The Questions You should be able to Answer about your Trade Show Booth

Ever had a boss ask you “how did the trade show go?” and you can’t really give a clear answer?

You may have made an effort to collect as many business cards as possible, but you still felt like you could have learned a little more about the people that stopped by. Luckily with a little planning and help from technology, next time you can.

 Here are a few questions you should plan to answer after your next trade show.

How many people came in?

Straight-forward, how many eyes were on your booth, displays, and products? Total counts are fine, but breakdowns by day or hour can be helpful when it comes to staffing and resource planning.

How many visitors converted to business cards or signed-in?

You track conversion rates on your website, so why not in your trade show booth? If you’ve tracking entries, it just takes a few calculations to find your conversion rate, and determine if you need some new ideas on how to capture visitor information.

Where did people go first?

Depending on the size of your booth, there were probably a number of areas a visitor could go first. By tracking this question, you can determine the effectiveness of your booth layout, displays, and products, and how they aligned to your plan to feature certain things in your booth.

What was the most visited area?

Trade shows are all about getting eyes on your newest or most popular offerings, and you want more eyes on some areas more than others. Was that new product you wanted to feature the most popular? If not, what was? Do you need to improve or change its display or position?

What was the most engaging area?

Where traffic moves first and where it moves most often is important, but what about where it spends most of its time? Often quality is more important than quantity, so identifying what features or products kept visitor attention the longest can help uncover insights you were missing, help you adjust your booth design, and reassign staffing to ensure visitors are getting enough personal attention.

How did this show compare to the last show?

As with anything, continuous improvement should always be a priority and your trade show booth is no different. Once you’ve made a commitment to collecting and analyzing trade show data, the next logical step is to leverage it to make changes and test your assumptions on a show-to-show, booth-to-booth, and product-to-product basis.

While some of these questions can be answered after your show or through dedicated personnel, it’s more cost-effective and efficient to employ tracking technologies like cameras, beacons, and smart flooring to ensure accurate data. 

With a little investment into activating your space and taking the time to learn about your trade show analytics, you can apply that data to turn your trade show booth into a serious contributor to your bottom-line.