Trade shows are an opportunity for your company to make important contacts, close sales, and set your business up for future success. However, the competition at trade shows can be fierce. Presenters are spending more and more on their booths to attract attention, prospects, and ultimately generate sales.
You need a way to stand out from the competition. You need a booth that attracts prospects without being too expensive or difficult to set-up and tear down.
Custom-made trade show booths can be expensive and difficult to transport. An increasingly popular option are portable trade show booths which can offer a clean, professional appearance at a good value.
If you’re considering a portable trade show booth, there’s some important criteria to keep in mind.
Attract Prospects
You need your booth to draw in prospects. In order to do that, it needs to be a unique reflection of your brand and message.
Be Unique
When you’re evaluating a portable trade show booth, ask yourself, “Will this stand out from other options I’ve seen at tradeshows before?” Is there something unique about it? Or, does it just blend in?
While there’s other ways to help draw people into your booth (that you should be using) such as giveaways or discounts, having an appealing and welcoming booth is the first step in attracting prospects’ attention.
As humans, our decisions are often made subconsciously. This is particularly true in regards to aesthetics. Do you ever find yourself drawn to a space without really knowing why? With so many booths at a trade show competing for our attention, you want something that will draw in your prospects unconsciously.
When you’re looking at portable trade show booths, try to picture it at your next trade show and ask yourself, am I drawn to this booth? Does it stand out?
Be Yourself
An effective portable trade show booth should help tell a story about your brand. If you’re a brand that sells organic tea, a carved wood booth might relate well to your customers. If you’re a wedding planner, something elegant that matches the style of weddings you put on would express your personality to interested brides.
The key is to choose something congruent with you and your brand and not necessarily the latest trend. Your booth is part of the story you’re telling prospects so make sure it’s in line with your marketing message.
Stay Focused
There’s a temptation when choosing or designing a trade show booth to try and accomplish everything. You want it to show the unique part of your brand without being too exclusive. And, you want it to have room for every feature you’ve ever seen before at a trade show.
Resist this urge!
There’s going to be a lot of your competitors in the room. Having something general is going to do you much more harm than good. Figure out what about your business is unique. What’s the story or message behind your business that sets you apart? Focus on a booth that emphasizes that.
A good rule of thumb is if you don’t feel uncomfortable by how small and unique your branding is, then it’s probably too broad.
Choosing a Portable Trade Show Booth
Now, you have an idea of what you’re looking for in a booth. You have a value proposition for your booth and business that’s unique, specific, and true to your identity.
Still, there’s a lot of decisions to be made before you know which specific portable trade show booth to buy or exactly how to design your own.
Value
Cost is always a consideration. You need to choose a booth that fits your budget. If you do a lot of trade shows or they’re a significant source of business for you, it might be worth investing in a more expensive booth. If you don’t do that many trade shows, see if you could invest in a booth that serves some other function in your business.
Caterers, wedding planners, and mobile bar tending services often invest in one of our portable bars because they can use them at their trade shows and also as a part of their business.
Ease of Use
Your portable trade show booth should complement and enhance your trade show experience and presentation. It shouldn’t create unnecessary headaches.
Make sure set-up and tear down for the booth will be quick and painless and you won’t spend hours at the end of the show tearing the booth down when you could be out networking and talking with other people in your industry.
Customizable
Whether you make it yourself or buy it, your portable trade show booth needs to be customizable and unique to your brand and your messaging.
Depending on the kind of portable trade show booth, you have there’s a nearly unlimited number of ways to accomplish this. The key is to define your core message and customize your booth to reflect it.
Our Portable Bars Make Great Portable Trade Show Booths.
Yes, we’re tooting our own horn here, but we’ve seen our bars in action at trade shows and they attract prospects like metal to magnets. Our portable bars are fully customizable with your branding, textured laminates and LED lights to help your booth stand out. Durable, acrylic panels can feature your brand name and logo and can be exchanged for use in other venues so you can use it in multiple places, not just at one trade show. They set-up and tear down in minutes letting you stay focused on growing your business, not taking care of equipment.
See how our Flash Bar can make you stand out.
