Banner Stands Rollup

If your company is going to be attending and participating in a trade show of any kind, one of the first things you will need to decide on is your exhibit display. Naturally, part of your display will include your company sign and logo, and your contact information, but this is usually a very small part of the overall display. While it sounds like a simple procedure to come up with exhibit displays, it is not always as easy as it seems.

To begin with, you will need to decide on how many displays you will need.  As you usually book your booth for trade fairs well in advance of the event, you should know the specifics of your booth’s dimensions quite a while before the trade show is scheduled to open.  You will also need to know the type of shelving you are planning on having in your booth, and how high it will be, as well as what the actual layout of the booth is, in order to know exactly how many and what size exhibit booth displays to design.

Once you know the scope and plan for the displays and signs, you can then brainstorm ideas as far as what you will include on them.  If you do not have a graphic design department in your company, you will need to outsource the actual designing and the printing of the display exhibits. However, you should be able to at least come up with a general idea of what you would like to have on show to present to other tradespeople and the public via your tradeshow exhibit display.

There are as many different design ideas as there are people, as everyone has a slightly different take or idea on what they feel would best represent their company when it comes to trade show display exhibits. If you are a new company, or you have never attended a trade-show before, you may find that it would be beneficial to visit other tradeshows and carefully note how other booths are setup.  Oftentimes companies will have graphic displays in the form of posters, around their booth and they may also have a video presentation, featuring their company or the products they produce or sell. It is also often helpful to have a presentation or information board, which outlines your company’s products, or any other information that you would like to present to others.

Your exhibit trade show booth display should be eye-catching, as well as give a very good, clear and concise explanation of your company and your company’s products.

Poster Displays:  These displays are the ones that initially catch people’s eye. They should be designed to both give a clear representation of what your company is all about, and your products, and to be visually very appealing as well. The aim, with the poster displays, is to draw people into your booth. Once they are there, then you will find that they will pay attention to your other products and your other displays.  You should have vivid colors, with bold lettering on the poster displays. Clear photographs make great poster displays. When designing poster displays for our tea company, we blew up high quality photos that showed the entire tea production process, beginning with the hand harvesting, and ending with the professional packaging. Detailing your company’s production process in this way with an appropriate trade show exhibit display is very eye-catching and visually appealing.

If you do not have a very detailed production process, or if your company is a middle-man company, or you mainly deal with retail, or you are a service company, you can design catchy poster displays of people using your products instead. No matter what type of business you operate, highlighting what you do in a visually appealing way will draw people into your booth.

The poster displays should be large, bold and should be positioned high up so that people can see them even from far away. Usually these type of displays are put up above your shelving. This is a good reason why you may want to limit the height of your shelving, and make sure that you have enough space for poster displays above the shelves. Generally, these posters are backed with very lightweight Styrofoam or plastic sheeting, so they are easy to manage and they stay up very well with little needed to attach them to the booth wall.

Trade show exhibit displays are a lot of fun to design, they do a great job of drawing people into your booth, and the great thing about them is that if you treat them gently you should be able to keep them and reuse them again and again at different trade shows and fairs. Plan your exhibit displays with this in mind, and you will be set for years of trade shows.

Trade shows are the heart and soul of the marketing campaign for many companies.  Exhibit booths put a face on a business, so it is essential to invest a good degree of time and thought into selecting this foundational advertising element.  Companies will need to decide on an exhibit booth that is a purchased build, custom rental item, or a combination of the two, in which large items are rented and smaller items are purchased.

Trade show exhibit booths must communicate a fresh image and be able to accommodate different life cycles of a product over a period of time.  Flexibility is a good quality of success in any endeavor, and a good trade show exhibit booth must incorporate this quality as well.  If an exhibit booth design looks extravagant, it can obscure the message.  While capturing the attention of potential customers, it may be a representation of misplaced priorities and a poor business model.   Increased traffic should translate into increased sales.

Exhibit booth rental is a practical option when allotted floor space varies from show to show.  The number of trade shows attended annually also weighs in the decision whether to rent or purchase exhibit booths.  If a company participates in twenty trade shows a year, the shipping costs and time for transporting one purchased unit from location to location could be prohibitive.  Purchasing a second trade show exhibit booth may be impractical or just plain too expensive, whereas exhibit booth rentals could solve the problem.
Another perspective on purchase versus rental is from the company balance sheet.  A purchase may be amortized over a period of time and requires a large upfront outlay.  Rentals are an advertising cost and appear only as a monthly expense.  Rather than making a decision based upon cost savings alone, factors must be considered that will guarantee a return on investment.  Are the exhibit booth displays appropriate to the content and is there quality in the workmanship and materials?

Analyzing booth exhibits may be expedited by establishing a few categories as proposed in a 2008 white paper of Catalyst Exhibits, Inc., and available from their website.  Considering trade show units as panel and frame systems, modular systems that are lightweight, used exhibits, and inventory rentals is a helpful point of reference.  Pop-up portables and pop-together units fall under modular systems, whereas panel and frame structures are the very common, multi-purpose projects for display, retail sales, presentations, and exhibiting.  Inventory rentals offer a wide selection of parts that some firms will customize with graphics.  Only now is this branch of the trade show industry stepping up to the plate as a marketing arm, versus simply providing a work space.

As companies continue to evolve, adding and removing products, and responding to customer input received at industry conventions, presentations will need to keep step.  Purchasing a show unit has intrinsic costs including storage, maintenance, repair, and expansion for new features of the program.  Rental units from a quality firm will engage the rental company on a marketing level, adding energy and ideas to the company’s team while including a new set of presentation tools.  If graphic design is built into a rental – purchase cross, the reuse of the graphics can reduce costs.  Revisiting the concept of the rental company as a marketing partner, ask if there is staff available for setup and take down as well.  This can relieve much stress from the presenters, and knowledge of the unit will facilitate the assembly.

When considering extra staff to set up the presentation area, an indispensable group is a services team that provides audio-visual equipment and connections for Internet and any land line phones necessary to the project.  Backwall exhibits, branded give-aways, and table top displays are integral to most trade show marketing campaigns.  Arranging these details for display takes time from those manning the booth, so help with the larger lifting and moving must always be part of the planning.  By downloading an exhibitor kit ahead of time from the trade show website, or requesting and receiving it by mail in advance of the show date, the entire experience can be optimized.  Floor plans, rules and regulations, and any other necessary and pertinent information for trade show participants are published in the exhibitor kit.

Banners are very important in catching the attention of the many people milling about a trade show floor.  There are telescoping banners, retractable banners, counter top banners, pop up banner frames, hanging banners, motorized banner stands that allow scrolling messages, and banner combination products that provide room for literature and merchandise on the supporting pole.  Whatever banner is used, the message should be eye level, have simple recognizable graphics and lettering, and be well lit with no glare.

This short introduction to the world of exhibit booths can open the door to marketing success.  A right objective will result in a product or service mutually beneficial to buyer and seller.