show. You need to align your trade show strategy with the wants of the audiences for better results.

Once you hook the audiences enough, you can then get them introduced to your products. This would be a very non-pushy and subtle approach which is usually appreciated by audiences that include investors and businessmen alike. “Easy does it” is the mantra that is at work in a trade show.

Without much ado, we get you introduced to some quick tips to design the best trade show strategy. This will not only help you generate more leads but will also help you better your sales.

As a thriving business, you would understand the importance of getting your brand more attention. For this, there is no better way than a successful trade show put up by your brand.

1. Get an Early Start

If you thought that the work that goes into a trade show requires you to put in efforts only on the day of the show, then you are aiming for a lukewarm response. It is the era of digitization; you need to use the resources available.

Design a specific logo. Hand out flyers and catchy accessories like badges and funky t-shirts. Reach out on social media with a help of a specific hashtag.

For all you know, if you have done it well, your hashtag could be trending. This way, people are aware of your booth and would surely make it a point to stop by and say hi.

2. Attract More Attention with Something Quirky

Quirks go a long way when you want your audiences to remember you. It is a general rule of thumb that what stands out is spoken of more often. Giving out mugs and pens is a boring corporate strategy that is done and dusted. Using it anymore is like beating a dead horse.

Give out something that is rather odd and makes people inquisitive about what you have to offer. Something unique like earphones, socks, innovative laptop sleeves, sunglasses, oddly shaped paperweights.

A good brainstorming session can give you a wide range of off-the-usual giveaway ideas. The audience turnover will surprise you.

3. Make it Visual

Having a trade show booth design that stands out makes your brand come across differently. For this, you need to use your location in the best manner possible. The main aim always is to offer the audiences something they did not anticipate at all. A booth at a trade show that blew their minds would be the talk of the town.

Gaining popularity in this manner helps you rope in more leads and subsequently more clients. It also comes in handy to have your exhibit booth staff well groomed and appropriately dressed. It adds up to the visual effect overall.

To make it a wholesome experience for your visitors, have your exhibit staff converse well. Instruct them to be warm and polite and appropriately funny. Having such a staff helps you subtly plug-in sales pitches, and even before you realize, you have leads and clients.

4. Great Brand Content

The phrase, “content is king” is something that is applicable in practically all walks of life these days. Having interactive content on your custom booth portrays a very techno-friendly image of you.

It is not much you would have to look into for this. Installing a few tablets throughout your booth helps you make your content interactive.

This is a very non-pushy approach. People will automatically be intrigued to find out what you have to show. Hence, tablets and other such touch devices let visitors engage with the content you have already programmed into those devices.

Having them fill in their email Ids, making them participate in surveys and fill out feedback forms can generate you enough data to make a proper marketing strategy there on.

5. Gauge your Competition

For you to outdo your competitors, you need to know what they are up to. For this, you need to research into it thoroughly. Check out how the professionals are doing it. How is it that they are managing to go out of their way, and still reap profits?

Learn from them as to how they are gaining customers, and more importantly credibility. Are their giveaways really all that great? If yes, try something on those lines. If not, how well can you one-up it? All this needs to be looked into before you start planning your exhibit booth.

6. Induce Humor

Everybody likes a good laugh. Marketing your product with smart humor helps attendees remember you longer. And the longer they remember you, the longer they talk about you – which after all is the motive behind exhibit booth displays.

As opposed to bland, salesman-like promotion, you can try upping your promotional content to something funny and quirky. Use of puns as hashtags is also a good idea to have a wider social media reach.

7. Indulge your Booth Visitors with Interactive Games  

People are sportier than you think them to be. Nobody shies away from a good challenge. Having your audiences participate in games is a good way to reach out to your target audience. This shows that you are going the extra mile and making grass root efforts to come closer to your audiences.

Games require people to be involved physically, mentally, socially, emotionally and even motivationally. Use this to your advantage.

People who participate in the games you arrange, if filmed and compiled can even make for a great promotional video. Efficient “gamification” of your brand’s ethos makes it easy to be absorbed by your audiences.

Simultaneously, handing out free units of your product to winners and appropriate acknowledgment to participants makes your customers feel good and this feel-good-factor goes a long way in customer satisfaction.

8. Go All Out with Creativity

Never hesitate when it comes to displaying your creativity to the fullest. In order to command people’s attention, you are free to use whatever means you wish to.

To lay this point across more clearly, let us assume a specific brand has its mascot as an exotic animal like a toucan or a penguin. Try bringing in those at your booth and give out themed flyers.

This will accomplish two things – people live the experience through the display you have arranged, and relive it later when they look at the themed flyer you gave out. This way, they never forget you. Instead, they keep coming back to you.

9. Advertise your USPs

This builds upon your competitor research. If they offer a service, you need to advertise what you do that is better than what is available already. Why should the masses know about you? What is it you do best? That is pretty much the crux of all advertising.

Leverage your Unique Selling Points to the fullest. Create a custom booth that accentuates your brand’s USPs. Again, handing out merchandise and innovative flyers will go a long way in your audiences retaining your efforts in their memory. Word will spread sooner than you anticipate and you will have more audiences than you estimate.

Parting Thoughts

To wrap it up, a well-crafted trade show exhibit is a culmination of all your marketing strategies stitched into one.

Therefore, if done well and pulled off tactically, it definitely leaves your brand with tangible benefits in the form of improved visitor traffic, enhanced engagement, and better conversion potential.