Trade Show Display Booth:
Impact of Exhibit Trends

Companies spend a tremendous amount of effort ensuring their event strategy and trade show display booth, graphics, staffing, marketing, and giveaways are well planned to maximize sales and lead generation.

Those responsible for exhibiting need to pay close attention to industry trends that correlate to exhibit planning and a company’s ability to be successful with its trade show display booth.

According to findings by the Incomm Center for Trade Show Research and Sales Planning, here is a summary of recent trends in exhibiting.

• Time limitations by attendees cause them to stay longer and get as much accomplished at the show as possible. As a result, they are doing less browsing and more targeted product evaluation.

  The ability to conduct multiple meetings in one day is a great benefit to show attendees. They use their time efficiently to compare products in order to make their purchasing decisions.

• There has been an increase in buying teams at events compared to a single company representative. The buying teams are comprised of a number of decision makers from a single organization who strategically visit you and your competition’s tradeshow display booth – often multiple times – to fully evaluate the benefits of one product over another.

  Then they meet as a group and collectively make follow-up strategies and, ultimately, purchase decisions for the company they represent.
  

• Experiential exhibiting is another growing trend. Rather than aggressively selling products and their features to visitors, trade show display booth staff now find they are more effective serving as soft-sell consultants and engaging visitors with product success stories and solutions. Research shows that buyers prefer this type of approach versus hard selling.
  

• An event’s success now is not only measured in new leads or sales generated, but in building current customer relationships. Pre-show marketing and account management help draw booth visits and special meetings with current customers that can yield incremental sales. .
  

• New registration technology with smart cards, bar coding and magnetic strips expedite the registration process, saving attendees and event sponsors time and effort.

  The other great advantage of this technology is better tracking of prospect data and traffic flow, allowing exhibitors to measure quality as well as quantity.

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