The 3 biggest mistakes made at exhibitions

Don’t let this work go to waste by making these three common mistakes:

1. Choosing the wrong reps

No matter how much time, effort and money you dedicate to making your stand look fantastic, if it’s being manned by unresponsive, unenthusiastic staff then visitors won't think twice about moving on from your brand new tv display stand. You want your staff to be solely concerned with interacting with potential customers, not interacting with each other. With this in mind, though, not many exhibition visitors react well to a hard-sell. The value of meeting face to face is to build great rapport and develop relationships and to use tactics such as free samples and great stand design to draw them in, rather than stopping in their tracks purely to sell to them. Make sure all your staff members are fully briefed before each day of the exhibition on that day’s targets and don’t be afraid to amend your strategy throughout the event.

2. Bad exhibition stand design

This, of course, varies sector to sector and exhibition to exhibition, but in general, a poorly designed exhibition stand signals a lack of effort and thus a lack of dedication to the visitors attending the show. You’ll see it at every exhibition – the company with one lowly looking chap in a suit sat at the only stool on the stand with one roller banner, who is looking so lowly because his stand is failing to attract visitors. At the very least, consider your visitor’s needs, a stand which offers to help them will be much more attractive than one which seems to offer nothing. For instance, offer a comfortable place to sit (and interact with you), or a cup of coffee to keep them going during the long exhibition hours.

3. Repeating last year’s failures (and successes)

If you had a successful time at the exhibition last year, that’s a great accomplishment and it probably served you well in the following months. However, there are many reasons why you shouldn’t aim to emulate every aspect of last year’s exhibition. For one, exhibitions are showcases for new ideas in your industry, bringing the same ideas and method to the table as last year will automatically leave you behind the other exhibitors at the exhibition. Secondly, unless you’ve been to dozens of exhibitions, and whittled down your approach to a perfect, seamless tactic, chances are that small changes could create improvements even on your previous successful year. There’s no use in sticking with the good methods if you’re capable of great results but just need to take a risk to achieve them. There's always room to try out new and engaging designs, like branded feather flags or even a selfie frame. It also goes without saying, if there were elements that let you down last year, created inefficiencies or visibly put customers off, steer clear of these tactics this year.