There are so many reasons to welcome the fall season… like cooler weather, pumpkin spice lattes and of course more trade shows! Now is the perfect time to look at your upcoming trade show program, evaluate your display strategy and design, and really focus on how you will achieve your lead and sales goals.
One of the main reasons trade shows are still a popular method of business today is because they provide you invaluable face-to-face time with your customers and potential customers. No matter how much technology continues to change how we interact with people day to day, people and businesses still starve for the traditional hand shake and personal interaction. We as consumers must find a way to cut through all the “noise” and find trusting people to do business with, not just impressive brands that seem to have it together. And in turn those companies are in search of quality leads that will generate new sales and revenue for their company. Strip away the marketing and branding and it is people doing business with people.
So, how do you bring the two worlds of tradition and technology together to stay relevant and match good consumers with good companies? Simple! Use all the social and automated marketing tools at your fingertips to drive the consumers into your booth and then engage with them effective interactive technology. The days of toting heavy product catalogs to shows, and your prospects in turn lugging them home, are over. Put an interactive touchscreen in front of your audience, and they will know what to do with it. Give them a bunch of printed collateral material and they will just throw it away on the way out the door.
Interactive trade show displays are an attention-getting way to draw people into your display space and help you make a lasting impression while capturing critical information from users at trade shows, events, showrooms and more.
Now that I have you convinced to bring your booth into modern times, where do you start? Well, there are a number of things you can do, ranging in price and complexity. I will start with the easiest and work my way up.
- TOUCH SCREENS
This can be anything from tablets strategically placed around your booth or in the hands of your sales team, to large touch screens mounted to wall of your display with messaging luring your audience in to learn more. Keep the content simple, and attention getting, but always make sure your team is trained and ready to help guide any visitor through your corporate approved presentations and collateral. Make sure the experience is simple with a call to action at the end, allowing users to email themselves the product materials they are most interested in. Not only is this valuable marketing information, but it makes for a quick and easy follow up after the show.
- LED VIDEO WALLS
LED Walls are very exciting and growing in popularity at tradeshows for two simple reasons – 1) they come in manageable square tiles that once calibrated together allow you to easily display video and other flashy content as part of your booth design vs static graphics; and 2) you can scale them up or down to fit any space and generate any size WOW factor you want. There are different levels of LED tiles, user friendly tiles for the beginner and professional, stadium quality tiles for the technology aficionado. Either way we always recommend you have a dedicated tech on the show floor, whether it is a skilled AV guy from your exhibit house or a well-trained staffer dedicated to taking care of your technology throughout the show.
- VIRTUAL REALITY and AUGMENTED REALITY
There are some cool, fun things you can do with VR or AR, but these are slightly more advanced options. Most likely this is not anything you can execute in-house, but with the right partner you can turn almost every surface in your booth into an interactive experience build around your brand and goals. Gamification is here to stay, and it allows your visitors to relax and hang out in your booth leaving them more engaged with your and your brand.
These are just the top three Interactive technology solutions we find our clients most interested in, as they all work well within trade shows and live events. Each solution we create is customizable to your needs and goals, and what message you want to portray for your brand. All of Apple Rock’s technology allows you to reduce your literature printing and shipping expenses and provide various metrics for targeted post show follow-up.
Schedule a free, no obligation consultation and find out how interactive display technology can take your static trade show display to the next level.
