Ed Marshall
Our creative genius, the one who can take a loose brief and turn it into a stand that doesn’t just look amazing but works brilliantly too. Known to most as Ed, he’s picked up awards along the way (including Young Business Person of the Year at the SME Cambridgeshire Business Awards), but what really matters is how trusted he is by clients who keep coming back.
Were you stressed and struggling to set up a stand that fell short compared to the competition at your last show? Hauling everything to a show. Building it. Running it. Packing it all down. Then heading straight back to the day job. It might be time for an upgrade. If you don’t know where to start, here are 10 small exhibition stand ideas to get you going.
It’s easy to think that the bigger your stand, the more you will stand out in grand exhibition halls.
However, that isn’t necessarily true for exhibitions. A small, well-designed exhibition stand with friendly, knowledgeable staff will attract more visitors than a sea of roller banners and tired staff frazzled from setting it up from the crack of dawn.
You might be planning future events and looking for ideas, but are constrained by budget and fretting about the size of the space you have been allocated. When it comes to exhibitions, there are lots of ways to add value to even the smallest stands so you can stand out and connect with your audience.
1. Choose your events wisely
There’s no point in attending exhibition events that aren’t a good match for your company and brand. This might seem like an obvious point, but you might be surprised how many exhibitors don’t research the type of events they are booking, going for maximum coverage as opposed to researching the audience to check compatibility.
Planning is essential to ensure you target the right audiences to promote your brand. It is also a good idea to see who else might be exhibiting to determine whether you are the right fit for the market.
“Choose the right trade show, and you’ll get yourself in front of more qualified, relevant prospects in a couple of days than you would calling them through the rest of the year. When you’re weighing up the cost of exhibiting, think about how much time and money it would take to talk to the same number of people if you weren’t on the show floor,” says Edward Marshall, Creative Director at Motive Exhibitions.
2. Pick the right spot
Research the exhibition venue properly to book a space that will generate the most footfall. You don’t want to be tucked underneath a stairway, behind a food outlet or anywhere out of the way of the main traffic. Don’t forget to use all the booth space available.
“The best exhibition design and build teams will know the prime spots in the hall, the ones to avoid and the stands where you’ll need to adapt your design to suit the space, with extra lighting, for example. The best trade show spaces get snapped up quickly. We know a lot of shows where repeat bookings are as high as 90%; that’s slim pickings for the remaining space, so book earlier than you might think,” Edward adds.
3. Make a lasting impression
Treat your shell stand as a blank canvas to create an appealing and memorable display to entice visitors. Often with large spaces, exhibitors simply rely on the size of their branding and display to do the talking but with a smaller space you can be creative and use more imaginative displays that work much better to help you stand out to visitors. You can experiment with different materials and graphics or product demos to create an exciting display.
When we built Spacegoods’ stand for their first ever exhibition at London Coffee Festival, a 3.5m x 3m footprint at The Truman Brewery, the centrepiece was a custom buzz wire game that gave visitors a baseline score, then let them try the brand’s Focus drink and play again to see if their score improved, letting the product prove itself on the spot rather than just being talked about.
Visitors filled in their details for a free sample, turning samples into contacts Spacegoods could follow up with after the show.
Edward Marshall, Creative Director at Motive Exhibitions: “The gradients and the colours were really eye-catching, teamed with the LED lights which suited the image of the brand. The game fitted with the messaging.”
Spacegoods have since booked to exhibit at lunch! at ExCeL London, off the back of how well the London Coffee Festival stand performed.
“Don’t go too text-heavy either, as this can put people off. No one’s going to stop in front of your stand and read all your copy while you watch them. Interact instead, get them playing a game, trying a demo, and talking to you. When it comes to exhibiting, less is more,” says Edward.
4. Maintain a tidy trade stand
Less is more here! Don’t overfill your stand so visitors are confused about what you are promoting. A clear, uncluttered exhibition stand will better showcase the products and services you want to promote. It’s a good idea to keep your display tidy – keep extra brochures, stationery, gift bags etc. tidied away in boxes underneath a table so they don’t ruin your display. You’d be surprised at how many exhibition stands we have encountered where brochures are left scattered about and drinks abandoned by delegates are perched on counters.
Plan in plenty of storage space. Even the smallest stand can have clever storage and charging facilities built in. “Make sure your staff are taking regular breaks too. Nothing makes a stand look more untidy than half-eaten lunches hanging about,” says Edward.
Take Fleetwood Paints. They launched their brand into the UK market at the Painting & Decorating Show, giving away product by the bucketload to build awareness. Without the right storage, the stock would’ve cluttered the display. We solved it with a giant custom-built can, identical in design to the tins Fleetwood Paints were giving away, making storage a huge, intentional part of the stand itself rather than something bolted on. Their stand was huge, but the same thinking works at any size.
5. Make the best use of exhibition lighting
Clever lighting can enhance your display and make your products and brand a focal point. It can make a smaller thing appear larger and pack a punch particularly when you make good use of colour to wow your visitors.
Edward Marshall says “Video walls can do this too. Light reflects off the floor, softening the hard lines and creating an illusion of space. Video and LED walls also grab attention, and you can convey different kinds of messages and content really easily.”
6. Make the best use of your staff
Ensure your staff have a particular focus when working the stand – i.e., one person in charge of greeting customers, one person to assist with any tech such as games you might have on your stand and one to keep the display tidy and organised. Keep your staff numbers low and don’t have too many people milling around talking as this can be off-putting or intimidating to visitors. An open and friendly approach will generate far more footfall and result in more brand awareness and ultimately, sales. Create buzz with humour as opposed to a hard-hitting sales approach.
“It’s OK to have staff with different skill sets – people who can welcome visitors to your stand, run a game, or bring in subject experts or sales team members when needed. A stand full of competitive salespeople is more likely to terrify prospects than get them sharing their details to take the next step.”
7. Use technology wisely as an incentive to visit your stand
A well-placed piece of tech, video wall, demo area or game will entice visitors and make your exhibition space look exciting. “It’s important to tie the experience back to your brand so visitors come away with an understanding of your business as well as having fun. This is especially important on smaller stands,” says Edward.
A generic game will get some attention. A challenge built around your actual audience does more. At Roper Rhodes’ stand for InstallerSHOW, we built a competitive challenge testing how fast visitors could fit a popular bathroom fitting, with prizes on the line for the fastest plumbers on the floor.
Watch “What makes an exhibition stand memorable?”
8. Don’t create barriers
This might seem like an obvious point again but it’s important to practice a walk-through before visitors arrive to ensure they can easily access your stand and exhibition and that there are no barriers or obstacles such as boxes of leaflets or coffee tables in their way. Ensure that visitors can easily access your materials too by placing information at different heights.
Sometimes the barrier isn’t clutter, it’s the structure itself. On Aerona Dental’s stand, removing the bar at the top opened the whole thing up. General Manager at Aerona Dental: “The stand was better than we envisaged, the removal of the bar at the top gave an illusion of space and the overall feel was that it punched well above its weight.”
9. Think about the visitor experience
It’s important to think about the visitor experience as if you are new to your business. It should be easy for people to see what you do and what your brand means. Does your stand entice them in? How will they associate your brand? Have you made a connection with them? Did they find you friendly and helpful? Will they remember you after the event? Do they have contact information? How will you follow up? These are important questions to ask. Remember that people connect to people rather than things so if you give them a good all-round experience, they are far more likely to remember your brand and buy your products.
For more on getting your stand layout and visitor experience right, watch David Hennessy’s video:
“Exhibition stand design tips, Motive Exhibitions’ top 5 for getting it right”
10. Enticing visitors in doesn’t have to be expensive!
We’ve mentioned tech but what if you don’t have the budget for that? Competitions are always a popular idea and can generate a real buzz around your brand. Don’t forget to offer some sort of refreshments – free coffee and sweets are always a winner! It doesn’t have to be expensive.
Think carefully about goodie bags and pack them with useful items that delegates will actually use and will help them to remember your brand. Another important point with goodie bags is to be mindful of plastic and your carbon footprint . You don’t want to spend money on tacky plastic gifts that will just be thrown away and nor do you want your brand associated with a company that doesn’t care about the planet whether or not that is a primary focus.
Let your small exhibition stand make a big impression!
We hope you found our 10 ideas useful. But if you’d rather someone else took 90% of the graft off your hands, that’s exactly what we do.
Sales Director at Merley Paper Converters, put it: “Knowing we could just turn up, do the show, and go home, that made a massive difference. Normally, we’d be there all night packing up. Motive took all that hassle away.”
Motive Exhibitions, 3 Orion Court, Ambuscade Road, Colmworth Business Park, Eaton Socon, St. Neots, PE19 8YX
