Best tradeshow marketing tips and case studies. Call 800-654-6946.
Best tradeshow marketing tips and case studies. Call 800-654-6946.

Booth Design

Virtual Reality for Tradeshows

First things first: I’m not an expert on virtual reality at tradeshows, known as VR! But there’s a lot of information out there which I’ve absorbed along with some observations on using technology in a tradeshow, so I thought it would be fun to explore the topic from the perspective of using VR at tradeshows as an attractor.

Virtual Reality experience at Expo East. Photo by Jennifer Liu of Hyland's Homeopathic.
Virtual Reality experience at Expo East. Photo by Jennifer Liu of Hyland’s Homeopathic.

In a recent conversation with Jennifer Liu with Hyland’s Homeopathic, a long time client and an attendee at Natural Products Expo East, she mentioned that there were a handful of exhibitors there using VR in their booth.

My first question when it comes to using VR, or any video in a tradeshow is this: what is your content? After all, content is everything. Without the right content, you might as well forget it.

Apparently the content at one of the booths involved spacious outdoors and action video: glaciers, mountains, beaches, and so forth. The idea was for the viewer to experience the full spectrum of virtual reality, regardless of the relationship that content had to the exhibitor’s product or service.

If you’re going to invite people into an engaging and intimate experience using VR in your booth, it would seem to me that you’d want to make some sort of connection between the experience and your product or service. If you’re a company that provides outdoor climbing or hiking gear, for instance, having 360 VR video of hiking or climbing would make sense. But if you produce chocolate bars or headphones, you’d have to ask yourself how that VR experience of hiking or climbing would relate. And while you might be able to find at least a tenuous connection, the stronger the connection, the better.

Starting Up with VR

In Foundry 45’s blog, there’s a discussion of the first step of creating content for VR. Record a bunch of video with the right cameras! This post discusses how to approach using VR for a tradeshow. Without spending a lot of time quoting the article, their advice is sound: do a dry run before the show, be prepared to help newbies, create a safe VR zone, use good sanitation techniques for the headsets, and so on.

Headsets

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Photo by Jennifer Liu

When it comes to how people experience VR, the headset is one item you’ll need to decide on. Wareable has a recent rundown of several sets, including Oculus Rift, Playstation VR, HTC Vive, Gear VR and others. These range in price from about $100 to nearly a thousand bucks. And of course there’s Google Cardboard for just $16.99. And where do you have visitors sit? You might want to give them comfy auto-race car type seats which hold them comfortably and safely while they zoom around a virtual world. You might check out the Roto Interactive Virtual Reality Chair. No doubt it would give you a line of people waiting to get into your booth!

Whether you choose to incorporate VR into your exhibit now or not – or just wait and see, it’s safe to say more and more exhibitors will step into the VR world as time goes by. If you do consider it, make sure it’s a good fit for your product or service, and make sure you have content that is a good match to keep visitors engaged and learn about what your company can do for them.

UPDATE: If you’d like to find out more about using Virtual Reality in a tradeshow setting, be sure to watch our recent webinar with Dave Beck of Foundry45!

Want a free digital copy of my “Tradeshow Success” book? Click here.

Renting Furniture: Good Idea?

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With a multitude of moving parts in tradeshow exhibits, where does furniture play a part in your booth? Do you purchase chairs and tables and ship them with your booth? Or do you simply rent furniture each time you exhibit?

There’s no single right ‘one-size-fits-all’ answer. Life isn’t that way, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately)! Nope, in fact it might be that your exhibiting needs change drastically from show to show, and you have to rent sometimes and other times it makes sense to ship furniture.

So how often to exhibitors actually rent furniture? Surprisingly, it’s over half, according to several I&D companies that were queried at an April event. In fact, it was close to 75% to 90%! So if you’re currently NOT renting furniture, you’re likely one of the few that are either shipping it in your booth crates, or having your clients and staffers stand the entire show. Whew!

The cost of renting furniture can add up, we know. In fact, if you’re new to furniture rental, you might be shocked to see that it will often cost more to rent a nice chair or table than it is to buy. And if it doesn’t cost more, it will likely cost close to the purchase amount. But if you calculate the cost of shipping, drayage, return shipping and storage of the furniture, the cost continues to increase. And even if you own the furniture, you’ll have to replace it at some point due to damage and wear and tear. So how much does it really cost? Unfortunately, tradeshow exhibits – including furniture – take a beating and often have to replaced or repaired frequently. So your cost of owning keeps going up.

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With furniture rental, you are paying not only for the cost of the furniture, which rental companies go to great lengths to make sure are in excellent shape (otherwise they’ll lose customers), your cost typically includes shipping and drayage. So that $300 for a chair is a one-time cost that means it’ll show up at your booth and will vanish once the show is over – all coordinated by show services or your tradeshow coordination company.

TradeshowGuy Exhibits Exhibit Design Search recently added a new strategic partner: Cort Furniture. Here is where you’ll find virtually any furniture item that you’d ever need in a tradeshow booth, from plants to stanchions, from small refrigerators to tablet stands, from bar tables and stools to luxury office chairs and ottomans and much more. And the prices are very competitive, so if you’re looking to rent a furniture item for your next show, just review the selection here and see what works for you.

7 Ways a New Tradeshow Exhibit is Worth the Investment

How to determine if your tradeshow exhibit investment is worth it.

What will a new tradeshow exhibit do for you?
What will a new tradeshow exhibit do for you?

Tradeshow exhibits can be expensive. So how do you know if it’s a good investment? Here are seven ways that will help you determine if the money invested in the design and fabrication of a new tradeshow exhibit is well spent.

  1. If it allows your booth staff to function better. A new tradeshow exhibit will look great, but if it helps your team function better at a tradeshow, it’s worth the money.
  2. If it increases your brand awareness at the show. One of the most important reasons to be at a tradeshow is because it can help reach new markets. If your tradeshow booth (bigger, prettier, more eye-catching) is better at attracting attention than your previous booth, it’s worth it.
  3. If you find it easier to generate more leads. A recent client that upgraded their tradeshow booth to a 20×20 island exhibit saw leads increase three-fold as a result. Definitely worth it.
  4. If it gives you more space for presentations. Even if your hired professional presenter says she can do a great presentation in a 10×10 (and they probably can), if you can give them more space, it’ll allow more people to see those presentations and be engaged with your products or services.
  5. If it shows your market that you’re the dominate company in the niche. One client of ours likes their big booth because they feel it gives them bragging rights as the ‘big dog’ in their market. Psychological warfare, indeed!
  6. If it leads to increased profitability. Does it positively impact the bottom line? Then it’s a good investment.
  7. If the new exhibit boosts your staff’s morale. Perhaps this isn’t a cut-and-dried way to determine if the investment is worth it, but I’ve seen first hand many times the impact a new tradeshow exhibit has on a staff’s attitude. It shows them that management believes in the company’s tradeshow efforts.

Can you come up with any other reasons why a brand new tradeshow exhibit is worth the investment? I’d love to hear what you think. Leave a comment below.

Need a quote on a new tradeshow booth project? Click here for a no strings-attached quote request form.

Meduri Farms Exhibit Project

Meduri Farms 20x20 custom exhibit, seen at IFT, Chicago, July 2016
Meduri Farms 20×20 custom exhibit, seen at IFT, Chicago, July 2016

You never know exactly how new clients will find you. It could be from an introduction at a tradeshow. It might be from someone hearing a webinar that impressed them enough to make a call. It might be from an internet search or a referral. The Meduri Farms exhibit project came about thanks to an online search.

One of our most recent clients, Meduri Farms of Dallas, Oregon, found TradeshowGuy Exhibits through a Google search. Through a few months of back and forth to answer questions, the issuing of a Request for Proposals including a design from scratch, we ended up getting the project. It was awarded in March after a competition of four or five exhibit firms, and kicked off in April, finally making it’s debut in July at the Institute of Food Technologists show in Chicago at McCormick Place.

Design was by Greg Garrett Designs. Fabrication by Classic Exhibits. The 20×20 structure was a combination of original design (the tower/alcove unit and product display unit) and rental (counters). The top section of the tower features SEG fabric images up to about a 15′ height which grabs eyeballs from a distance.

The 15′ tower is 9′ x 9′ with a meeting space in the bottom. Two sides are taken up by alcoves that display products and offer plenty of storage room. The roughly 10′ counters give more product display area and more storage for the oodles of samples handed out during the show.

According to Sara Lotten, Sales & Customer Service for Meduri Farms, management loved the booth and the results it brought (“that’s beautiful!” was the comment passed along as the president first laid eyes on the booth at the show). Meduri Farms got a great number of positive comments about the booth. Comments are great, but results are more impressive.

“We got as many leads the first day with the new booth as we did all of last year’s show. We ended up with three times as many leads for the show as last year,” said Lotten.

Meduri Farms, Inc., founded in 1984 is a premier supplier of specialty dried fruits to food manufacturers around the world.

Check out our Meduri Farms photo gallery here.

Find out more about how you can get a new tradeshow booth here.

 

How to Know When it’s Time for a New Tradeshow Booth [Video]

Some companies upgrade their large island booths every year. Must be nice to have that budget!

Other companies hang on to their old ten-foot inline booth for a decade or more because ‘hey, it still looks good and we can still set it up! Why change?”

Why change, indeed? If it’s not broke, don’t fix it!

On the other hand, there are any number of reasons you might consider replacing, or at least upgrading, your old booth. In this short video, we look at some of those reasons:

Need a new booth?

How to Issue an RFP for a Tradeshow Booth Project [Video]

You want a new tradeshow booth, but perhaps you don’t know exactly where to start.

You might consider issuing a Request for Proposal (RFP) to a select group of exhibit houses. This gives you an organized process to judge which exhibit consultant might be the best fit for your company and your project.

Here’s a quick video that examines what it takes to issue an RFP:

Need a quote on a project?

How to Choose a Custom Tradeshow Exhibit House [Video]

When it is time for you to choose a custom tradeshow exhibit house with a designer and fabricator, you are facing a daunting choice. Especially if you’re new to the game.

So we put this brief video together to more closely examine the various ways to choose an exhibit house.

In this video we look at how you might communicate with your exhibit house, what goes into design, the consultant’s depth of experience and strategic partner resources if needed. It all boils down to a couple of things: what you need (and can they handle it) and how well you get along with the company’s reps.

Take a look:

Need to get a quote for an upcoming project? Please go here and fill out the form.

14 Proven Steps to Tradeshow Success [Webinar Replay]

Last fall I put out the book “Tradeshow Success: 14 Proven Steps to Take Your Tradeshow Marketing to the Next Level.” I’ve done several promotions around it, given away a bunch of copies, and use it as my main calling card.

But I’ve never done a webinar on the book. Until now. Check it out:

You can pick up a digital copy of the book at TradeshowSuccessBook.com. Or get your own copy here.

10 Reasons Not to Exhibit at Tradeshows

Any good tradeshow marketing strategist is going to come up with a few dozen reasons as to why you should exhibit at tradeshows. But what about some of the reasons NOT to exhibit at tradeshows? Are those reasons worth exploring?

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First, let’s assume that if you are exhibiting at tradeshows or at least considering them, you are able to identify the shows that are of the most benefit to your company and products or services you’re pushing.

Some reasons NOT to exhibit:

  1. You’re trying to get attendees to stop at your booth with some gimmicky things like fishbowls and spinning wheels or putting greens. These may get people to stop, but the gimmick doesn’t know how to separate the prospects from the walkers-by. Only you can do that.
  2. You don’t have a measurable objective. In other words, you’re just setting up a booth, handing out samples or giving demos, but are not taking care to count anything. If you want to know if your tradeshow appearance is worthwhile, you have to track metrics such as visitors, leads, sales, demos given – and do it year over year and show by show.
  3. You’re thinking only of the logistics of a show and not the strategy of how the show plays into your overall marketing approach.
  4. Your staff is unprepared for the chaos of a tradeshow floor and the long hours and hard work it takes to pull it off.
  5. It’s too expensive. True, exhibiting at a tradeshow is likely to make an impact on your marketing dollars. But it’s a proven way to keep the cost of your lead acquisition much lower than the typical sales call. Yes, there are some businesses that do it differently and have written off tradeshows, but if it works for you, there’s no reason to quit as long as you’re able to get a good return on that investment.
  6. Your booth does not accurately represent your brand and the graphic messaging is cluttered and/or unclear.
  7. You don’t have a lead management system in place that all participants understand and know how to use.
  8. You only plan to exhibit at one show this year. It may be a great show that perfectly fits your audience. But if you only do one show, you’re missing a lot of potential customers at other shows. Stats show that nearly 4 out of 10 attendees are first-timers and 46% of attendees are only going to that one show.
  9. You’re not interested in or willing to network. People like to meet face-to-face, and tradeshows are a great place to spend time with people in the industry that can give you insight into other areas of your industry.
  10. You don’t realize that many exhibitors do NOT bring their “A” game. Face it, we’re all human. Many of your competitors are not going to do their due diligence and train their staff, do pre-show marketing, have a great product or know how to generate leads well. If you can do those things even marginally better than average, you’re going to succeed more than your neighbors. If you do all of those things very well, you’ll probably run laps around them.

Perhaps if you can overcome these reasons not to exhibit, you’ll find a lot of great reasons TO be setting up a booth and pitching your products and services. But it comes down to you.

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Tradeshow Guy Blog by Tim Patterson

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