Vendors: 3 Strategies to Optimize Your Booth’s Walk-By Experience

Are you a vendor looking for ways to make your booth attract more visitors? If so, you need to focus on maximizing your booth’s walk-by experience. A walk-by experience is maximized by appealing to the senses and creating interactions with passersby that draw them in.

When event attendees walk by your booth, they’ll know in a moment if they’re interested in stopping to check you out. You’re always making first impressions on people, even before they interact with you. When you create the right impression, more attendees will stop.

Here are some strategies to optimize those first impressions at your next trade show:

1. Appeal to the senses to attract attention

People are drawn to alluring sights, smells, and sounds. Appeal to these senses to get attention. For example, while other booths attempt to have casual conversations with attendees (like shouting “hi, how are you?” from a distance), try a different approach. Use laughter and cheering to give the impression that people are having fun where you are. Even better, make it genuine. Devise a way to get people excited so you can give them a high-five and cheer, like a simple game people can play to win a prize.

Creating visual appeal

Appeal to people visually with a professional and aesthetically appealing presence. Forget about using folding card tables and flimsy pop-up tents. You won’t attract attention if your booth looks like a hodge-podge of stuff you dug out of your garage. Get a custom pop-up display booth either with a backlit panel or a built-in podium for you to stand behind.

The ideal booth for attracting attention is simple and professional, but the visual aspect must match your brand. Although display booth examples show custom graphics with simple logos and company names, plastering your logo across your booth isn’t good enough.

Unless you’re a nationally recognized brand, your logo isn’t going to appeal to people. A custom graphic design that projects your brand image will. For example, if your logo is a flower, plastering a flower across your booth won’t draw attention. However, an image that projects a specific message to the crowd – a message that tells them what your brand is about – will draw attention.

Appeal to smell

It’s easy to appeal to smell as long as you avoid smells that have the potential to trigger sensitivities. For instance, perfume, air fresheners, and body spray should never be used to attract attention. The tried and true smells that capture a wide audience are hot chocolate and coffee. Even people who don’t like coffee attest to enjoying the smell of a freshly brewed pot. There’s actually a complex, scientific reason the smell of coffee appeals to almost everyone.

Provided you’re allowed to brew coffee per event regulations, set up a couple of basic coffee brewers and brew coffee throughout your event. Better yet, provide a stack of paper cups and make it a self-serve station for anyone who can’t resist the smell. While they’re pouring the coffee, chat it up and give them your best sales pitch!

2. Hire a couple of actors

Although some might consider it cheating, you could hire a couple of actors to have scripted conversations inside your booth to explain specific points you’d like people to know about your products or services. For example, your actors could have a basic sales conversation where the “customer” asks all the right questions and the sales rep gives all the right answers.

The idea is to get people to overhear the conversation to communicate certain ideas to them indirectly. Not everyone will strike up a conversation. By overhearing a staged conversation that seems real, some visitors in your booth will have their questions answered effortlessly. Other people might hear information that will get them excited enough to talk to you and ask more questions.

3. Make sure nobody has to ask what you’re offering

The most effective part of optimizing your booth’s walk-by experience is making sure people know what you’re offering.

Once you’ve gotten someone’s attention, you shouldn’t have to work hard to explain what you’re offering. Once they move toward your booth, it should be obvious what you’re about. One way to achieve this is to have your staff wear a uniform. A uniform might not tell the whole story, but it will provide important clues as an attendee comes closer and starts noticing the rest of your setup.

There are a variety of ways to increase your walk-by experience, and these are just some. For your next event, try some of these ideas and you’ll see an increase in attendees visiting your booth.

from Feedster https://www.feedster.com/branding/vendors-3-strategies-to-optimize-your-booths-walk-by-experience/