5 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Booth

Make the most out of your exhibit with these 5 traffic-driving strategies! By employing these strategies, you will receive a bump in the number of visitors to your booth, capture more leads and have a successful event.

1. Innovative Design

When attendees enter the exhibit hall, they will see a sea of inline booths ahead of them. Don’t fall into the trap of looking like every other exhibitor on the floor.

Break the mold! Do something different than the standard pop-up display. Maybe offer lounge seating or a work station to charge computers. You could even have a bar in the booth! We’ve seen it all, but one thing holds true: creativity and new ideas excite people. An innovative design will draw more attendees than a standard layout.

Whatever you decide to do with your booth space, make sure your design reflects your company mission and core values. Focus on your corporate identity and let that lead the design.

Once you have your design idea, be sure it fits! Use our helpful booth worksheet to map out your design before the show. This way there are no surprises on-site.

2. Provide Value

One common pitfall for exhibitors is they focus on their products /services and not on the attendee. It’s important to remember that attendees are only in the exhibit hall to find solutions to their problems. As an exhibitor, if you don’t provide solutions or offer value to them, they will ignore you. That’s a hard truth for sure, but nonetheless, the truth.

To avoid making this mistake, get to know the attendee audience ahead of time. What are they worried about? What keeps them up at night? How does your company or product solve their problems? When you find the answers to these questions, use it to create your booth design, materials, and talking points.

3. Pre-Show Promotion

Did you know that 70% of attendees decide ahead of time who they will visit in the exhibition? That means pre-event promotion is crucial to your success. There are many ways to reach attendees ahead of a show, but here are a few of our favorites.

• Emails: it sounds obvious, but emailing your clients, prospects and attendees before an event is worth it. Email marketing is 40x more effective than social media when it comes to acquiring new customers so we recommend starting here. When you email your prospects, be sure to include your booth #, any new products or services you will be introducing, and any social events your company is hosting. Try including an invitation, ticket and/or exhibit hall pass, to make the email more personal. An invitation always increases the likelihood they will respond.
• Social Media: Most conferences now have their own hashtag and social media accounts. When you retweet or repost messages from the conference organizers you gain exposure to followers of those accounts. You can also send out messages on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter via your own accounts to let your followers know you will be exhibiting at an event. Be sure to use the conference hashtag in all your tweets or posts in order to increase your post visibility.
• Direct Mail: Sending a postcard or letter invitation before an event is a great way to grab attendees’ attention. Introduce your company, provide an overview of your company’s offerings and let them know what booth you will be in. You may want to entice them to visit your booth with a giveaway or other offer (see #4 below).
• Videos: Nothing beats the simple entertainment of a video. People love watching videos more than they like reading text so creating a shareable video about your company and the upcoming event will only increase attendee interest.

4. Offer a Giveaway

Giveaways are a guaranteed way to drive traffic to your booth and can be marketed before and during an event. Everyone loves free stuff, especially free stuff they have been wanting for some time.

When selecting a giveaway prize, make sure it is something the attendees know about and desire. In addition, it must be relevant to your audience. For example, giving away a barbecue pit at a vegetarian conference would not be appropriate.

Sometimes giving away one high-priced item is better than giving away many lower-priced items. This is because people will keep coming back to your booth to see if they won it. That’s why it’s best to wait until the last day of the exhibition to announce a winner.

5. Host a Reception or Event

Making connections with attendees off the exhibit hall floor can actually drive traffic to your booth during conference hours.

Less formal gatherings like receptions or other social events, provide valuable opportunities for your company representatives to meet and befriend conference-goers.

The relaxed atmosphere is perfect for starting casual conversations and making connections that otherwise would not be possible on the exhibit hall floor. These new connections will feel more comfortable conversing with your representatives after the reception and be more inclined to visit them in the booth. You can even make an announcement inviting everyone to your booth the following day during exhibit hall hours.

Thanks for reading 5 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Booth. We hope you found these strategies helpful.