The One Thing Your Trade Show Booth Must Do To Succeed

Just read this in an underground marketing newsletter this morning.  This guy has an obnoxious subscription fee that’s worth every penny.  

"You should NEVER assume attention.  Each and every time, you must scheme to get it and invest to buy it."

The most important part of a direct mail piece isn’t the copy: it’s the envelope.  Even bad copy will outperform a letter that doesn’t get opened.  Every marketing piece you develop must get attention before it can deliver content. 

On the trade show floor, if you don’t capture and control attention, all the money you invest in your booth goes to waste.  You can’t demonstrate your product, connect with your customer, or collect follow up information. You can’t even build your brand. Nothing else happens until people pay attention to you.

To compare with mainstream thinking, I read a 15 page "trade show marketing guide" that "assumed attention" at every step.  They talked about doing pre-show work, having a well trained booth staff, collecting lead information, and the obligatory stuff about fresh breath and not talking on your phone in the booth. 

But when the rubber hit the road - when the prospect was actually in the aisle beside their trade show booth - the author simply ASSUMED that he or she would automatically stop and visit their booth.

That’s why mediocre trade show results seem acceptable.  Exhibitors assume that interested prospects will come into the booth, and everyone that ignores the booth isn’t interested.  In fact, your booth is simply invisible: they haven’t paid enough attention to your booth to “decide” to ignore you. 

There’s a better way. 

Talking with show attendees has uncovered three powerful reasons even your ideal prospect will avoid your booth.  At a large show with a busy show floor, people who already know your company and enjoy working with you can ignore your booth because other things seem more important.

That’s why the most successful exhibitors do not assume attention; instead, they capture and control it.  They convince people in the aisle to commit time to their booth, and they deliver an experience that makes prospects think, “Yes I want that” and “let’s set an appointment to talk about this more.”  

That’s real lead generation.  

Your program either sets itself up for success by controlling the attention and directing the actions of the people in the aisle, or you surrender your results to the whims of those people in the aisle. 

For a guide that puts you in control of driving 10X more booth traffic and collecting 2X more qualified leads from your next show, download your copy of The Little Booklet that Transforms Your Trade Show Booth into a Lead Generating Machine here.