You’ve made a big decision for the business. You’re going to your first trade show. It’s an opportunity to introduce your company to a broader audience and snag a ton of new leads.

But now comes the realization that you need a stellar trade show booth for your exhibition.

It’s the difference between your event generating buzz or barely making a whimper. Since over 80% of attendees have buying authority, and most of them going to only one show a year, your booth must make an impression.

And we’re going to show you how to make your trade show a success.

Things to Keep in Mind Before the Exhibition

Organizing your first trade show is a delicate exercise in strategizing how to entertain visitors, generate leads, and produce sales. For some businesses, trade shows are their most significant marketing and networking events of the year.

But before you dive into the planning, let’s go over a few things to help ensure that your first trade show is successful.

Understand Your Goals

We’ll assume that you have a firm understanding of your brand. You know it from the inside out. Now you need to extend this into your booth.

So what are your goals for this endeavor? This is a serious investment, and you’ll need to have a clear understanding of what this event will accomplish.

Most businesses have one or a combination of goals for their events which include:

Driving Awareness: If the company is relatively new or releasing a new product, it needs to get people talking. Visitors need to get acquainted with your business. Since there is a short amount of time to catch their attention, your booth must engage and entertain them.

Generating Leads: B2B trade shows and conferences are some of the best places to network with customers and build potential partnerships. To do that, you need to give people a compelling reason for them to provide you with their contact information.

Closing Sales: When the goal is to get a sale, especially one which is a high-dollar value, presentation is everything. Since a majority of the attendees have purchasing power, your booth must check all of the boxes to make them feel comfortable. While there is no such thing as perfection, if you want to close more sales, every aspect of the trade show booth needs to impress.

Go In with a Strong Marketing Strategy

Trade shows are an effective way for businesses to gain exposure to a highly targeted audience. As a marketing medium, 51% of companies feel that it’s useful for their business overall.

This stat means there is so much potential for small businesses and startups to capitalize on this marketing outlet.

So as you create your marketing strategy, you’ll want to keep the visitor in mind. Think like them. Know what they want and understand what they are looking for from a business like yours.

Part of this strategy needs to include tactics people can interact with during and after the show. Get them excited about what they’ll see ⁠— and do ⁠— at your booth. Successful vendor booth ideas utilize creative technology and branding to gain attention.

One way to do this is to have a central theme. Many first-time and even veteran exhibitors are guilty of creating trade show booths that are strategically and visually disjointed.

Thinking back to your goals for the show, this can mean that at best people politely take your card and toss it in the next trash can. At worst, it could mean they ignore your booth entirely.

Planning Your Trade Show Booth Design

On average, it takes 5-8 weeks to prepare for a trade show event. During this time, there are a lot of plates spinning. From managing the logistics to approving the final design of the booth, it’s a lot to keep track of for your first exhibition.

We’re going to help you out, though. Let’s walk through how to make your trade show booth stand out.

Think of Your Booth as One Element

There’s a common theme we’ve seen with companies that ask us to redesign their trade show booths. They lack cohesion. Each panel was designed as a separate advertisement, not a complete structure.

We recommend approaching the entire booth as if it were a 3-dimensional room and not as separate, disjointed pieces. The thing that gets people clamoring is immersion. Your booth needs to appear and feel like one connected, functional space.

When creating custom trade show designs for clients, we create a mockup showing how each wall graphic and piece of furniture would be used. Building a virtual 3D model helps to visualize exactly how the booth looks and brings all of the elements together to create one united space.

Know Your Space

Remember the spinning plates we mentioned before? Well, we’re about to delve into one of the most crucial aspects of planning your event.

As you work with designers, builders, and installers, you’ll need to provide them with the exact dimensions of the booth. They’ll also require information about height or material restrictions.

If you’re incorporating any technology into the booth⁠—and we recommend you do⁠—you’ll want to be familiar with where the electrical outlets are and how many you’ll have access to.

Knowing the booth’s location is also critical in planning the design. If you’re tucked in a corner, there won’t be as much foot traffic coming through. So you’ll need to think of other ways to get visitors to make a detour in your direction.

Plan Backwards

Creative booth designs require doing things a little differently. Instead of designing the booth and making adjustments as you go, it needs to be devised with the end result in mind.

You’ll need to plan for how people will view and interact with it in reality.

Attendees usually walk through or in front of booths. Sometimes both depending on how much space there is. Plus, there’s furniture to consider. So everything above it needs to be easily seen. To address this, we recommend using the design rule of ⅔’s.

This rule ensures that the top ⅔’s of any space or image contains essential details. Branded content is housed in this area, along with products and service information.

When designing a booth, it also reveals any issues with how images appear in the space. While there are almost an endless amount of photos you can use, not all of them will look good when enlarged and added to graphics.

It’s counterintuitive to think of the design this way, but doing so saves you the headache of making numerous tweaks during the process. As the saying goes, measure twice, cut once.

Attracting Visitors to Your Booth

Since the trade show you’re participating in has a particular audience attending, you have some idea about their interests.

So get rid of the kitschy highlighters and magnets. You won’t need them for this next part.

Take advantage of the traffic coming to your booth by creating an area where people can mix and mingle. Charging stations, interactive video walls, and displays are some of the main drivers for lead generation at business to business trade shows.

They serve as a more natural way to create a conversation and build rapport. And if you’re providing beverages or snacks, even better. One of the chief complaints from trade show-goers is about the price or lack of refreshments.

Use this as an opportunity to stock up on food and drinks at your booth. You’ll not only fulfill a human need but also catch a few more leads.

Use the Booth to Tell A Story

For the new kids on the block, it’s intimidating to have a booth next to a big, established company. But don’t think about that. Focus on the unique products and experiences your brand provides.

Use the space you have to create a story, or even better, a world people can escape into.

We recently designed a sleek, sophisticated exhibition space for Superior Essex, an international manufacturer of wire and cable products. Since their event was part of a larger conference in Germany, they wanted to make a statement.

Superior Essex wanted visitors — which in this case consisted of directors and other prospects — to have a comfortable place for a conversation without pressure. They needed to make it easy for anyone coming into their space to immediately see how their products were used in real-world applications.

And we helped make it happen.

While Superior Essex already had the booth’s structural elements in place, we were challenged to create a design based on their dimensions. The booth also needed to capture people’s attention from all angles — close up and far away.

So we incorporated large eye-catching graphics and clean typography to be seen at a distance. Once people reached Superior Essex’s event space, they could see more intricate details at eye level. These design elements, coupled with multiple seating areas, created a more dynamic booth.

The space felt less like a standard trade show booth and more of an intimate experience where potential clients could ask questions. They were able to interact with Superior Essex’s products in an environment where they didn’t feel rushed and could genuinely get to know the brand.

So your mission is to create a booth design that attracts attention. We encourage you to add elements that make people curious about the brand. Make it impossible for visitors not to be intrigued.

Use Technology Wisely

Whether you want to use interactive touchscreens or virtual reality, technology allows you to add a new level of dimension to your trade stand design. Since 2016, live interaction technology accounts for over 30% of the technology used for events.

Live streaming games and contests hosted by your company will get people talking about your brand. Game shows are incredibly popular with patrons who want to engage in some friendly competition.

Interactive mobile apps are a way to introduce people to your products and brand. But you can’t get by with a run-of-the-mill lead gen tool. What you’ll need is an enticing app that holds people’s attention.

Virtual scavenger hunts using augmented reality is one way to use the entire event space to engage people by sending them on a quest.

Use objects and product demos as overlays to increase the length of time visitors spend at the booth. When people can see live demonstrations at trade shows, they’re more likely to purchase the product.

By creating a custom app or partnering with another company, you’re able to interact ⁠— and follow up ⁠— with prospects and convert them into customers. And with the number of event apps only increasing, it makes sense to take advantage of this networking opportunity.

You’ve Got This

Attending your first exhibition is a big step in pushing your business forward. It’s a chance to give people a better understanding of your products and expose them to your brand.

And now, you have a few ideas on how to make it a success.

People naturally gravitate towards brands that show professionalism and creativity in their marketing. By thinking of the booth as one cohesive area instead of separate, disjointed parts, you’ll create an experience that captivates.

So while being a first-time exhibitor can be stressful, using these tips will ensure your debut is a showstopper.