Choosing the best trade show exhibit for your business is no easy feat. Trade shows are a major investment of time, money, and energy. The booth rental fee is only the beginning. Travel. Staffing. Preparation. All of this money is spent before one attendee walks through the door. Getting the exhibit right in the first place is a critical component to the entire process and so often missed because businesses don’t give it the focus it needs at the outset. Instead, they’re left standing in an empty booth wondering why no one is stopping.
Fortunately, good decisions don’t require blind amounts of spending. They require taking the time to ask the right questions before moving forward.
Don’t Start with Budget, Start with Objectives
One of the major mistakes a business makes when determining the best exhibit for their purposes is starting with a dollar amount. Yes, budget considerations are important. But they come second to what’s truly necessary for a particular display to succeed. A company that generates leads specifically from a niche audience by attending one major annual event has entirely different needs than one that exhibits at a dozen regional shows in a year.
Consider what success looks like at the end of an event. Is it a multitude of leads? A handful of valuable conversations? Product demonstrations? The mere presence of the brand in an unfamiliar market? The answers to these questions will help inform everything from scale to how space is used.
Know Your Exhibit Types Before Committing
At its most basic, there are three types to understand. Inline exhibits sit against a wall, typically ten or twenty feet wide. They’re a solid choice for a display that has a message focus and limited space. Island exhibits are freestanding with access from all sides. These make sense for companies that want a 360-degree experience without bordering on too much floor space dedicated to the exhibit itself. Tabletop and portable displays are small and compact. They make sense for smaller shows and businesses just starting out with trade show experiences.
Within those ranges, there are modular and custom options. Working with a reputable supplier like Classic Exhibits will help determine what works best based on the insights from those who know what genuinely works well on show floors. Modular systems are built with reconfigurable parts, which allow them to function at different booth sizes at different events across brands. Custom builds are designed from scratch for specific purposes and boast aesthetic appeal but at a larger price and with less flexibility.
Find Out What Works for Your Show Frequency
How often a business exhibits should dictate what it invests in financially to make something work. If a company exhibits five or more times a year, it needs something durable, easy to transport from event to event, and relatively easy to set up without a specialized team needing to come in. A modular system that breaks down into several manageable cases and can be reconfigured on-site makes sense in this scenario.
If, however, a business exhibits once or twice per year for larger events, then something more on the custom side can work because it has less wear and tear over time as it sits in storage for longer stretches. Durability over repetitiveness isn’t as important as aesthetics and experience quality geared toward a particular audience.
Graphics and Messages Should Factor In
It’s easy to think that graphics should be researched after a structure gets determined, but they’re intimately related. The physical fabric of the exhibit helps determine what graphic options exist or don’t, how sized-down messages can ultimately get displayed, and where someone’s eye moves toward first at the booth.
An organization that puts graphics off until last finds itself with an exhibit that looks incomplete or fails to meet message clarity from afar. The hierarchy of the message sent, what people read first, second, and third, should be part of the design from day one.
What’s Practical For Set-Up Logistics
An exhibit that looks great in the supplier’s showroom still needs a home come event day. How long it takes to set up, how many people will realistically be needed to set it up, and how it breaks down to get transported all add to its effectiveness or not out of perceived dollar amounts. If an exhibit gets erected by a crew of specialists bringing its costs up every time it’s used, that’s important—especially to budget considerations—over the course of an entire show season.
Asking critical details about setup time, cases used, case dimensions and weight should all be done before committing because this time is well worth it. Aesthetics tend to overwhelm practicality but practicality far outweighs the importance if something doesn’t work when it’s needed.
Flexibility is Critical For Future Change
Companies change. Messaging changes. Product lines change. Space allotment at shows changes from event to event. An exhibit that needs to stand in one way with graphics that become outdated quickly is more costly than not having any exhibit at all.
Selecting systems where graphic panels can be swapped out, pieces can be added or taken away, and the overall structure can accommodate different floor plan needs provides added company bonus over the same amount spent initially over time. Be sure to ask how flexible something can actually be used before choosing because over time, it matters more than any single show.
Ensuring Long Term Success
At the end of a day, the best exhibit is one that can be successful at the first show and maintain success for every show thereafter that’s based on initial rush decisions made to meet deadlines. Giving time for proper due diligence before making things happen—thinking beyond one immediate situation by asking these questions—fosters greater success in the long run.
