In today’s competitive business landscape, one of the essential components of a successful trade show is the strategic use of media. This brief guide to using proper media at trade shows offers valuable insights and tips on utilizing various marketing mediums to your advantage.

Understanding the Role of Media at Trade Shows

Media plays a vital role in connecting exhibitors with potential customers, partners, and industry influencers during trade shows. It helps create a memorable experience and adds value to your booth, ensuring your brand stands out in a sea of exhibitors. The right media mix can empower your brand to capture attention, promote your products and services, engage your audience, and drive your business objectives.

Harnessing the Power of Digital Media

In this fast-paced digital era, electronic media is indispensable in trade show booth strategy. From incorporating interactive elements to projecting social media feeds, digital media can enliven your booth and enhance audience engagement. Consider creating an attention-grabbing digital display to highlight key product features and achievements, or offer a gamified experience to build excitement around your products and services. Remember to keep your digital displays user-friendly and focused on your brand message.

Utilizing Print Media Effectively

Despite the rise of digital media, print materials—such as banners, posters, brochures, and fliers—remain essential to trade show booths. Print materials work wonders in not only giving attendees a tangible reference for your products or services, but also in reinforcing your brand identity. When designing print media, ensure that your brand’s message is well represented. Be sure to use eye-catching visuals, memorable messaging, and easy-to-read fonts to make a lasting impression.

Incorporating Audiovisual Media

Incorporating audiovisual elements in your trade show booth creates a multisensory experience that captivates attendees. From product demos and testimonials to captivating animations, audiovisual media is an excellent tool for delivering information in a digestible and intriguing manner. Think about how you can integrate audiovisual media into your booth to complement your brand’s unique qualities and attributes. Just be mindful of volume, content duration, and booth space to ensure a seamless experience for your visitors.

Devising the perfect media strategy for your trade show exhibition is essential to securing your brand’s success. Remember this brief guide to proper media for trade shows as you design your next booth layout and incorporate various mediums as you see fit. If you’re looking for exhibition design services to guide you through the different marketing options and implementations for your booth, trust West Coast Exhibit. Our team of experienced exhibit designers will help you create an engaging booth with cohesive branding and media usage.

If you’re familiar with attending trade shows, you know it can be a challenge to attract customers to your exhibit and gain more traffic over your competitors. Some of the biggest factors that affect your booth’s success come from the design period. If you’re looking for tips to help you have a more successful event, learn some of the dos and don’ts of trade show booth displays. These tips will help you better navigate the planning and design process to promote an eye-catching and engaging trade show display.

Do: Set Your Budget and Goals

The first thing to do before starting your trade show display design is to establish a plan. The planning process involves factors such as setting your budget and determining your goals for the event. For example, your main objective might be to increase your brand awareness, gather new leads, or to network with potential partners. Establishing your goals early on is critical to the success of your event because they can affect how you design your booth. For example, if you want to increase your brand awareness, it’s crucial to feature your logo, slogans, and color scheme prominently in your booth design and marketing materials. If one of your main goals is to partner with other businesses, you should prioritize a clean, professional design for your booth that will attract other vendors.

Do: Understand Your Target Audience

Another factor that affects your booth design is your target audience. Before signing up for an event, investigate who it attracts—what audience of attendees, which vendors will be there, and so on. This helps you find common audiences between your business’s targets and the attendees at the event. Once you know your shared audience, you can tailor your marketing strategy and booth design to better reflect this group. With this insight, your marketing will be more accurate to the event and your audience, resulting in more booth interest and traffic.

Do: Make Your Booth Stand Out

Another thing to consider before you start designing your trade show display is how to make it stand out on the show floor. You don’t want your exhibit to blend in with the hundreds of other vendors around you, so creating a booth that stands out gives you an advantage. Consider using unique display materials, such as LED video walls and digital displays instead of traditional posters and sign boards. Additionally, choosing your typography wisely helps your booth stand out. For example, use clear, large fonts that are easy to read from long distances. Make sure your marketing materials have plenty of contrast so that your overall message doesn’t get lost.

Do: Use Interactive and Engaging Marketing

The types of marketing you practice at your trade show booth can also influence your event’s success. For example, if you simply pitch your products to each customer that passes by, the surrounding attendees and your own team will tire of hearing the same pitch. Instead, use interactive marketing to keep your customers engaged. For example, you could bring materials to practice product demonstrations and hold raffles for free products and gifts. You should also consider bringing giveaway items with your branding to promote brand awareness. These types of marketing examples are much more engaging and are more effective at attracting attention.

Do: Work With a Professional Design Team

Whether you want to design your own custom booth or rent a display, working with a professional team will match you with the best exhibit for your business. Professional designers such as our team at West Coast Exhibit understand the ins and outs of booth design and how each element can help promote your business at an event. Having experienced booth designers and advisors can help you create a more effective layout for your exhibit and ensure you get the most out of your investment.

Don’t: Rely on Static Displays

As we touched on before, avoid overly traditional marketing elements in your exhibit design. Stationary posters, signs, and displays won’t be as effective at capturing customers’ attention as interactive signage and displays. For example, using LED screens and video monitors to project videos of your products or services in action are superior ways to show off your business. Digital displays keep things moving without getting stale or boring to look at, unlike a static display. Video displays, LED screens, and touchscreen tablets are all splendid examples of engaging technology that will keep customers interested.

Don’t: Overcrowd Your Booth or Marketing

While you don’t want your trade show booth to be bland and empty, you don’t want to overcrowd the space either. If your trade show booth has too many interactive elements and places for customers to sit and gather, it could create blockages and prevent traffic flow. Keep things moving by spending time with each customer but knowing when to cut interactions off.

Another way you could overcrowd your booth is through its marketing materials. Keep your messages short and direct without being overly wordy. If you include too much text or overcomplicate your marketing designs, your message could get lost and become less impactful and memorable to customers.

Don’t: Wait Until the Last Minute

Trade show booth design is a complex process that takes time and planning, especially if you’re interested in a custom booth. The design, material acquisition, and shipping processes can take months to complete, so never wait until the last minute to start planning your trade show booth.

However, if you’re working with less time, consider a conference booth rental option. Your exhibit layout and materials may not be fully customizable to fit your business, but with the right company, you can still create an exhibit that stands out. This is where West Coast Exhibit comes in. We offer both standard designs and custom rentals for trade show exhibits. Browse our services today to learn more about our rental options.

Now that you know the dos and don’ts of trade show booth displays, you have all the tips you need to start planning an effective exhibit. And if you’re looking for ways to jumpstart your planning and design process, contact our team at West Coast Exhibit today. We can help you choose the right standard materials or walk you through the custom booth creation process. If you want to take your booth design to the next level of effectiveness, trust these tips and our expert team at West Coast Exhibit.

Are you looking for unique ways to help your business stand out at a trade show? Consider using a programmable LED video wall as a part of your next exhibit. Using LED displays provides several benefits, including increased booth visibility. Keep reading to learn creative ways to use an LED video wall at your next event.

Interactive Events To Promote Engagement

Investing in an LED screen is a smart way to increase engagement and interactivity for your future trade show booths. Setting up your own LED video wall provides new opportunities to interact with customers through digital activities and promotions. For example, you can use LED screens to display QR codes to link with customers’ smartphones. You can use LED technology to instantly send customers information about your products or services. These quick links can also encourage customers to take part in polls, sign up for raffles, and learn more through newsletters.

Product Demonstrations on the Big Screen

One of the best ways to attract attendees to your trade show booth is to capture their attention with product demonstrations. Rather than simply explaining what your products do or what you cover in your services, give a demonstration. If your products are difficult to demonstrate in person or in a commercial trade show environment, consider using your LED wall to display a recorded demonstration. LED video walls offer large screens to capture customers’ attention from across the show floor and provide a clear view of your products and services.

Dynamic and Eye-Catching Marketing Information

When you’re not displaying product links or demonstrations on your LED wall, you can use it to display your business’s branding. LED walls offer complete customization, so you can program them to display your brand’s logo, corresponding colors, marketing materials, and other branding options. The digital display aspect helps your branding stand out against a sea of other banners and walls at the show. This can help attract more customers to your booth and explain more about your brand at a glance.

These are just a few of the creative ways you can use an LED video wall at your next event. If you’re interested in incorporating a video wall into your next display, work with our trade show booth builders at West Coast Exhibit. We can help you design a custom booth complete with an LED display perfectly suited for your business’s next event.

Trade shows attract thousands of attendees and vendors to each event. With so many people in one place, it can make keeping everything secure a bit more challenging. If you’re exhibiting at an event in the future, you may be wondering what you can do to keep your display and goods safe. Here is a quick guide to keeping your trade show exhibit secure so you can focus on connecting with potential customers.

Expand Your Staff

If you’re managing a display at a trade show, you can’t expect the event staff to watch over your booth at all times. Event security’s primary jobs are to check ID badges and passes to ensure attendees are registered and to watch over the general show floor. Most venues won’t have enough security staff to watch over each individual exhibit, which is why you should expand your booth’s security yourself. Bring extra staff to the event and designate certain people to keep an eye on your products and equipment while you demonstrate products and answer questions.

Keep Track of Valuable Items

When exhibiting at a trade show, you may use a variety of displays and equipment to help market your products. Tablets and interactive displays are examples of technology that help attendees engage with your business, but they are also targets for thieves. Always keep track of these items and your personal valuables throughout the day. When you leave your booth at the end of the day, bring these pieces of equipment with you or utilize display lockers or on-site lockers at the venue. This will help you protect your items from anyone who could be lurking around after hours.

Limit Booth Access

By limiting the number of attendees in your booth at any given time, it makes it easier for your staff to keep an eye on things. Thieves tend to strike when crowds are present so they can blend in, but limiting the number of attendees around your booth can deter thieves. However, you don’t want to make your attendees feel distrusted, as this could result in lost interest and leads. Keep an eye on your products and equipment without placing unnecessary suspicion on attendees that come through.

Stay Organized and Prevent Clutter

Thieves tend to target booths and displays that are cluttered and disorganized. This is because the staff watching these booths are less likely to notice missing items. As another way to deter thieves, do your best to keep your booth organized and prevent clutter. Don’t let business cards, marketing materials, and note sheets litter your space, or it will be less noticeable if your valuables go missing.

Use this guide to keeping your trade show exhibit secure for your next exhibition to ensure your booth stays safe. Custom exhibit fabrication services can also help you design a display booth that maximizes visibility and security. If you’re looking for custom exhibit design services, trust West Coast Exhibit for all your display needs.

Do you have a specific product or line of products that you want to promote at your next trade show? Promoting your products at a trade show is a fantastic way to present them to your target audience and expand your product recognition. However, exhibiting with a product in mind takes some unique display and marketing techniques. Keep reading to discover how to successfully display your product at an expo.

What To Consider When Planning a Product Display

Before you’re ready to hit the trade show floor with your display booth and products, you should consider several factors to channel into your displays. Here is a quick list of what to consider during your booth design phase:

• The size of your product
• How many products you want to focus on
• The target audience for your product
• Your goals for the trade show

Remembering these factors will help you tailor your booth design to serve your company and best fit the products you want to display. If you plan to show products that have unique sizes, quantities, and target audiences, you may want to consider a custom booth design. Custom booth design companies can help you tailor your exhibit to comfortably fit your products and branding into the marketing.

Use Product Demonstrations To Gain Attention

Product demonstrations are the fastest and easiest way to help trade show attendees learn more about your business’s products. Trade shows and expos provide unique opportunities for you to demonstrate your products in person, which many digital companies and online retailers don’t get to do. Take this opportunity to explain how your products work, the stories behind them, and why they are so useful to your audience.

Product demonstrations are educational, and they attract more foot traffic to your booth. Demonstrations, whether in person or on video, are fantastic for attracting attention from the crowds passing through a vendor hall.

Allow Attendees To Interact With Your Products

Interactive displays are some of the most effective ways to draw more foot traffic to your booth during a trade show. Interactive elements include features like touch screens, product samples, and giveaways. Interactive displays help customers learn more about your products, and they help your brand stand out and become more memorable. When a trade show ends, you want attendees to remember your products and booth over all the rest of the vendors they saw that day or weekend. This is how you form leads and future clients through a trade show.

Highlight Your Products’ Benefits

One of the biggest reasons you want to evaluate your target audience before the show is to incorporate them into your display marketing. You can do this by marketing how your products can benefit them. For example, explain how your products can make your customers’ lives easier or make certain processes more efficient. You’ll also want to consider your competition and include how your products have more benefits than what your competition is selling. Trade shows often feature hundreds and even thousands of vendors, so this is crucial to help your products stand out over the competition.

Use Supplemental Lighting

The overhead fluorescent lighting that many trade show venues provide doesn’t always do your products and displays justice. Instead of highlighting your products, it can make them look washed out or blend them in with the rest of your exhibit. Instead, highlight your products by supplementing the venue lighting with spotlights, portable LED lights, and lamps.

If you use any type of shelving unit for your display, remember to light the products on each shelf. Overhead lighting can cast shadows on products on shelf displays, so consider using LED light strips or display cases to illuminate these products.

Use Your Product Display To Build Your Brand

When customers walk away from your booth and the trade show, you want them to remember your products and associate them with your business. Being able to trace your product demonstrations back to your business is crucial for securing lead follow-ups. For this reason, don’t neglect your business’s branding while trying to highlight your products. Fortunately, you can use your product displays to build your brand. Product displays can incorporate your brand name in white space on banners, display walls, posters, and signs. Don’t forget to include branded elements throughout the rest of your display booth as well, including the flooring, countertops, banners, and more.

Work With Expert Trade Show Consultants

When it comes to having a successful trade show, you need to plan out everything from your exhibit’s design to its dismantling. Some businesses don’t have the time or workforce to oversee so many aspects of the planning process. Working with a certified exhibition management company can take some of these planning and execution burdens off your company’s shoulders. Custom trade show companies like West Coast Exhibit are here to help you tailor your exhibit to your products and your goals. If your goal is to increase the brand recognition and popularity of your products, a management company will help you cover all the above design recommendations and more to showcase your products.

How To Measure the Success of Your Product Displays

Finally, once you’ve packed up your trade show exhibit and gone back to business as usual, you might be wondering how you can measure the success of your product display. Start by retargeting any leads you picked up at the show—these are potential customers who signed up with their contact information for future offers and promotions. You can reach out to these leads with follow-up information on the products you featured at the trade show. The success of these retargeting emails, texts, and other marketing can help you evaluate the success of your show.

Now that you know some tips for how to successfully display your product at an expo, try incorporating these strategies into your next exhibit. And if you’re looking for assistance as you design your exhibit, West Coast Exhibit is here to help. Our certified trade show managers can help you plan your exhibit from design to tear down while keeping your marketing and products in mind.

If you’re preparing your business for an upcoming trade show, you may be considering whether you should rent or buy your own exhibit booth. There are many factors to examine when comparing renting and owning your own exhibit. Keep reading to learn the pros and cons of each to help you decide whether renting or owning your trade show booth is best for your business.

Pros and Cons of Renting

Renting a trade show booth has several advantages and disadvantages. Renting offers businesses flexibility with their booth designs from event to event. However, your booth’s overall design will be more standard. If you’re looking for a booth design more tailored to your business, you’ll need to invest in a custom booth. However, renting comes with the benefit of not needing a place to store your booth’s materials, and you often won’t need to worry about shipping it to your venue.

Pros and Cons of Owning

Owning a trade show booth allows you to customize and tailor your display toward your business’s needs. As a form of marketing, you want your trade show booth to be as accurate to your business’s branding as possible. Owning and customizing an exhibit allows you to make more creative decisions when it comes to design, layout, and branding. However, you will need to have a way to store and ship your custom booth to each venue you visit. Investing in a custom booth is also more expensive up front, but attending trade shows regularly can make the investment worthwhile.

Which Is Best for Your Business?

If your business regularly attends trade shows, exhibitions, and conventions to promote your products and services, one of the best things you can do is invest in a custom booth. Buying and owning a custom display booth is ideal for businesses that don’t want to worry about renting a display each time they sign up for an event. In these cases, buying a booth is much more economical and convenient for businesses than renting. However, if you attend trade shows occasionally, renting may be a better option for your business and budget.

Now that you know the pros and cons of renting versus owning your trade show booth, you should have a better idea of which is best for your business. Whether you’re looking for exhibit booth rentals or buying your own custom booth, West Coast Exhibit has you covered.

There are many reasons you should prioritize replacing your exhibit’s floor coverings, especially from design, safety, and practicality standpoints. For these reasons and more, explore the importance of adding new floor coverings to your trade show exhibit.

Makes Your Exhibit Appear More Professional

Your exhibit’s flooring is one of the elements that starts to show wear and tear the fastest. Between scuff marks from shoes, dents from fallen items, and tears or rips in places, your floor coverings can start to show their age after attending many events. It can be easy to forget about your floor coverings because they don’t draw the most attention out of your overall booth, but neglecting these surfaces will make your exhibit appear dirty and unprofessional. To help your booth maintain the same quality standard throughout, remember to address your floor coverings regularly.

Minimizes Tripping and Falling Hazards

Maximizing safety is another benefit of swapping out your booth’s old floor coverings. When flooring panels or rolls go too long without repairs or replacement, they may start to develop slick patches, bends, dips, and other conditions that could pose tripping and falling hazards. To make sure your booth’s attendees stay safe and comfortable while passing through, inspect your flooring after every show and test it before each show. If you notice any of these conditions that could cause your guests to trip, schedule a replacement for your exhibit flooring.

Keeps Your Exhibit Branding Cohesive

Managers don’t always show the same urgency to replace and upgrade exhibit flooring as they do for the more visual elements of their booths. However, if you update your exhibit’s marketing elements, such as banners, screens, and displays, without updating your flooring, you could create an unbalanced design. For example, if you don’t update your flooring color to match the rest of your booth’s new branding, your exhibit won’t look cohesive. Consider choosing a flooring material in a neutral color that will match the rest of your booth no matter how often you update the rest of your marketing.

Knowing the importance of new floor coverings for your trade show exhibits is crucial for maintaining an appealing and functional design. If you’re looking for trade show fabrication experts who consider elements of your booth design from top to bottom, choose West Coast Exhibit. We offer exhibit design and fabrication services to help you create a new exhibit or upgrade elements of previous booths, including floor coverings.

Attending a trade show is an excellent way to market your business and promote new sales leads. However, if you’re still using a standard rental booth to market your business at trade show events, you could be losing precious engagement and leads. For companies that attend trade shows frequently, designing and ordering a custom display is a much better investment for trade show ROI. Keep reading to learn how a custom trade show display can benefit your business.

It Helps Your Business Stand Out

At a trade show, one of the biggest measures of a booth’s success is how much foot traffic it receives. To promote more interest in your booth and encourage more people to stop and look, you need your exhibit to stand out. If your booth blends in with the rest of the exhibitors, potential customers will be more likely to pass your display in favor of another more eye-catching booth. If you don’t want your display to become lost in the hundreds of other vendors at an event, you need a custom design. Custom displays feature unique layouts, marketing materials, and overall designs that help attract more attention.

Its Professional Designs Can Match Your Branding

Another benefit of customizing your trade show display is that you can tailor it to match your branding. Premade booths or rental booths will only ever be able to match the most basic elements of your brand. Depending on the booth you rent, you may not be able to match your brand’s colors and aesthetics. However, with a custom trade show display, you can decide on its design elements down to the font size and style. This promotes brand consistency and helps your brand stick out more in your customers’ memories.

It Fits Your Trade Show Plans

Every business will market its products or services uniquely at a trade show. Some products and services are most successful and engaging when you perform a demonstration. Others work better with a verbal explanation or a video wall featuring footage of your business’s products or services. When planning your trade show displays, you should consider what design works best to showcase your products. You only have so much control over this layout when renting a booth, but customizing your own can provide all the space and features you need. For example, a product demonstration might take up more space, so you’ll need an accessible area in your booth layout. Custom designs can help you plan the exact dimensions you need.

It Saves Your Business Time and Resources

Planning and designing a trade show display is a demanding process. If you’re planning a trade show booth on your own as a business, you’ll need to dedicate many hours and resources to the design, ordering, and setup process. However, when you work with professional exhibition design services, you can take back those resources and channel them into your business. Many trade show design businesses, such as West Coast Exhibit, also offer exhibit fabrication and construction services to assist you at the trade show itself. This helps you get off to a strong start at your trade show and minimizes the chances of damaging your booth during the setup or dismantling stages.

It Saves Your Business Money

While getting a custom exhibit will be a greater investment up front, it can also help your business save money over time. If you continue to rent a traditional trade show booth each time you sign up for an exhibition, these costs can add up. If your business attends multiple trade shows per year, it is much more economical to invest in a custom booth and use it regularly instead of renting. Plus, your booth will be specific to your business rather than using a generic booth design each time you rent.

It Encourages a Greater Return on Investment

Investing in a custom display for your trade show is a smart choice because it can also help increase your ROI from the event. If you have an eye-catching display that prioritizes engagement and brand consistency, you’re more likely to cultivate more leads during the event. Leads are visitors that have the potential to become future customers for your business. The more connections and leads you promote during the event, the higher your chances of leaving with a positive ROI. Trade shows can be big investments, which is why it’s vital to improve your ROI with strategies like using custom designs.

How To Create the Perfect Custom Booth for Your Business

Now that you know how a custom trade show booth can benefit your business, you may wonder how to acquire one of your own. Customization services like ours at West Coast Exhibit Services, Inc. can help walk you through the process. However, you may want to read this quick rundown of things you can do to prepare your custom booth.

Consider Your Target Audience

The biggest things to remember when customizing a trade show booth are your target audience and retaining your brand consistency. Consider your audience who will attend each trade show you visit and how a custom booth will be able to best attract their attention. Using colors that reflect your brand to make your booth more recognizable is an effective way to accomplish this. There are many design choices like this that you can make to enhance your custom booth and encourage engagement from your target audience.

Work With a Professional Fabrication Company

If you want to enjoy all the benefits of a custom trade show booth, the best way to do so is to work with a professional design company. For example, at West Coast Exhibit Services, Inc., we take care of professional trade show exhibit design, fabrication, shipping, and management. Our experts help manage the trade show display process from start to finish, and we can even help with booth setups.

Now that you know more about custom booth displays and how they can benefit your business, you may be interested in finding out more about custom exhibits. You can learn additional information about the custom design process by contacting us. Our team of designers and management experts can help guide you from the initial plan to the setting up of your completed custom booth. Start investing in your own custom booth to make the most of your trade show appearances and encourage a larger ROI for your business.

Trade shows are excellent opportunities to promote what your business has to offer. However, without the right information and preparation, your exhibition attempt can turn into a disorganized mess. Here are some key questions to ask before exhibiting at a trade show to provide you with the information and elements you need to fully prepare.

What Are Your Goals for the Show?

One of the first questions to answer when signing up for a trade show event is why you’re attending in the first place. Establishing your goals upfront can help you follow a more organized and thoughtful approach to your trade show booth design and marketing. For example, you might want to attend a trade show to build brand recognition or establish a new audience. Attending a trade show is also an excellent way to engage more with potential customers and develop new leads. Establishing your reasoning and goals will help you record your event more clearly and have a better picture of your success levels after the event ends.

Where Will You Establish Your Booth?

Trade show exhibits are all about location, location, location. Where you set up your booth on the show floor will help influence the amount of traffic it receives, how you should design it, and many other aspects of its performance. Before you start designing your booth’s layout, it’s important to learn your location on the show floor and its dimensions to avoid creating an exhibit that is too large or small for your allotted space.

Who Is Your Target Audience?

Before exhibiting at a trade show, it helps to know your audience so that you can better tailor your marketing and pitches to them. For example, certain trade shows can attract more than just a general audience. Some trade shows are more popular among consumers with higher levels of education and experience in the industry or with the products or services they’re looking for.

Are You Organized for the Show?

Ask this question of yourself and your team at multiple stages of your convention preparation. Being prepared and well-organized for a trade show starts months in advance, so don’t wait until the last minute to put together a booth or design your marketing materials. Waiting until the last minute to gather your materials often leads to unpreparedness and lacking cohesive marketing when you get to the event. If you have a small team and need assistance with your planning or material design, consider working with an exhibit management company, such as West Coast Exhibit.

Remember these four key questions to ask before exhibiting at a trade show as you prepare for your next event. Having these questions prepared can mean the difference between a disorganized event and a successful one. And don’t forget to check out our booth management and design services at West Coast Exhibit if you’re preparing for a future convention or trade show.