What are some of the most common techniques to attract people to trade shows? Free food ranks on top, with free coffee and a biscuit or a small pastry. The real question you want to ask is how effective this truly is. Can visitors choose to come just for the free food? Unlikely. While it’s an undeniable perk, it’s also one that doesn’t drive much genuine engagement. A free cookie might, at best, encourage someone to pause for a moment, but it doesn’t necessarily make the event memorable. Creating excitement and engagement at a trade show requires a more thoughtful approach. Visitors are usually short on time and surrounded by competing stands, presentations, and offers. A successful event needs to focus on interaction, accessibility, and curiosity, rather than offering freebies.
Image: Khanh Nguyen
By Team Savant
Don’t Keep Talks Behind Closed Doors
Panels and presentations that contain some of the most interesting insights are often kept in private or closed areas, ensuring that only a limited number of attendees can benefit from them.
Bringing those conversations into the wider venue would be a better approach. You can install screens and sound systems in shared areas to allow attendees to follow talks even while walking between stands. With professional audio visual hire solutions, organisers can transform the entire venue into an active learning space.
For visitors, this can be a game-changer, as many have no time to attend conferences. So being able to hear what is being said while still visiting the rest of the visit can change their perspective of the show.
Self-contained Informative Displays
Interactive displays are designed to encourage engagement without forcing visitors to speak with a sales representative. Because they invite people to explore a concept on their own terms, these are more likely to generate interest and positive interactions in the long term.
For example, a standing touch screen display could ask visitors to enter their business sector and an estimate of the data volume handled by their organisation every day. The display could then show an approximate calculation of how much time a data management tool could save the company, based on averages from similar clients.
It’s a concept that can be applied to a variety of businesses and let visitors experiment with a quick scenario.
The QR Chase
Using QR codes around the venue is not a novelty. But using them strategically to create a network of digital touchpoints can help elevate your event.
QR codes can be used to share a variety of things:
Short product demo
Case study relevant to visitors of a specific zone of the trade show
Details about a speaker
There’s a playful element to discovering QR codes and finding new information from them. More importantly, QR codes can be used to bring valuable business information to visitors without forcing them to speak to a representative. They can still be a useful tool in a lead generation strategy, without being forceful.
Trade shows need to change their focus to prioritise engagement where curiosity and conversation happen naturally. It is time to move away from a trade show that creates a highly selective sales approach. Most visitors today would much prefer methods that keep them in charge of interactions with businesses while ensuring they can collect enough insights to convert into leads when they are ready.