Trade Show Game Ideas

If you’ve struggled to attract as many visitors to your trade show booth as you would like or are maybe looking to try something different, a fun trade show activity or to incorporate games into your trade show booth. Trade show game ideas can run from something cheap and simple to interactive and a little pricier whether you just want to try them out or go all out.

Obviously the goal of gamifying your trade show booth is to attract more attendees and use the games to turn them into leads.

The simple stuff

Counting/guessing games: This is pretty simple and won’t cost you more than whatever the prize will be (or what people are counting).Fill a bowl or jar of candies, pennies or something related to your brand if possible, have people fill out a log book with their name, company, email address, and their guess of how many are in the jar. It’s a contest and an email/lead grabber.

Trivia: Come up with some industry-related questions and throw in a few fun ones and have a staffer encourage attendees to participate as they come by. The success rate on this could be hit or miss but it’s also a game you can do a giveaway to people who answer correctly and incorrectly by just setting prizes for both outcomes. This game can help with engaging attendees.

Hashtag contest: This again costs you nothing except needing a staffer to monitor social media. You should be creating a hashtag as part of your trade show promotion plan anyway, so turning it into a contest gives you the chance to interact with show attendees on social media. Get them to use the hashtag during the event and randomly pick winners. You could gain some insights into those people who interact and use those to turn leads into sales.

Photo booth: You could rent one of these and that would make things a little less simple. But, you could create your own photo backdrop in front of or near your booth (depending on space) and incentivize attendees to take photos in front of it. Have them post them on social media and pick winners. Take all the pictures you find (or take yourself) and send them to those attendees in an email. It’s a very easy (and personal) follow-up email opener. Plus it’s a great social branding campaign.

Not too complicated

Social media contests plus: You can combine trivia and your hashtag contests into one and display them on a monitor for visitors to see. Let them see all of the buzz you’re creating in real time on your social channels and encourage people to answer trivia or participate to see their posts.

Prize wheel: These generally are not too expensive to rent. They’re also easy to set up and aren’t complicated to use. Everyone who comes to your booth can spin and designate certain prize levels for what they land on. You could give free demos away on this as well or discounts for your product (but also give away some swag with this option). Prize wheels are very visible and it’s easy to get everyone involved. You’ll just need a staffer to monitor the wheel. You could also ask for business cards to sign up to spin.

Putting green: The rental of this might be a tad more expensive than a prize wheel but most trade show attendees love golf. There are tons of trade shows that are near golf courses for a reason and even schedule a tournament into the show itinerary for travel entertainment. If you can rent a green, bring a club (two, you should have a lefty and righty putter) see if there are two or three cups in the green to give attendees motivation to shoot for the harder pins to get better prizes. This should attract a crowd and it shouldn’t be hard to get a business card in exchange for a try.

Complicated but fun

Cash/prize booths: Gives attendees two minutes in the booth to grab some cash or some kind of coupons for your company or the show. These are very attention drawing.

Video/arcade games: These can be fun and visually attracting, but they’re more costly and they take up a lot of space. If you have the budget and space, people are going to have fun at your booth and that’s what you’d like them to remember your brand with.

The match game: No, it’s not for dating, but you can involve two people and get them to be aware of your brand all show long. Have attendees wear stickers (and people will wonder what they’re wearing – good for your brand), draw a card with your brand on it or take a puzzle piece with your logo. If they find the matching sticker designated card, or puzzle piece, they can both (or more than two) can come to your booth to claim their prize. It can be hard to pull off or get people to be engaged with it, so your prizes might need to give them motivation. If it works, you have people essentially looking and thinking about your booth and brand all day.