How to Attract Booth Traffic at an Outdoor Trade Fair

Participating in an outdoor trade fair can help your business reach new target customers, build trust, and gain market share. It’s also an excellent way to show your community presence, reinforce branding, and obtain direct customer feedback about your products.

Meeting and engaging with prospective customers can help raise awareness of your brand and boost your sales. So, once you secure your spot at an outdoor trade fair, it's important to do everything you can to attract more people to your booth and promote your business.

Below are some suggestions to help you drive traffic to your booth area and attain your exhibiting goals:

1. Design and Create a Compelling Exhibit

Your trade fair booth or stand must have a high impact design and be inviting to draw people in. It's also crucial to have the design reflect your brand image. For an outdoor event, here tips to set yourself apart from other exhibitors.

Start With A Branded Canopy
Installing a bright, branded canopy can help your booth stand out at an event. For instance, a 10x10 canopy with a giant brand logo of your company printed on it has potentional to attract more people to your trade fair stand than a plain canopy can deliver.

Consider Booth Lighting
Check with your trade fair sponsor when you sign up to participate to see if electricity will be available at your booth. Even though you are outside, having booth lighting can be very important to the overall look and appeal of your exhibit. For example, colorful light-emitting diode (LED) walls can amaze attendees, drawing them in to discover what you offer. Having spotlights for your products can also be an effective visual strategy.

Make an Impression with Color
Take advantage of color psychology to get more traffic to your booth. If you want your trade fair stand to attract attention, warm colors, such as yellow, red, and orange, are the best.

2. Effectively Market Outdoor Trade Fair Participation

Trade fair booth promotion before, during and after the event is essential for success. You can’t just appear on the day of the outdoor trade fair without a solid marketing plan. Trade fair participation involves multi-phase marketing to maximize your investment in time and money. Marketing may include the following:

Sending invites, emails, and other forms of communications before the event
Social media activities before and during the event
Promotional activities, like live streaming, during the trade fair
Follow-up communications after the event to convert leads

Include in your marketing plan taking photos to post on social media and your website. You can also request visitors to take selfies and post them on their social media accounts to boost brand awareness and product interest.

3. Plan Entertaining Booth Activities to Attract Traffic

Aside from a well-designed booth and marketing, one of the most important factors in getting booth traffic is to give people a reason to stop by and learn more about you and your products. Holding engaging activities can help. Examples include:

Hosting Contests
Hold a booth contest and give away appealing prizes. Contests may include shooting balloons or trivia games about your products and services.

Demonstrations and Product Encounters
At the event, show people the advantages of your products and their unique distinctions. Hold a demonstration to show people how to use your products and let attendees try your products to encourage them to buy.

3. Add Good Music And Scents

Aside from striking visuals as part of your booth design, consider having appropriate music and scents in your exhibit area. Music can quickly attract people. If you have a company jingle, play it in your booth. Seasonal songs can help boost the mood of attendees.

Adding a fragrant scent can drive more visitors, as well. A food business can disperse the delicious smell of cinnamon, rosemary, freshly baked cookies, or other food-related fragrances by baking or cooking inside the booth. Essential oils, like lavender, chamomile, and lemon oils, can help achieve the same goal.

4. Provide Vouchers or Giveaways to High Opportunity Prospects

Giving vouchers and freebies can be strong traffic drivers. Yet, you want to reserve them for potential buyers and not just give them out to everyone who comes to your exhibit area. Identify interest in your product by your team's conversation with booth visitors, as well as those who stick around for a product demonstration. These individuals have the most potential to buy and are worthy to receive a free promotional item or discount voucher.

Branded merchandise, such as mugs, shirts, and lanyards printed with your company logo and contact information, are great for branding your business on top of being excellent giveaways.

Keep your vouchers, coupons, reward cards and giveaways in the back of your exhibit area so passersby who have no interest in buying will not take them. If you are using vouchers or coupons, have an expiration date on them for redemption. Then your team can remind prospects to make a purchase by that date.

5. Ensure the Effectiveness of Your Booth Team
You can have a beautiful exhibit and excellent promotion, but if your booth staff is not thoroughly trained on...

Your product offerings,
How to greet visitors,
How to effectively sell your products, and
How to track and follow up on leads after the fair

...then all your efforts are for naught.

Select your best sales staff to attend the outdoor trade fair. Give them goals for contacts and leads. Have them wear name tags and stand in front of the exhibit to welcome booth visitors into your area (no sitting, eating or chewing gum).

Teach your team how to effectively talk with prospects, explain your products and share how your products address specific needs. Then, have them follow-up with prospects (preferably by phone) within 48 hours of the event to secure each sale.

6. Determine Your ROI

Once all prospect follow-up is completed and show sales are tabulated, evaluate your cost of fair participation. This includes booth rental, booth design and production, materials, shipping, giveaways. staff pay, and more.

Then calculate your revenue and compare against the cost of doing the outdoor trade fair. This calculation will give you a clear picture of your return on investment – and help you decide whether trade fair participation is a viable strategy for future opportunities.