At major expos, drawing attention is what it is all about. If your trade show booth can draw the attention of attendees, then your sales team should be able to do the rest, right? So, the biggest thing is how to actually get attendees and visitors to actually come and check out your trade show booth. This is made even more difficult by the fact that every other company at the trade show has the exact same goal. You’re going to be in a room where everyone is competing for attention at the same time. That means you need to bring you’re a-game. But, when attempting to draw the attention of attendees you want to make sure that they are coming to your trade show booth because they are genuinely interested in your company and your products, not because of a gimmick. Gimmicks demonstrate that not all attention is good attention. Here are three gimmicks to avoid at your next trade show.
Giveaways
Giveaways can seem like a decent idea for some companies, and they don’t need to be banned altogether, but they should definitely not be the centerpiece of your strategy to draw visitors to your trade show booth. The reason is that people who come to visit your trade show booth are not going to become customers because you have a really cool pen or stress ball. They are going to come for the free stuff and leave afterwards. The exception to this is if you actually make a product that you can demonstrate on the show floor. If you’re an ice cream company, by all means let your customers have some free samples.
Very Loud Display Graphics
By very loud, we don’t mean graphics that actually verbally berate attendees as they walk the show floor. What we mean are graphics that are overly busy or include a horrible color-scheme of very bright neon colors. These types of display graphics are more likely to give attendees a headache than actually cause them to hang around your trade show exhibit. We know that you want to be able to get people’s attention, but do it with a good product, effective branding and a good slogan—not bright colors and over-complicated designs.
Booth Babes
This is going to be a hard one for a lot of businesses to do away with. Why? Because—quite simply—sex sells. Doesn’t it? Well, sex draws attention very effectively. That’s why you see this tactic employed ad nauseum at the largest expos where all the stops have to be pulled out to get anyone to even glance your way. But, unless you are actually in the sex industry you should be asking yourself: Is having a trade show booth full of scantily-clad women really representing my brand in the best way? Unless you sell lingerie, the answer is probably no. Using beautiful women as props to draw attendees in is a cheap ploy and one that isn’t likely to bring you much sales in the end anyway.