If you vend or market your company at trade shows, you know one of the most important things you must do is create a great booth. Your trade show booth is essentially a small office or storefront that you have to build in a day or so. It’s got to assemble quickly and has to be portable, but you want it to look amazing, so potential customers and clients are impressed. There are several ways to create a trade show booth, but some are much better than others. Here are a few tips for creating the ultimate trade show booth.
Plan Out Your Trade Show Booth in Advance
If you’ve never been to a trade show before, don’t wait until the last minute to start designing your booth. You need more than a table and some literature or a demo on a laptop. Your trade show booth design is the first impression some new customers will have of your business. If it doesn’t grab their attention, look professional, and help them learn about your company, they may move on to another booth.
This means you need to have nailed down your booth design weeks in advance. You want to make sure you have all of the components you need and that you know how to assemble those components into a booth. If possible, build your booth in your office or other area so you can see how everything works together. You may find that what you thought would work on paper doesn’t actually work when your displays are set up. There’s often no way to make large changes to your design on the show floor, so you need to have everything worked out ahead of time.
Overall, think about what the goal of your trade show booth is. Do you want customers to sign up for a mailing list, take information, or buy/commit to working with you? This will help you decide how to build and layout your booth.
Select a Color Scheme
Just like a display in a store or a series of print ads, you need to work out a color scheme and set of graphics or photos early on. Look at the marketing materials you plan on using and see how they work together. Based on that and your company’s logo, you can design the custom signs, banner
s, and other parts of your trade show booth. You may want to select one or two primary colors to use as your booth’s background. For example, if your company name is usually printed in blue, you could create a blue background for most of the booth. Then you could place white boxes on that background for your company logo and information. This helps the text in those white boxes stand out.
What Do You Need Printed?
For your first trade show, you’re likely going to be building your booth from the ground up. That means you’ll need to have custom banners and signs printed and in hand before the show starts. You’ll need to design these items early on, so you have plenty of time to have them printed and shipped to you.
Before you can do this, though, you need to have an idea of your booth layout. Are you going to have open sides on the booth? If so, you may only need a large backdrop at the back of the booth. However, if the tradeshow layout puts booths in a line, you may have other companies to your left and right. That means you’ll need sides on your booth to create a clear separation from them. If you have a booth on a corner, you may have another booth behind you and on one side, but you’ll have two open sides that people could walk through.
If you have multiple trade shows lined up, one thing to keep in mind is that each show may do booth layouts differently. This means you may have a fully open space around you at one show but might be between booths at another. You will want to create a booth design that can easily be adjusted to meet these different layouts, so you don’t always have to redo everything.
Once you have your layout in mind, determine what banners you need. If you’re not using any type of divider such as gridwall or a pipe-and-drape system, you may want to have large eight- or ten-foot backdrops printed. These will serve as walls, blocking off your booth from those behind or beside you. If you have some other form of divider, though, you may only need signs and banners to convey information and let customers know who you are.
Remember to Keep Height in Mind as Well
Your trade show booth is going to be one among many on the show floor. You may have attendees looking for you, but if it’s a large show, they may not be able to easily spot your booth. That means you need to remember to get your trade show banners up into the air so people can see them. While you may be tempted to go ten or twelve feet or even higher, do be sure you check to see if the trade show has a height limit. Some do ask that no banners be raised higher than a specific height. Also, remember that doing a banner at the back of your booth is just one option. You could construct your booth with support in the front or even use side banners.
Once you’ve determined how you plan on getting your banner or signage up, you need to work out exactly what you want that banner to say. You may simply want to include your company logo and name. If you have a headline product, you may want to include its name on the sign as well. Just remember that this sign needs to be readable from across the show floor. Be sure you carefully consider colors and lettering fonts during the design phase.
You may also want to use height as a way of displaying more information. While you may not want to go up as high as your main banner, you may want your booth’s sidewalls to reach seven or eight feet high to provide some privacy and to give you plenty of space to show off large graphics or other information.
What Information Should Be on Signs?
When you start thinking about your trade show booth displays, think in terms of what information you want to convey to attendees. Do they need to know small details about what your company offers, or is a high-level overview enough? Should you have some kind of working demo of a product available? What about videos or slideshows?
Remember that what people read on signs isn’t necessarily what they will remember. If you have signs with a lot of information, you will want to reinforce that information with handouts. People are going to be reading and hearing about a lot of different companies, products, and services at the trade show, and they’re not going to remember everything. Signage that outlines what your company provides will be helpful in the moment, but you will want to be sure you have something to give attendees for them to look over later.
Remember that these pamphlets or handouts don’t have to include all of the information about a product or service. This is an area where your marketing team will want to create the perfect blend of basic information along with sales points that will catch people’s attention. This information, like everything in your booth, needs to be branded and include your company website and a way to contact you for more information.
Have Fun Handouts
Another way of helping attendees remember your company later is to have a handout of some sort. This can be anything from a small sticker or pen with your company name and logo to a reusable bag or a travel mug. It all depends on what you’re willing to invest and how much space you have. If your booth is going to have multiple employees in it at all times and you need space for demo products, you may not have room for boxes of mugs. Pens, stickers, and keychains, on the other hand, are much smaller and more manageable. If you are selling products directly from your booth or giving away larger items such as mugs, be sure to have branded bags on hand, too.
TNT Signs Is Here to Help You with all of Your Custom Sign and Banner Needs
When designing your trade show booth, you want to be certain the materials you have are made from high-quality materials and will withstand repeated use. Signs, banners, and other items from TNT Signs will remain bright, vibrant, and damage-free for years. You can use these items indoors or outdoors, at trade shows or in your store or office, and anywhere else. In addition to signage, we also offer stickers and decals that you can use to brand your products or give out to attendees.
We’re here to help you create the necessary banners and signs to build the ultimate trade show booth. Once you’ve got your design nailed down, contact TNT Signs to turn those designs into reality.
