7 Tips to make the most of your Trade Show Booth

Exhibiting at a trade show isn’t cheap. With potential five-figure investments in just your booth and space, the costs are high, but the opportunities to learn are even higher.

With a consistent stream of potential customers and partners in front of your products and services, it would be foolish to sit back and hope for the best. After all, you’re paying to be there. Take advantage of the crowd!

Collect visitor information from business cards or getting visitors to sign-in via a booklet or electronic directory. This is probably the most obvious action for even the most novice booth-tenders,

Ask for first-hand feedback from those visiting your booth. Don’t sit back and only take their questions. Prepare some of your own ahead of time to make the most of those conversations and if possible, keep track of your conversations, both in number and content.

Observe where people went throughout your booth. Which product got the most traffic? Where did people go first? Depending on the size of your booth and overall traffic numbers, an investment in tracking technology like cameras, wifi beacons, or smart flooring can make this data capture possible.

Learn where they spent the most time in your booth. Similar to where your visitors went, where did they spend the most time? A bright display might draw initial attention, but learning what offering achieved the longest engagement times can speak volumes about where you should invest your marketing dollars. Again, technology is your friend for capturing this data.

Compare to other shows that you attend. How many cards or names did you get last show compared to this one? Which show drew more traffic into your booth? Which created more conversations? What was different? Trade shows are a great setting for R&D. Don’t miss the opportunity.

Make changes to your booth and offers, displays, staffing, and more. Making the effort to learn is great, but you’re missing out if you aren’t taking advantage of your new-found insights. Move a product display to the front of your booth, adjust that shelving, position someone at the entry. The more you learn, the more you can test and change, and the higher your trade show ROI.

Make changes to your offering in the real-world. As we alluded to earlier, your trade show traffic isn’t going to lie about what its interested in. Unless you’re handing out hundred dollar bills in front of one product display and not another, you’re real-world marketing, sales, and R&D efforts can be at least partially driven by the feedback, interest, and engagement you experience at trade shows.

Making the most of your trade show booth requires more than just paying for the best space at the event, showing-up, and hoping for the best.

With some planning, resources, and additional technology (like smart floors!), you can truly learn about your traffic and the offerings inside your booth, and apply them to your operations to see real-world changes to your bottom-line.