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Are you worried no one will visit your stand when there is the lure of so many big, glitzy stands? Make it as easy as possible for prospects to visit your stand and engage with your brand. We’ve created 11 ideas to consider and include at the briefing stage of your project.
Table of contents: 11 WAYS TO ATTRACT A CROWD TO YOUR EXHIBITION STAND
- pick the right spot
- keep your message simple
- make the best use of lighting
- make the best use of your staff
- don’t create barriers
- entice customers with a great competition
- create a game visitors can’t resist
- goodie bags and giveaways
- a small stand? Use virtual reality to your advantage
- create a 3D experience
- maximise social media opportunities
1. pick the right spot
Ensure you 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.
You may struggle to attract the crowd you want if no one can see you. Ensure you book early and if you need to pay a bit extra, it’ll be worth it to secure the best spot you can stretch to.
2. keep your message simple
You may love your brand and all the services, benefits and detail, but no one will stop and read all about your brand from the edge of your stand whilst you look on awkwardly. Busy confusing graphics put prospects off. Visitors want to know who you are and what you offer from a glance and quickly understand what might be in it for them.
4. 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 to assist with any tech such as VR or 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.
5. 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.
6. entice customers with a great competition
Competitions are always a popular idea and can generate a real buzz around your brand. If you can offer a fantastic prize, that’s great but smaller items can work as an incentive too. Don’t forget to offer some sort of refreshments – free coffee and sweets are always a winner! It doesn’t have to be expensive to be enticing!
7. create a game visitors can’t resist
Get some people moving and having fun on the stand and you’ll catch the eye of other potential visitors. Providing games for your visitors needn’t be expensive either. Games like darts, skittles, ‘don’t buzz the wire’ giant Connect Four or Jenga can be fun and give your sales team a great talking opportunity while visitors are waiting to play. You can also offer meaningful prizes that further promote your products and brand.
8. goodie bags and giveaways
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 cheap gifts that will be thrown away and nor do you want your brand associated with a company that doesn’t care about the planet.
9. a small stand? Use virtual reality to your advantage
Virtual reality (VR) is another exciting way to entice visitors to your exhibition stand.
It can work brilliantly for any type of business and give visitors the change to virtually experience your product and brand: rather than photos of your factories – take them on a VR tour; when promoting a new vehicle – give your visitors a hair-raising VR ride around a race track; if promoting a new coffee then take people on a beautiful VR tour of where the beans are grown alongside opportunities to taste the coffee…
VR offers a unique and exciting way to attract visitors to your exhibition stand. The possibilities are endless and people are always impressed and excited by VR, which is itself always improving in precision and definition giving viewers more and more realistic experiences.
10. create a 3D experience
Connect visitors with your brand by mocking up an example of your product for visitors to experience as this will engage people far more.
If you are an architectural design geek, then you will know the ultimate example of this is when New York design studio, Snarkitcture, celebrated 10 years in the business by mocking up a ‘fun house’ with an exhibition at the National Building Museum in Washington DC.
It included a white gabled house that visitors can walk through with the exciting addition of a kidney-shaped ball pit you can throw yourself into.
If your budget doesn’t quite fit a museum, there are many ways you can mock up space for people to interact with. For example, if you provide office space then mock up an office pod that visitors can sit in complete with games to highlight features of the design.
11. maximise social media opportunities
Make your interactive stand into an Instagram opportunity. Photo booth style displays with greenscreen work particularly well in this respect.
For example, if you are selling travel experiences, rather than brochures and photos, why not invite visitors to take green screen photos of themselves at exotic locations with your brand clearly displayed? It will travel across social media and get your brand across to a much wider audience.
Think branded stand-in cut-outs or a life-sized sheep in your company colours. You could even have a photo booth with props, which prints out photo strips with your logo on. In addition to giving your visitors something to remember you by, it will also provide you with added promotion on social media and you can create hashtags to further benefit from this.
Make sure you include reels, stories and live broadcasts from your exhibition. It will act as a signpost to find you and give visitors and a sneak preview of what they may experience!
David Hennessy
David Hennessy is our Managing Director and co-founder of Motive Exhibitions. Based in St Neots we help businesses across Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire exhibit across the UK and beyond.
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Motive Exhibitions, 3 Orion Court, Ambuscade Road, Colmworth Business Park, Eaton Socon, St. Neots, PE19 8YX
