By Julian Steinforth, Expedition PR
What makes a great trade show booth? Flashy signs? Free swag? Booth babes? While these all might seem like nice gimmicks, and might work at attracting eyeballs to your booth, to a certain extent…do they actually help you get the leads you came to the trade show for? While walking the floor at NY Tech Day 2014 I was able to see a little bit of everything, and took note on which hooks were producing leads, and which were just attracting the swag trolls (see photo and guard your giveaways when this attendee approaches your booth). Here are a few of the companies who got it right:
New York Tech Day attendees had numerous possibilities to get discounts, use promo codes and get free trials, as seen at UBER’s or at the Dash’s booth.
Seldon Marketing did a great job, with their mini basketball game, that would make you enter a raffle after shooting some hoops to win great prices. Zipmark also bet on physical activities to make people stop by and engage while playing a round of Cornhole.
Most visitors didn’t need to go out for lunch, since marketers and exhibitors were luring the people like the witch in “Hansel and Gretel” with candy, treats and beverages. And the classic trade show giveaways such as pens, mini footballs and can holder were not missing either.
Gilt Tech got attention by taking their Plasma Car for a ride through Pier 92 and directing visitors to their booth.
Pretzel Crisps was driving traffic to their social media channels with the chance to win a Pretzel Crisps party pack for all the Tech Day visitors who would retweet the message.
Kookopa, a fashion community where women can rent closets to and from each other, used walking human billboards for their booth marketing that day. Models actually walking around at Pier 92, showing outfits and holding a sign saying “Love my style? Rent it!” definitely created some buzz.
Some companies didn’t even need any specific booth marketing. Soolidoodle attracted visitors simply by their product, exposing their 3D printer and many people stopped by to see this groundbreaking innovation in action for the first time in their lives.
All in all we were astonished how great the booths looked and what can be done even with a small marketing budget.
