How to maximise your stall's visibility at events | 5 tips to dominate an exhibition or expo space

You know the drill: you go to all the effort of getting your stand at an expo or an event, but then find yourself invisible in a sea of your competitors. While the struggle is real, fortunately, we’ve got our top 5 tips to help you dominate the next event space you go to.

Trade shows, exhibitions, networking events, expos, recruitment fairs, meet & greets, and so on and so forth… These are all big occasions full of qualified traffic, and as such, most brands trading or running a booth will bring their A-game. Everyone’s already spent money and sweat equity to be able to represent their business there, so nobody’s interested in selling themselves short.

For you as an entrepreneur or leader running your stand, at the risk of being dramatic, you’re going into the battle of your life. It’s not business as usual, it’s business in a confined event, with big prizes on offer, making it an incredibly concentrated experience. You need to do everything in your power to tip the odds in your favour.

1. Invest in the appearance and layout of your stand

The first step is to create an inviting environment that suits your goals. For example, if you’re selling products at an event, optimise customer flow channels for easy browsing and queueing. If you’re there to raise awareness and appeal to hearts and minds, how is your stand helping you appeal to those hearts and minds?

You should develop customer or guest profiles to guide your design choices. Afterall, the guests en masse are the tastemakers and ultimate barometers which decide whether or not you’ve been successful in your event.

Pro tip: Gamification is a universally effective strategy when it comes to making your event stand exciting and inviting.

For one thing, imagine a large screen with a leaderboard erected above your event. It immediately draws the eye. People are naturally inclined to play, and nearly everyone is competitive to some degree. Whether it’s a branded game, a themed Quiz, or even a customised sports game, people will be baited by the opportunity for diversion and competition, and then the experience itself is a natural icebreaker that can open up a more relaxed, more productive conversation.

Additionally, you can include data collection forms at the beginning or the end of the experience, where you can collect customer information and leads, and invite them to opt in to your marketing newsletter.

2. Bring your A-team and have them bring their A-games

Remember, this isn’t business as usual, this is your Olympics, your World Cup Final, your Super Bowl, your last Monument of the year; your benchwarmers and your development squad, unless you’ve got no other choice, shouldn’t be on this roster. You need to stack your team with the best of the best of the best.

Brief them before the event. Have teamship rules specifically for the day. No phones. All dressed in uniform or to the dress code. Have your corporate messages rehearsed, roles assigned and understood. Always approachable, making eye contact, initiating conversations and not wasting a single breath off-topic.

Events are all about building relationships and working at pace, so those with people skills and naturally industrious multi-taskers are the employees who can bring the thunder in this environment.

3. Use gamification before, during, and after the event

Events are more than just what happens between their start time and end time – especially when you do them properly.

To really get the maximum bang for your buck from exhibiting at an event, you need to connect with people before to maximise your potential audience, and reconnect with people after to ensure you’re leaving no stone unturned – letting no potential lead, connection, or sale slip through the cracks – especially given how much work goes into exhibiting in the first place.

For this, we have a proven gamification strategy.

The first step is a teaser game, sent out to expected attendees prior to the event. The aim of this game is to whet people’s appetites for what you’ll be bringing to your stand. It could be a Quiz that puts your stand, your brand, and/ or your solution front-of-mind, or an instant win game that distributes prizes or goodies that can be collected from your stand. This plants the seeds for increased foot traffic before you’ve even set up.

The second step is a follow-up game at the event for a chance to win a better prize (something scarcer, that only a select few win) – or potentially entering into a leaderboard to leverage attendees’ competitive natures to your advantage.

The third step strives to make a deeper connection with a Media Contest at the event. The format of this could vary depending on your project, but might involve people taking pictures with your product, or taking pictures at an installation. This forms the foundation of step 4 – a connected Voting Gallery.

The Voting Gallery is released a week after the event, and can be shared across social channels, as well as directly with attendees. This follow up serves to reinforce your event message, and gives you an extra chance to share strategic calls to action (CTAs) to help redirect audience engagement towards desired actions and behaviours.

Pro tip: Wrap it all up into a single cohesive experience by making each game a level of a Dynamic Path™. This way, participants can log back in with their email address at each stage, making for a smoother and more immersive user experience, and easier data management for you at the back end.

You can set it to control how levels open up for participants – having them open and close on specific dates, or defining whether or not they should be played sequentially.

You also have the option to enable a global leaderboard, with the completion of each level maximising a player’s chances of winning a grand prize – a useful tactic to ensure more participants play right the way through the experience and follow your branded story to the end.

4. Form strategic partnerships with other brands exhibiting at the event

Co-marketing with complimentary exhibitors can broaden your reach and attract a more diverse audience.

You can share resources and redirect traffic between each other’s booths or stands, and carry one another’s flyers or posters.

For example, at a food market, if your business is a wine bar or a bottle shop with a stand, you could partner with a delicatessen to do wine and cheese pairings. If you were at a tech-focused expo, you could partner with brands creating complimentary products to put on joint demos.

Partnering with other brands can be as simple as just helping each other out by recommending and redirecting traffic, to more high concept promotions that help to demonstrate the value of each business’s offering.

5. Always run a debrief after exhibiting

Events are typically high octane experiences for all involved, with little opportunity for on-the-fly coaching, feedback, analysis, or pivoting. You’re kind of in the fray as soon as it kicks off until it ends.

This is why it’s important to let the dust settle before counting your wins, your losses, and identifying what can be improved for next time, and actioning whatever can be actioned.

There will always be points to improve upon from one event to the next, and advances in technology and developments in consumer expectations means it’s important to not only analyse your own performance, but also to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing, and stay on top of broader industry trends so you don’t get left behind overnight.

Key takeaway

Running a stand at an event isn’t easy, but the rewards can be incredibly valuable.

If you’re retailing at an expo, you can make in a day or 2 the same money you make on a good week at your store, and raise brand awareness. If you’re launching new products, they’re a great way to get lots of customers or even potential retailers to interact with your new offering, and identify any blockers people have or obvious wins. If you’re trying to recruit, they’re also a great way to see and assess potentially hundreds of candidates in a very short amount of time. If you’re networking, they’re like speed dating for businesses.

Ultimately, the challenge lies in standing out. You’re stepping into the most competitive possible environment, so it’s on you to find ways to stand above your rivals and dominate your space. The 5 actionable tips listed here are great starting points for any businesses to start formulating their hard process to consistently achieve event success.