How To Create an Irresistible Trade Show Stand At TEN

TEN is the largest trade expo in African, It is initiated by Trade Nigeria in partnership with Federal Government to promote trade and investment.

Having an ironclad sales strategy is half of trade show marketing success. The other half, and the part that’s responsible for attracting people to your trade show exhibit in the first place, is creating an alluring and irresistible trade show stand.

Your trade show stand doesn’t need to convince prospective customers to buy what you’re selling – that’s your sales team’s job. Instead, it needs to be a powerful and irresistible message that gets prospects to step into your stand and ask questions.

In this section, you’ll learn how to design and create an irresistible trade show stand that uses your business’s qualities and your sales team’s knowledge to bring in new business in mass.

Great trade show stands aren’t built overnight
If you leave the process of designing your trade show stand to the last minute, you’ll end up with a forgettable exhibition. Why? Because even a great trade show stand is worth very little when it isn’t designed as part of your overall marketing message.

Start planning your trade show stand as soon as you begin planning your exhibit as a whole. This way, you won’t end up with a rushed stand that looks unprofessional and discourages attendees from interacting with your sales staff.

1. Using colour to your advantage:
There’s a reason McDonald’s decorates its restaurants using red and yellow – they catch the eye and immediately draw your interest. While you might not want your display stand coloured red and yellow, you can use other bold colours to attract attention from attendees without compromising your brand.

Colours like deep red catch the eye and give your stand a sense of energy that other exhibitors might lack. Colours like orange stand out in a crowd of bland design and give your exhibit a look that indicates value. On the other hand, colours like pink or purple can be used to denote calmness and luxury, respectively.

Different colours have very different effects on the mind, and you can use certain colours to have an effect on your audience at a trade show.

Black makes your stand look traditional, authoritative, and exclusive

Purple makes your stand look luxurious, elegant, and expensive

Yellow makes your stand look urgent but is regarded as tacky

Red makes your stand look powerful, energetic, and striking

Blue makes your stand look calm, pure, and comfortable

Green makes your stand look natural, harmonious, and dependable

Pink makes your stand look sweet, comforting, and calming

Colour plays a major role in projecting the type of message that your business wants to send, and choosing a colour that strikes the right balance between helping you get noticed and supporting your brand is an important decision.

2. Put your exhibit in motion:
Digital displays can be a powerful tool for attracting attendees to your trade show stand. If you have a short marketing video that catches the eye of prospects, play it on one of your displays to attract people to your stand.

Just like there’s a trade-off between authority and attention in your choice of colour, overusing motion can hurt your trade show stand. Stick to simple videos that draw in passers-by, not overly complicated videos that try to close the sale on their own.

3. Use images to your advantage:
Images are an incredibly effective tool for reaching your target audience. The human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text, giving you the power to send a detailed message in seconds that would take far longer to send using written copy.

Just like different colours have an impact on how your company is perceived, images have an effect on the way passers-by view your company. This means you can use images to filter out bad leads while intentionally attracting the type of prospects your company is looking for.

As an exhibitor, you can use images to selectively target a certain segment of the trade show’s attendees:

If your company sells a retirement planning service, use images of retirees enjoying their life to project the image your audience is seeking.
If your company offers banking services aimed at jet-setting executives, you can use images of people boarding or disembarking from airplanes.
If your company offers tutoring services for university students, you can use images of happy graduates to paint a picture of academic success.
People respond strongly to images that they can identify with, and with images that they view as inspirational. Showing the end result of your product or service is one of the best ways to create an emotional reaction that draws attendees to your exhibit.

4. Make your unique selling point (USP) obvious:
When you’re marketing to clients in a less competitive setting, your unique selling point isn’t so important. When you’re in a hugely competitive setting like TEN, however, differentiating your business from its competitors is essential.

Put the key features of your stand, for example products or marketing messages that emphasise your benefits, at the front and centre of your display. You only have a few seconds to make an impact – make them count using your unique selling points.

A key aspect of this is marketing benefits instead of features. Your display should put the benefits of your product or service in the most visible location, and list the features in brochures and other materials that prospects will leave with.

"...differentiating your business from its competitors is essential"

5. Combine direct marketing and branding
The best trade show stands effortlessly balance direct marketing and branding to close deals at the show and in the future. While the focus of your stand should be attracting visitors, increasing brand awareness is a great secondary focus.

Make sure your stand features your company name, your logo, and any branding material that you think might be relevant. The perfect exhibition stand strikes the perfect balance between branding, product showcase, and sales-driven direct marketing campaign.

6. Use useful free giveaways to your advantage
Most free giveaways don’t work. Some free giveaways, however, are incredibly good at helping prospects remember your business. Choose a giveaway that’s useful and memorable for attendees and you’ll enjoy some serious feedback and sales action.

The key to a great giveaway is making your free product something that your target audience has a genuine, immediate need for.

Pens fill a need. Your prospects will visit anywhere from ten to 100 stands during their time at a trade show. Give them a customised company pen and they’ll have something that stays in their pocket for the entire trade show and gives them an immediate reminder of your company whenever they make a note.

7. Attract your audience with interactivity
The more interactive your exhibition stand is, the more effective it will be in attracting your target audience. Things like product demonstrations – or better yet, products that prospects can test by themselves – are excellent ways to make your exhibit more interactive and attract prospective customers.

If your product has a unique feature that could impress your audience, have one of your staff members perform a live demonstration. The infomercial approach – a live demonstration that explains the product and sells it.

Quizzes, particularly quizzes about your company’s products or services, are a great way to add interactivity to your booth. Instead of running a normal competition for an iPad or notebook computer, put together a competition that requires entrants to learn something about your company.

Include some questions on your quiz form about your product and note that all of the answers can be found within your exhibit. This gives prospects an incentive to look around your stand and learn more about how your product can help them.

The best interactive booths draw prospects into the experience of your product or service. If you can show the value of your product using a demonstration or quiz, you’ll be in a far better position to convert visitors into customers.

Remember that successful interactive exhibits will draw crowds. Have brochures and other sales material ready to keep prospects occupied while they’re queuing up to try your product or watch a demonstration. Your brochures should address the questions customers frequently ask, priming them for your sales team