Let’s face it – a growing trend in the exhibition, event and trade show industry is all about trade show booth engagements that create meaningful interactions with customers and prospects. As mentioned in previous posts, it’s important to first attract attendees to your exhibit, and then to offer them the opportunity to interact and engage with your staff. Thus, it is essential for your exhibit design to encompass clear and distinct zones throughout its space. After 25 years in business, our team of industry veterans has put together some helpful tips to share when it comes to zoning engagements in your next custom exhibit design.
Customer-Centric Engagements
It’s not always about having a flashy design to drive traffic to your booth. Oftentimes it’s about creating a customer-centric engagement to appeal to potential customers’ emotions and imagination. One way to better understand who your customer is and how you can help solve their problems is through buyer personas. This background research is crucial to your trade show exhibit design and it helps to create a plan to intrigue your target attendees.
Knowing that you will offer customer-centric engagements will influence the overall design of the booth and will let the designer know that the flow within the exhibit will be critical to engagement access and success. This type of zoned design indicates where both booth staff and show attendees should direct their focus and attention.
Multi-Sensory Designs
You want to appeal to all of an attendee’s senses while they are in your exhibit, but be careful not to overwhelm them by evoking all senses in just one engagement. By incorporating more than one engagement into your exhibit design, you can be strategic about what the appeal of each engagement should be.
Moreover, everything about engagement design should be intuitive and user-friendly, working together to facilitate a common goal: reinforcing to the potential customer how your product or service will benefit their business. In order for your engagements to standout, you can utilize accent walls to direct customer traffic to specific areas of your exhibit. Accent lighting is also a great way to capture your audience’s attention and guide them toward a designated area of your exhibit. In-laid carpet or other flooring options with a path through the exhibit defined by two different colors also will lead visitors in the direction you want them to go.
Because the human nose has hundreds of more receptors than the eyes and ears, don’t forget the power of scent. For example, if your booth design has an engagement related to hospitality, consider embedding and dispensing aromas from the kitchen to capture the attention of attendees walking the trade show floor. By focusing on the sensory connection between the potential customer and your booth design, you are creating and strengthening the unique relationship between your brand and booth visitors.
Creative Messaging
Creating a unique spin on a nostalgic engagement, such as Plinko or an old-fashioned prize wheel, will reinforce your value proposition while giving visitors the chance to let their hair down and have some fun with trade show games. For this type of zoned engagement, look for ways to incorporate your company or brand message into your design, regardless if its product focused or educational.
The goal of any engagement is to get people connecting with your brand. Using unique signage, fabrics and new textures can help create an aesthetically pleasing and zoned engagement, providing an exceptional experience for event attendees.
For your next trade show exhibit, try to incorporate zoned engagements into your booth. These designs, if zoned strategically, will help attract and engage show attendees. Interested in creating zoned engagement, but don’t know where to get started? Contact Exhibitus today to learn about how we design incredible zoned engagements and increase your booth traffic.