How to Display Products at a Trade Show

According to Statista, trade shows generated more than $12.8 billion dollars in business-to-business revenue in 2016, making it one of the most profitable B2B marketing strategies.

In 2015, Statista also reported 82% of trade show visitors had buying influence. That means trade shows are a great place to grow business, sales and elevate brand awareness by promoting and selling your products. Whether you are selling a physical product, or a service, making it visible and attracting attention to it is how you effectively get a piece of that revenue at a trade show.

We have a few trade show product display ideas and simple tips to help you add to your revenue and make a positive impact on your ROI. Here are some quick pre-show things to keep in mind when it comes to displaying your products at a trade show.

Pick the right trade show: Know the market for your products, the best uses and the industries they fit in. That will help you make sure you’re choosing to exhibit at the right trade shows and in turn will give you the best chance to increase sales at the event.

Pre-show promotions: The worst thing you can do ahead of a trade show is to forget to promote your presence at a show. Use every communication tool at your disposal to reach your audience to make sure they know where you will be and why they should come visit your trade show booth. Highlight your booth location on social media. Utilize your email base to share the message and tap into any resources and emails the trade show exhibitor services give you to reach attendees before the show. Give your audience a reason to stop by your booth and an idea of what to expect when they get there. The few days you spend at the trade show are just a small portion of the work you need to do for it to be successful and promote your business and products.

Don’t bring too many products: Avoid overstocking your booth with too much product and clutter. Know how much space you are going to have and how much space your products take up. Set an ambitious but realistic goal of products to sell at your trade show and combine that with the amount of booth space you’ll be working with to help determine how much inventory to bring.

Shore up sales technology: If you’re planning on selling products at the show, you need a way to process payments, track inventory and handle receipts. Invest in mobile sales technology and test it before the show to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Trade Show Product Display Tips

Every part of your trade show booth plays a role in your success, and growing business by selling products at the show is no different. From your displays, accessories, and presentation, every detail can make a difference when it comes to meeting your goals.

Point of Purchase Displays: Consider your trade show booth design and layout like a retail setting and even your own store or business. If your goal is to promote and sell your products, point-of-purchase displays and banners make the most sense for your booth. Use displays that are going to attract attendees directly to the products you’re trying to promote and sell. Lighting and backlit graphics like LED Podiums make it easy to highlight a sale area at your booth. For a more traditional look, and if you have more limited space, trade show tables with overhead banners give you plenty of space to showcase products and exposure for your brand and message. Portable trade show counters with shelves are also a great option for quick point-of-sale displays in your booth to give you storage and promotional space for your products. It’s important to have the right amount of well-placed signage and graphics with the right messaging to inspire attendees to buy in these spaces. Something as compact as tabletop banners are perfect in these situations.

Real Life Feel and Setting: Try creating a real life feel and setting for attendees to view your products in, something like how they will use it or display it themselves. Giving your prospective buyers a real life idea and example of how your product works and how they can use it can be one of the most convincing sales pitches.

Product Demonstration: One of the best trade show product display ideas you can execute is a product demo. Make sure you have the setup space in your booth to do a live product demonstration. This is another important sales tactic to have planned for your trade show booth. It’s easier for attendees and prospective buyers to imagine purchasing your products if they see a live demonstration.

Furnish Your Booth: Want to make a sale at a trade show? Sometimes that requires convincing attendees to spend time in your trade show booth talking to you, or one of your sales or booth workers. Attendees will be more apt to spend time in your booth and it will be a more pleasant experience for everyone if you have tables and chairs there to offer space to talk business. You can even take your trade show booth furniture to another level with LED illuminated tables and chairs.

Use kiosks next to displays to promote products: Any displays you use, especially your biggest, most eye catching ones, should be drawing attention to the products you’re trying to display at the trade show. If promoting and selling products is your goal, your displays and graphics should work in concert with that plan. More podiums and counters right by your biggest displays promoting your products lead attendees right to the products you’re trying to sell, keeping them focused on what’s important to your promotion.

Design displays and your booth to work with your goals: Your graphics, displays and booth layout should be all planned in mind to help meet your goals. Whatever your goals are for exhibiting at a trade show, especially promoting products, your graphics, displays and layout all impact the likelihood of meeting those goals. Choose the right graphics by working with a display printing company that has experience and has produced the type of displays and graphics you are looking for in the past. If you don’t have expertise on designing trade show graphics, trust a professional to help you. Use displays that are going to promote your plan and lay them out strategically to help with keeping space, good traffic flow and visibility to the areas of your booth that are going to be most important to reaching your goals.

Draw attention to your booth with fun games: There are plenty of ways to generate buzz and attract a crowd at your trade show booth. Trade show games are one of the best ideas to do that and they can be fun to plan as well. Using social media and designing your displays to try to capture attention are a good start, but at a crowded trade show, games are an easy way to get the word out about what’s going on at your booth. Trade show attendees talk about the booth’s they’ve visited between sessions or when they’re networking. They’re probably going to talk about a booth that had a fun game. Here are some trade show game ideas and tips to get you started.

Give away cool swag: Trade show booth games are an easy way to make your booth fun and create buzz. A really good way to quiet that buzz is with boring trade show swag. Generally, most of your prizes for a game at your booth are going to be branded items with your own logo and information. That swag is important for promoting your brand and keeping it top of mind for attendees long after the show is over. That means giving away items that are at not only cool, but useable. Everyone gives away pens, but what about a pen that’s also a business card? Custom branded Coasters are another unique, usable item that will help your message carry beyond the trade show. It’s also important to remember to give away branded swag that fits with your company. Putting your logo and information on a pen or something simple is fine enough, but you also want to make sure your giveaway items are somewhat related to who you are as a company and what you do.

Overall, don’t build up the hype at your trade show booth with a game only to diminish the excitement by giving visitors something uninspiring to walk away with.

Stay organized: It’s always important to keep your trade show booth well organized, but it’s especially true when your goal is to display and promote products. Portable trade show product display shelves, racks and tables are must have items for making products visible and accessible to attendees and potential customers at your booth. This also extends to literature and brochures so that all your important written information stays organized and accessible as well.

Don’t forget other important aspects to your trade show booth to help enhance the visibility of your product displays. Between backlit displays and other options, lighting is a crucial part of highlighting everything in your booth from the messaging of your displays and drawing attention to your products. Where you use lights in your display will likely direct where attendees look at your booth first. Use them strategically to get them to look at your product displays.

Electricity is also a necessity to make your trade show lighting work as well as keeping your monitors and computers working. Make sure you have enough power strips and the proper cords to keep everything powered on. Bring backups, too.

Bonus tip: Don’t use electrical tape to cover cords. Choose a trade show flooring option to keep your booth looking professional.

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