Tips for Designing Trade Show Display Graphics

Professional graphic design is within your reach, just learn what you can from these tips and you will be well on your way.

Use Bold Colors That Match Your Company's Brand

Color choice will make a huge difference in the overall look and feel of your company's trade show exhibit. When designing a trade show display, I always recommend using the boldest color that is found within your company's logo as the primary color in the scheme of your booth. Bold colors are proven to be much more effective at trade shows than muted colors.

Keep It Simple

Clean, simple images work much better than busy images to attract attention. If you're trying to accomplish too much within your trade show booth, chances are good that you won't accomplish anything at all. Your trade show display is not there to explain every detail of your company's products and/or services, that is what your booth staffers are for. The primary purpose of your trade show display is to attract attention and be memorable for attendees and visitors.

Avoid Picture Collages

Aside from the fact that you want to avoid having your trade show exhibit look like a school science project, multiple pictures crowded into a small space on your trade show graphics will overwhelm the viewer and reduce the impact of the trade show display as a whole. Collages look horrible on trade show displays. Take some time and think of a better way to represent your photos if they absolutely must be in the image, and you will be happy that you spent the time.

Be Consistent with the Rest of your Marketing Material

No matter how great your graphics look, they won't accomplish your goals unless they are consistent with the rest of your branding package. If your trade show literature looks entirely different than your display graphics, you will be sending very mixed messages to potential clients which will take you further from the desired result. You want your potential clients to leave the trade show with a vivid image of your company's brand as well as the products and/or services you provide.

Hire the Professionals

If you're not sure that you can properly design your own trade show graphics, I would highly recommend contracting a professional graphic designer who has experience in the trade show industry. Many companies that sell trade show displays staff graphic designers, and the cost per hour usually runs between $75 and $200. A few companies offer graphic design packages to cut costs, and a few companies even offer free graphic design with the purchase of a trade show display. Finding an expert in trade show graphic design can solve all your problems.

Six Keys to Exhibiting Success

My goal is to help you make more money with your trade show marketing program without having to radically change the way you and your company do things. Exhibiting can be a daunting challenge, but understanding some key concepts can help you make the most of your trade show experience.

The best exhibitors aren't flashy marketing experts, they are practical business men and women with experience in their industry who keep a sharp eye out for opportunities to reach their target market in new and interesting ways. Anyone can be a successful exhibitor as long as they understand how to reach their target market.

The Six Keys to Exhibiting Success are designed to help out the person who already knows plenty about their industry and their potential clients, but needs a few pointers to help their event go more smoothly. So without further delay, here are the six keys:

1- Make sure you're exhibiting at the right trade show. If your reasons for exhibiting at a trade show include "because our company exhibits here every year" or "I don't know", chances are you need to reevaluate your trade show schedule. Replacing your company's traditional trade show program with an updated schedule is the biggest way to dramatically increase the return on your investment.

So what kind of shows should you be exhibiting at? The answer to this question is very simple. You should be exhibiting wherever your target market is attending. You can use demographic data from the Center for Exhibition Industry Research to determine which shows are attended by your potential customers.

2- Plan well in advance. Planning in advance will make all the stress and much of the cost of exhibiting melt away. Trade shows often get a bad rap as a logistical nightmare, but that stems mostly from exhibitors who don't plan far enough in advance and end up winging it. Here's a short list of some common things that exhibitors leave for the last minute (which winds up costing them thousands):

• plane tickets
• hotel rooms
• rental cars
• trade show display
• graphic design for trade show graphics
• trade show literature
• promotional items

As you can imagine, the rush charges can add up quick when you don't plan well in advance of your trade show.

3- Send pre-show mailers. It is a proven fact that pre-show mailers will increase the traffic at your trade show booth by 50% or more. Many attendees carefully plan out which booths they plan to visit long before the show begins, and getting your company's name on that itinerary could be huge.

One of the main goals of exhibiting is to build brand recognition, and if you have already done that before the show begins, then half the battle is already won. If everyone already knows who you are before the show begins, you can start to focus on selling them your products and services and explaining why you're better than your competition.

4- Send the right booth staffers. Visitors to your trade show booth will remember your company more for the people that were working the booth than for the trade show display itself. It is important to staff your booth with intelligent, knowledgeable, and friendly people. Many companies send their top level executives to trade shows, but in many cases that is the worst mistake a company can make.

The people you send to a trade show should be extremely familiar with the industry as well as your company's specific products. They will be on their feet all day answering questions, and they shouldn't have to glance into the price book every few seconds to hold an intelligent discussion with potential clients.

5- Use simple, bold ideas when designing your trade show graphics. Trade show displays and museum exhibits are two very different things, but you wouldn't know it when you attend a typical trade show. You have less than 3 seconds to grab the attention of a potential client, and large blocks of tiny text are not the way to get positive attention.

If your company sells surfboards, you would do much better by using a single bold image of a surfer riding a wave than you would by writing large blocks of text about why your surfboards are better than the competition.

6- FOLLOW UP after the show. According to CEIR, over 87% of leads generated at trade shows are never followed up. Why invest so much in exhibiting when you do not plan on following up with the leads you've generated?

Your booth staffers should be well-equipped to record leads in a detailed way so that when they pass the leads on to your sales staff, the process of follow up is easy. Imagine the possibilities if your competitors follow up only 13% of their leads and your company takes the time to follow up on every lead that is generated.

I hope you've enjoyed this post about exhibiting success. I'll examine these topics in much more detail as the blog grows, but leave a comment and let me know if you like what you see! Suggestions are always welcome.