While your trade show booth is the centerpiece of your trade show appearance, it’s not the only way to engage attendees.
Trade shows are a valuable experience for any brand, but maximizing that value beyond the booth can take a little creative engagement. It’s these experiences for attendees that will be memorable, and that will help you to stand out amongst all other brands or guests.
Here are six strategies for trade show exhibitors to engage attendees beyond the booth.
1. Host An Interactive Workshop
Something learned is a souvenir that can’t be thrown away. It’s that bit of swag that attendees will carry with them always and wherever they go.
A workshop is an interactive session where a group gets together to be led through a process and toward an end goal. They’re filled with collaborative exercises and hands-on learning, really allowing attendees to your trade show booth to learn something impactful from the experience you present.
Hosting an interactive workshop lets you not just teach trade show attendees something interesting and new, but it allows you to engage and connect organically. Your brand is making an impact and making real connections at the same time with personalities audiences will remember.
2. Host Demonstrations
Demonstrations, or demos, let your products or services come to life during a trade show appearance.
Not only do audiences get to see what you have to offer, they get to see it in action. Demos don’t just show audiences your product in action, they also show them in real time what problems the product solves and how the product can make their lives easier.
They get to see what you have to offer, and they get to know just why they need it.
During demonstrations, like interactive workshops, your brand also has a unique opportunity to teach and communicate with your brand voice. This gives your brand a human and relatable personality, which is just what you’re looking for to foster organic meaningful connections.
3. Host A Presentation
On the surface, a presentation and a demonstration might look a lot alike. However, there are distinct differences between the two. In a demonstration, you’re working to gather and communicate information.
You’re learning pain points, discovering motivations, and demonstrating how your product can help what audiences need to be solved. In the demonstration, the exhibitor is focused on teaching and learning.
The presentation is focused on storytelling and defending. While presenting, you may go over what has been learned during a demonstration, using it to form a story that audiences can connect with. In this story, your product or service is the hero, showing how it provides the solution to the pain points discovered in the demo.
Presentations often end with a call to action, wrapping up this story and inspiring them to take the following step. The next step could be providing contact details, investing in a product or service, or contacting your brand for more information.
Hosting a presentation is an interactive way to get audiences excited about your exhibit, your service, your product, or even the possibility of networking with your brand. It’s a confident defense of what your brand has to offer and how they can experience these solutions for themselves.
4. Build Instagram Worthy Photo Backdrops
Connect, interact, and market all at the same time when you have an Instagram-worthy photo backdrop your audiences can freely interact with. Live plants and flowers, branding, and fun props are all you need to get noticed outside of the trade show when each attendee snaps a fun picture or two and posts them to their socials using your hashtag.
Trade show exhibitors can even be available to take pictures for attendees, so they have a photo a little more framed than just the typical selfie. During these photo sessions, trade show exhibitors have an opportunity to talk, laugh, and make fun connections with the people coming to visit their booth.
5. Customize Online Trivia Or Quiz Games
Customizing online trivia or quiz games lets attendees interact with you no matter where they may be at a trade show.
These can be custom-created and streamed from your exhibit, set up to kick off at a certain time. Attendees can be texted a link to the live stream, where they can then interact and answer questions during the trivia game to win prizes they may then visit your booth to pick up as they please.
This is an effective way to engage in a few ways:
- It places your brand personality in a fun and easygoing context, which is something attendees will likely want more of in the future.
- It keeps your brand on the minds of attendees even after they’ve moved on to a different location at a trade show.
- It taps into many people’s competitive nature, allowing them to have a little fun while trying to win prizes. They can work in groups and answer questions together or try their hand at winning the trivia match solo.
6. Set Up A Lounge Space
Trade show days are productive, impactful, fun, and – sometimes – tiring. Having a lounge space away from your booth but in your space lets attendees know in a real way how you care for and look after your clients’ or customers’ comfort. It’s close enough to your booth to keep your branding visible, but far from any sales or exhibitors so attendees feel as though they can truly sit back and relax.
Not only does a lounge space place you positively in the minds of audiences, but it’s also a great idea for attracting attendees to your exhibit in the first place. Attendees see a space to sit down and relax, they notice your branding and their next step is to check out what your exhibit has to offer.
Expo Ease helps to make your dream interactive exhibit space possible. With rentable plants and floral arrangements, photo and video services, and staffing agency temp hires to facilitate your trade show appearance, you can engage and excite better than ever before. Contact us to learn more about how our services can increase your engagement.
