Trade Show Displays for Event Promotion

This week at HubSpot’s INBOUND in San Francisco, I spent a lot of time walking the floor of Club INBOUND, the sponsor expo where brands big and small spend a lot of money to have a visible presence in front of INBOUND's 10,000+ attendees. Here’s what stood out: Most booths get it wrong. Too many companies treat their booth like a library shelf - lined with brochures, swag, and a few team members standing around waiting for someone to stop by. The result? Empty booths. Low energy. Poor ROI. The booths that worked? They built experiences. Crowds gathered where something was happening - where there was energy, interaction, and a reason to engage that had nothing to do with the product pitch. (Shout out to the teams at Vidyard, QuotaPath, CallRail and Computan, all of whom understood the assignment 😉 ) If you're a marketing leader or CEO who's thinking of making a big investment in a trade show or conference booth, here's my advice: ROI from trade shows doesn’t come from how much you spend on square footage, or how glossy your collateral is. It comes from the experience you create. If you want pipeline from an event, you need to: ✅ Give people a reason to walk over that isn’t your product. ✅ Create a moment they’ll want to share or remember. ✅ Use that moment as the bridge to a conversation. INFORMATION doesn’t draw people in >> EXPERIENCE does. The companies that understand this stood out. The ones that didn’t? They’ll be the ones questioning whether their event sponsorship was “worth it.” If you’re planning to invest in a booth in 2025 or beyond, stop thinking about it as “presence.” Start thinking about it as theater. To all of my marketing peeps who were at INBOUND this week, which booths did you think hosted the best experiences? #INBOUND2025 #kathleenhq

Walking the trade show floor last week, I was stunned by how many companies completely miss the mark with their booth messaging. Here's what I saw way too much of: - Generic platitudes: "We're here for you!" and "Your success is our mission!" - Ego-driven headlines: "We're #1 in [insert category]" — which tells me nothing about why I should care. - Stock photo disasters: Smiling people who have nothing to do with the actual solution. The result? I walked past dozens of booths with zero understanding of what these companies actually do or how they could help me. Here's the reality: Your trade show backdrop should work exactly like your website homepage hero. It has one job: get qualified prospects to stop. The three elements that actually work: 1. Lead with the problem you solve — not your product features or company accolades. 2. Show clear differentiation — explain why you're different from the 50 other companies claiming to solve the same problem. 3. Use visuals that matter — for SaaS companies, show your actual interface or data. For service companies, show images of real results or outcomes. What prospects don't care about while walking the floor: - Your mission statement - Your stock performance - How great your service is (before they know what you do) - Your pricing (All examples of things I spotted.) The best backdrops I saw communicated three things within seconds: the problem they solve, who they serve, and why they're uniquely qualified to help. The best example of communicating nothing? I took a photo of one booth (with the company name and logo removed to protect their identity). Take a look - can you even tell what this company does from their backdrop messaging? Your backdrop isn't wall art — it's your most expensive lead generation tool. Make it count. What's the worst (or best) trade show messaging you've encountered?

𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗪𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝘅𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗲𝗱 𝗥𝗢𝗜 𝗮𝘁 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗯𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘄 – 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗣𝗼𝗽𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗻.🍿 The electrical industry is still very old-school, and we still spend a crazy amount of money on trade shows. This cost has made me obsessed with how we can maximize returns through: 1. Brand Recognition/Awareness 2. Lead Generation 3. Conversion Here’s what worked for us - 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴✅ I put my Marketing Team through the wringer last year, focusing them on creating content and promoting the brand. But, what actually worked? 1. Videos – On YouTube and in the booth, videos had a huge impact on brand recognition and trust-building. It sparked curiosity in a way that nothing else has - we’re going to double down on videos this year. 2. Technical Books & Content – We wrote six books for #Elecrama, averaging 50 pages and countless days of research by our engineers. Again, a great way to build trust with customers. 3. Live Displays – Scaled product displays helped customers visualize how our products work in the real world and to experience the quality that adds value to their projects. 4. Popcorn & Chai – The smell of popcorn alone has brought 1,000+ people to our stall in the last 2 editions of Elecrama. While most of these may not convert, it was a cost effective brand awareness campaign. 5. Pre-show Video & Landing Pages – With over 15,000 people watching our YouTube announcement and visiting our event landing page, they were primed with the Axis brand before even arriving at the show. 6. Handbooks with Testimonials, Test Reports & Certification – Simply talking about quality will not convince your customer. We provided our sales team with easily accessible books to close the deal. 7. Emails, LinkedIn, WhatsApp Broadcasts and Statuses – Everybody does this because it is effective. We try to communicate with our customers on every platform that they are active. What are some low hanging marketing techniques that work for you? Axis Electrical Components (I) Pvt. Ltd. | #Marketing #ContentMarketing #Exhibition #BrandRecognition #BrandAwareness #LeadGeneration #Conversion

Event season is in full swing. You can rely on conference organizers to bring traffic to the show but getting folks to your booth is up to you. Most pre-show emails read something like, “Visit our booth at the show! We look forward to seeing you there.” Why on earth would I visit their booth? To ensure visitors show up, send email invitations and make calls, if appropriate, 7-10 days before the show, when most attendees are finalizing their plans. Include a compelling offer, like these: 🎁 Personal gift. “Hey Bob, I’ll be at the Vegas show next week and have a personal gift for you. Could you stop by Monday morning at 11 AM?” 🤝 VIP meeting. “Hey Rachel, my CEO will be at the show next week and has only three meeting slots left. I wanted you to be the first to hear about this opportunity.” If one of your employees, customers, or partners is an industry celebrity, use them to draw in a crowd. 💻 Private product demo. This works well with customers who are innovators or early adopters. 🍹 Cocktail event. Invite people to a social gathering right after show hours or to an early breakfast event before the show opens. ⏲️ In your invitation, be precise about the day and time you want to meet: “See you there on Monday at 11 AM?” is more effective than “I hope to see you there.” After the show, the booth team wants to go out and celebrate their hard work. The last thing on anyone’s mind is adding notes to scanned leads, updating the CRM, or figuring out which email to send to prospects. But delaying these actions is the difference between effective follow-up and allowing hot leads to go cold. A successful post-show campaign starts with setting it up before the show. This is the best way to ensure it goes out on time. Next, upload the leads to your CRM immediately after the show. Finally, send the follow-up email in the morning hours of the first business day after the show, before other exhibitors get their act together and do the same. The follow-up email should jog visitors’ memory to the giveaway they received (“I hope your child enjoyed the teddy bear!”) and give them another gift, like a valuable piece of content. On the landing page gating the content, ask a few qualifying questions to help your sales team prioritize calls. Send a follow-up email several days later to those who didn’t click through the first email. Take your leads to the next buying step by inviting them to a product demo or a free trial and include them in a nurturing campaign, to keep your brand top-of-mind until they’re ready to buy. Wishing you a great event season!

Want to know how to make your booth the HIT of every show? 𝘾𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙖 𝙬𝙚𝙡𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙨𝙥𝙖𝙘𝙚! That’s it, that’s the tip... And it takes $0 extra to do that (cool swag helps too). At every show, I see people sitting behind their tables of literature and product samples blocking the aisle, often looking down at their devices or talking to each other. Every time, I wonder how in the AF they will ever recoup the investment they made by sitting so closed off to everyone who’s walking the show floor. Move the table to the side so people can walk in! At this year's Advanced Manufacturing Expo, we sprung for a 10x20 (thanks to our awesome partner, Creston Industrial Sales). This allowed us to record the Creator Space youtube series in one half of the booth–with two incredible guest hosts joining me this year, Hallie Haupt and Shae Eichele–while leaving the other side open for people to come in, sit in our comfy chairs, put their feet up, and chill for a bit. I even borrowed big round rugs and velvety pink chairs from home (much to my husband's annoyance lol) to make it extra cozy. And guess what? Our booth was so busy I didn’t get to walk the show floor until an hour before it closed on Day 2–even with amazing friends and colleagues subbing for me like Alexandria Trusov, Joni Cunningham, and Scott K.–and I barely took any pictures (exhibit A below). So here’s what NOT to do if you want your booth to be a success: ❌ Put your table in front of the aisle ❌ Hide behind your table and talk to your co-worker ❌ Hide behind your screens ❌ Confuse onlookers with wordy displays ❌ Overwhelm window-shoppers with products ❌ Skip networking events and afterparties ❌ Forget to follow up with people you talked to ❌ Show up without doing any pre-show promotion Take it from someone who's exhibited at countless trade shows. Welcome people in and they'll open up about what they need. And a huge THANK YOU to everyone who stopped by to say, Hello. I met so many amazing humans and loved getting to hug and shake hands with long time virtual friends. Stay tuned to check out the interviews we captured! #exhibitortips #conferencetips #salestips #boothtactics #tradeshowtricks

Tradeshow booth, brand activation or host event, doesn't matter, audience and customer experience is vital to success. Here are two questions you must highly consider before creating, planning, concepting and designing... 1. How do you want your audience/customer to feel when they have left? This may be B2B event marketing, but we are all human. Humans operate on feelings. You should decide how you would ideally like them to feel. Is it... appreciated, excited, impressed, fun, confident, intrigued. Then concept and plan accordingly. Feelings resonate, they stay with people, both good and bad. The feeling your audience/customer leaves with is the impression they have of you. It's the ol' saying, "what have you done for me lately." This is qualitative and subjective, but in my experience, anytime we have worked with a client, and helped them move from a corporate, boring, run of the mill tradeshow booth -----> a experiential, concept or idea driven tradeshow booth focused on the customer. The feedback we always get is, "we got so many compliments, and way more traffic." They are throwing a different energy out there and showing up different. People see that, they remember it, and your message has a better chance of sticking. 2. What do you need people to walk away knowing? Ask yourself. What is your companies unique POV or stance on the industry? What is the problem you solve for your customer? What is your unique value proposition? Is there a mission or purpose to the event or activation? Do you want to define a clear line in the sand between you and your competition? New product or service launch education? The questions above are typically what is centered around what you will want your audience/customer to walk away with from your booth, activation or event. Now ask yourself, how do we effectively communicate this? Here are some ideas where; - Messaging. Get creative with your messaging. Short, sweet, stand out, specific. Be repetitive and have it everywhere, especially if the message is excellent. - Presentation setup, style and delivery. (ex. keynote, podcast, panel discussion, fireside chats, hands on instruction, entertainment, demos) - Themed appearance/design. Can you take the message you want to convey and tell a story through design, layout, eye catching engagement, colors, style, vibe, architecture? Be bold in your attempt. Tell a story and stand out in a way that raises questions, where the answers lead to your message trying to be conveyed. - Engagement games or activations to help connect the dots. Can you utilize gamification, or an activity to connect the dots for your customer? Is your value proposition a product that cuts down installation time compared to competitors? Example would be to do live mock installations, time them, maybe make a game from it and let people participate. #customerexperiencedesign #customerexperience #tradeshowmarketing #eventmarketing