Episode 004 – Booth Creation Process

Episode 004 – Creating a Booth Process

If you’re not familiar with the term “booth flow,” it’s literally what it means—how to keep trade show goers flowing through your booth. This is probably the most important thing you can plan and schedule, and it will have the biggest impact on your results!

Booth Flow is effective because it combines The most critical part This will determine your success or failure in the show.

How to attract attendees

What information to capture

How to capture it

What do you want people to take away when they leave your booth?

Booth Flow is your game plan! It consists of only three key components:

First – Attract attendees to your booth

· Second – Capture your key information – What do you want to capture, and how?

Does the business card have everything you need? Probably not. Then you need to identify all the information you need and want.

· How are you going to get this information? Come up with a system.

· Third – What do you want them to take away?

Literature/marketing materials

Free gifts

What do you want them to remember?

What do you want them to experience?

· How do you want them to feel?

· Carefully orchestrate how attendees enter, experience, and exit your booth—this is the secret to maximizing your results.

Your booth process, like everything else, starts with your goals. Your goals will help determine your process.

· It all starts with the first contact with attendees. Don’t expect attendees to come to you. You need to develop a strategy to attract attendees.

There are three ways to keep people at your booth:

#1 – Pre-show marketing. Advertising, social media, direct mail, etc.

· #2 – Games, giveaways, attractions or promotions. Nothing is more appealing than a spinning prize wheel, a magician or something entertaining.

#3 – Really engage people and invite them into your booth. This can have the biggest impact on your trade show results.

· Now, you can do all 3 options at once to increase your chances of getting more people into your booth, but option 3 is undoubtedly the most important.

· Never assume that attendees walking past your booth have received enough information to tell them they don’t need to stop.

· You may have the best products, innovations, presentations, and employees. But it doesn’t matter if they don’t stop!

· Six things you should never do at your booth:

Use simple greetings like “hello,” “all the best,” or “how are you.”

· Ask any right or wrong questions that are not relevant to your company or will not make attendees think.

· Say nothing! Just look at the attendee, smile, and say nothing.

4. Being on the phone and ignoring attendees. Put your phone away when you are in the booth!

5. Talk to other booth staff

6. Leave your booth empty. Never leave your booth empty unless you are alone and have an emergency!

Switch to this A simple technique This will entice more people to stop and have meaningful conversations with you and your staff.

Ask questions to every attendee who passes by your booth Relevant to your business Let them stop and think for just a moment.

· It needs to be a question that gets you a quick answer.

· Can be a yes/no question, but only if the participant is eligible.

If they are not qualified and willing to do business with you, don’t spend your time talking to them. Let them go.

But if they answer “yes” to your questions, that’s great! They’re qualified and you want to talk to them. Now move them straight to the next step in your booth process.

· The key is – don’t be picky about your questions. Ask everyone you can! When you are done talking to one person, immediately ask the next person you see.

In episode 002, Staffing Your Stand, we talked about how to run your stand like a restaurant. A restaurant has a front and back. The front is responsible for welcoming, seating, and serving guests. The back is responsible for food preparation, food presentation, and other details.

· Divide your booth into two areas – the front of the booth and the back of the booth.

· The front of your booth is where you first engage with attendees, usher them into your booth, and qualify them.

· Behind the booth to answer questions, conduct product demonstrations, distribute information, etc.

Assign specific roles to each staff member.

· Just like a restaurant, you have to have a process in place for attendees. For example, who greets them first, what that person says to the attendee, what you want the attendee to do, who they go to next and why, etc.

· The next step is to get all the information you want and needAsk them lots of questions, ask them to do surveys, give them presentations, have them participate in sweepstakes, etc.

Find out the person’s role in the decision-making process

Capturing the information – determining who will capture the information and how it will be captured

·

· Part 3 of the Booth Process – What Do You Want Them to Take AwayIf you are promoting a new product or service then they should know all about it, leave relevant literature, and sign up to get the latest information.

· The key to all three parts of the booth process is consistency! Ask the same questions, get the same information, take them through the same experiences, and have them take away the same results.

You may have 2 or more sessions for attendees based on their responses, their customer type, or other variables. Just remember to stay consistent.

So your homework is to start creating a booth process for your next trade show! Take the time, train your staff, and stick with it. It will pay off more than anything else you do!