The importance of Exhibition Stands and how to make yours work for you

There are hundreds of exhibitions and trade shows in the UK every year, ranging from small, local expos to vast, national trade shows that fill stadiums and dedicated exhibition centres. These shows are a fantastic place to go looking for new business. On the other hand, many people visit exhibitions to get advice on how to overcome a problem they’ve been facing in their business, for example, a company in need of a new website might attend a local marketing or tech expo to look for a new provider, rather than solely to offer advice and to try to sell their own products. Whatever the reason for attending, exhibitions can draw big crowds, and can create an exciting atmosphere that encourages sales, or at the very least, conversation. This article will illustrate that when exhibiting at an event, the impression you give to potential customers and contacts through the design of your stand is critically important. ?

Represents Your Brand

First and foremost, the main job of your exhibition stand is not only to stand out and catch the eye but to inform someone quickly and clearly what your company is all about. By this, we mean more than just listing what you do. We mean portraying your core values quickly and efficiently, whether that be eco-friendliness, high-end luxury, or affordability. Whatever it might be, your stand should immediately communicate your message to anyone who glances at it. This is the first component to a quality exhibition stand.

Engages Your Target Audience

Now you’ve communicated what your brand is all about, the next step is to engage your target audience. Assuming you’re at the right exhibition, you’ll be exposed to hundreds, sometimes even thousands of potential customers: the key is getting them to stop and engage. To do this you’ll more often than not need to offer some form of incentive to draw them in. An easy way to do this is to incorporate a TV into your stand design and have a showreel playing on a loop, showing off all your greatest pieces of work. Great exhibition stands can even include meeting areas, refreshment areas and interactive technology. These features all help in getting someone to stop and engage with you, giving you the chance to build a strong initial relationship that you can nurture into a sale further down the line.

Helps Generate Interest In Your Products

One of the best ways to engage people to your stand is to offer them the opportunity to try a few of your products. If you have an easily transportable product, this is a given, or if your service is digital, get a few computers set up for people to have a go online. Regardless of the environment, people always prefer to try before they buy as it gives them a chance to check the quality, durability and ultimately the usefulness of the product. Assuming you have a good product, there is no negative to allowing people to try out your product, so take the opportunity and get people excited about what you do. When planning the stand, make sure to think about the experience from the customer’s point of view.

Show What Makes You Unique

So now that you’ve drawn in the customers, you’ve engaged them, and proven to them that you have a quality product that can offer them real benefits, your next job is to answer the question, “Why us?”. More often than not, even after completing the first three steps, you still won’t have fully converted a lead into a future client. The final thing you need to make clear is why they should choose you over your competitors, especially seeing as at a lot of exhibitions you might have a direct competitor no more than a few stands away. Make sure your stand design and your pitch emphasise without a doubt what makes you unique. Why you can do something that no one else can replicate, whether it be a superior build quality with regards to the product, or unrivalled customer service. These sorts of things should be clear and incorporated into the design of the stand. For example, if you claim to have the best customer service, make sure you have some freebies to give away like sweets or cakes. Or if, as previously mentioned, you claim to have the highest build quality, why not have people test the durability of the product on the stand.

Can Be Used For Product Launches

Building on the last point, great use of an exhibition stand is not only to show off your existing products, but also to enable prospects to test out new products and prototypes. By offering trials of a brand-new product, you’re much more likely to generate a buzz around your stand and get a higher footfall as a result. If the product is relatively cheap to produce, offer free samples or, if the product’s a little pricier, offer a competition to win one. In doing so you can collect people’s names and contact details for marketing campaigns after the show is finished. If you do the second, make sure you’re transparent with people that you will be contacting them in regard to the product and ask if they are ok with this, as this will help ensure you comply with GDPR regulations.

So many people attend exhibitions without properly considering any of the above, and then wonder why they come back with few or no leads. People invest thousands of pounds into attending multiple expos each year, but will only spend a few hundred pounds on their stand. This isn’t the way to be successful. Like with most things, the cheap option does at a pinch, but doesn’t deliver anywhere near the sort of results you should be aiming for. More often than not, investing well in a great stand and exhibiting at just one show that year often works out better than exhibiting at lots of shows on the cheap. Don’t forget that a stand is a reusable one-off purchase so it makes sense to invest, as a good quality stand with a flexible design can last you many years.

If you’re in the market for an effective exhibition stand, get in touch with the team at The Expo People and see what we could offer you and your company.

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