• Putting up barriers between you and the attendees – many of the booths were set up with a table blocking the entrance. People stood behind the table, keeping their visitors at bay. Open up the booth and allow people to walk in and talk with you.
• Sitting down in the booth – again, this is not inviting to those walking by. Some of the folks sitting were sitting behind the table they put up as a barrier. They really wanted to keep people away.
• Overstaffing or understaffing your booth – one booth had five people sitting around doing nothing. As a visitor I would hesitate to enter for fear of being attacked by all five at once. Others were empty. Ouch.
• Talking among yourselves – many of the booth personnel felt more comfortable talking with their colleagues than speaking with the attendees who may just want to buy your product.
• Inconsistent booth staff attire – either go with business attire or select nice shirt with your logo and the same color pants. Mix and match hurts your brand in the booth.
• Talking on your mobile phone – more often, folks were talking on the phone, ignoring visitors to the show floor. Take you calls outside and keep them short. The show exhibit times were not that long and you can always call someone back if it is not an emergency.
• Reading your email – I saw people reading email on their laptops and PDAs. This is just as rude as talking on the phone. Read your mail during breaks.
• Never making eye contact – I walked around the show floor and noticed many people never made eye contact with me to start the conversation. Be inviting and encourage people to talk with you. You never know who may be your next customer.
• Turning your back to your visitors – people standing in the booth should always face out towards the aisles so that you can greet people that walk by. Standing in the booth with your back to your prospect is not very inviting.

Staffing a tradeshow booth is tiring, but the point of being there is to collect leads for sales. If you are going through the motions without getting valuable prospect information from the attendees, I’d suggest you spend your marketing dollars elsewhere.

People attend conferences and tradeshows primarily for the seminars and presentations that are offered to educate the audience on key trends in their particular industry or discipline. And although they are not attending the show to purchase product immediately, most are there because an upcoming project requires they do research into vendors who offer solutions. The vendor exhibit area gives them a chance to meet vendors and see first hand the products and services that they offer. Attendees are evaluating your company from many perspectives. Everything you do, say and show at the conference is being inspected by those visiting your booth. You must project complete quality across the board – display, attire, presentation, demos, and marketing collateral. You get to make a lasting impression -don’t miss the opportunity to impress your audience. Take this opportunity to show them more about your company, products and services than what they can get researching your solutions via the Internet.

If your traditional tradeshow plan is order signs, book travel and hotel, and show up, it’s time to change your ways. Planning and executing a well integrated tradeshow plan that incorporates different methods of pre-show and post-show marketing will help you make the most of your time at the show and turn leads into qualified prospects. For more information on how to develop a tradeshow marketing plan that attracts high quality leads, read the article Tradeshow Success Starts with a Plan.

Rapid7 Booth

This conference is a large IT security conference with over 15,000 registered attendees and over 300 exhibiting vendors. I was planning on blogging from the conference, but after 8-10 hour days on my feet, I had all I could do to read my email to stay up to date on what was happening with my other clients.

I did manage to walk around the exhibit area and check out other vendors and their booths to see what was in vogue in tradeshow decor and attire. Polo shirts, button down oxfords and tee shirts all adorned with the various company logos were everywhere. Booth layouts were interesting – some very simple and others extremely elaborate. Many spent money on “models and rapsters for hire” to attract people to their booth. The question is did these antics do anything to attract the right person to their booth in order to achieve a satisfactory ROI on the show?

Tradeshows and conferences are great places to meet prospects and start building business relationships that are critical to a company’s success. People get to see the product, hear first hand what it can do and meet people from the company. They can begin to form opinions about the company from how they are perceived at the show. Although you need to put your best image out there, it does not have to be expensive and trendy.

Like everything in marketing, a tradeshow appearance needs to project the brand, be professional looking and attract the right audience. We spent approximately $10 – $15k total for the show. Our simple 10×10 booth with a contest to win an Atari Wii managed to attract over 350 people who stopped, took literature and entered the contest. Of those, I suspect about 50 are truly interested in our product. Close a couple of them and the show more than pays for itself.