Attracting Visitors to Your Booth

Interactive Presentations Drive Traffic

Use Creativity and Engagement for Attracting Visitors to Your Booth

Interactive tradeshow presentations create a dynamic dimension for exhibiting. There's an added benefit of having your prospects serve as active participants: They are likely to become advocates of your products during and after the show.

A finely-tuned message is the key to your success with a live, theater-type presentation. It ensures you meet your company’s marketing goals and objectives – and fulfills the expectations of your potential customers.

According to Elaine Cohen, founder and president of Live Marketing in Chicago, studies show that if live professional presentations at tradeshows focus on answering the marketing objectives of the company, the company is then better able to deliver on those objectives.

When the objective is attracting visitors to your booth to increase sales, consider hiring an experienced tradeshow presenter or entertainer to draw people to your display. Once there, attendees need to experience your product first hand. During this time, you and your team should seize the opportunity to talk with booth visitors and pre-qualify them, based on their interest and buying potential.

Then, extend your marketing impact by giving potential buyers a free gift with your logo and contact information. Select giveaways that are consistent with your brand image, have high-perceived value, and will be kept after the event is over. Examples include quality promotional pens, USB drives, visors, insulated water bottles, or redeemable coupons for your company products.

A Case Study:

Cohen sites an example of a tradeshow live presentation campaign that produced highly successful results for Purina Pro Plan® at the National Dog Show in Philadelphia. The campaign was titled "The Difference is Real -- Real Meat, Real Commitment, Real Experts." In fact, the live presentation was so successful that it was repeated two more times the following year.

The campaign began with identifying what key message Purina Pro Plan had for the national dog trade show goers and what the company hoped to achieve at the tradeshow exhibit.

The message focus was that, nutritionally, Pro Plan is an exceptional product. Among top breeders and show dog owners, Pro Plan is the #1 pet food brand. However, many consumers are unaware of this. In the specialty market, unaided awareness of the Pro Plan brand is only 5% and Pro Plan market share is about 6%.

Therefore, the challenge of the Pro Plan Consumer Experiential Marketing Program was to generate awareness of, create a preference for, and drive sales of Pro Plan foods.

For starters, the tradeshow had the right audience -- approximately 18,000 dog-loving consumers attending the tradeshow. Most of these consumers either have a dog, attend the tradeshow to help decide what breed to purchase, or attend to find a breeder to purchase from. They were of all ages, genders, and ethnicities—and all of them are decision-makers or influencers of dog food purchases.

The overall goal was to re-focus the National Dog Show experience to integrate a Pro Plan experience. The way to do this was to immerse tradeshow visitors in the brand and to highlight the key messages and to drive at least 400 attendees to participate in the show plan promotion at their tradeshow booth.

By using a theater backed by content-specific interactive exhibit areas, they were able to communicate the key messages:

At the Real Meat area, a computerized Pro Plan Product Selector was used to find the right Pro Plan product for each tradeshow visitor’s own dog while communicating that the #1 ingredient of Pro Plan is Real Meat.
At the Real Commitment area, visitors learned about the animal rescue programs Purina supports and were given the opportunity to help support the cause.
In the Real Experts area, tradeshow guests spoke with breeders and/or a nutritionist to learn how to tell if their dog is the right weight and get answers to other canine nutrition questions.

They also had attendees complete a Pro Plan Show Plan quiz and survey and, closing the loop, tradeshow booth staff gave away samples and coupons to drive visitors to purchase now and in the future.

The solution was a totally integrated tradeshow exhibit marketing program that leveraged a live theatre and activities g to education and attract consumers.

To have a successful tradeshow presentation, you must push all the right buttons (appeal to the needs and desires) of the tradeshow exhibit attendee. You will achieve your goals of attracting visitors to your booth and identifying key prospects for sales.

Remember, the next time you exhibit at a tradeshow, adding a live, focused tradeshow presentation you will make your exhibit and message more memorable, accomplish your goal of attracting visitors to your booth and achieve a greater return on your tradeshow investment

This article on attracting visitors to your booth was written by Dick Wheeler, president of Professional Exhibits & Graphics, a full-service trade show exhibit, graphics and management services company.