Beyond the Booth: Extending Trade Show Engagement

Maximizing engagement and generating qualified leads is crucial to nearly every exhibiting program. But sometimes, you need more than you can accomplish on the trade show floor. When you want to extend engagement with your audience beyond your exhibit, it’s essential to consider multiple channels of connection.

Extend your pre- and post-event engagement beyond the trade show floor.

There are many ways to reach your target market on a small or large scale and draw an audience to or extend from a trade show. Develop cohesive brand experiences that build on the trade show attendee journey and utilize your exhibit’s content and brand storytelling. One example is using your exhibit as a permanent fixture at your office or corporate headquarters as an experience to introduce clients to your brand.

Courtesy of our colleagues at BrandSync, here are seven ways to expand your exhibiting experience to make a significant and lasting impact.

1. Strategic Events: Host press events, partner and client events, and keynotes on the show floor, in the convention center, or at off-premise venues such as theaters and museums to extend awareness and reach.
2. Sponsor Activations: Amplify your brand with virtual reality experiences, product displays, and demos to increase consideration and engagement.
3. Themed Environments: Captivate your audience and build social awareness with themed parties, live performances, networking events, and awards shows.
4. Executive Spotlight: Give your executives – and brand – an exclusive stage through general sessions, keynotes, and regional and geo meetings.
5. Exclusive Experiences: Enable developers, users, press, and clients to have a hands-on experience with product demos and exclusive engagement with product engineering, experts, and thought leaders.
6. Virtual and Augmented Reality: Enable your audience to experience your products and brand in a unique and informative way.
7. Team Building: Remember the importance of team building! Use your trade show as an opportunity to boost employee engagement and collaboration.

The first step is building an experiential strategy that considers the attendee’s journey and desired actions. Ask yourself important questions. Who are your attendees, and why do they attend your trade show? What will the exhibit experience make them feel, know, and do? How are you measuring your exhibit’s success?

Connecting with your brand story is more important than ever. When it comes to brand storytelling, it’s essential to expand on the overarching message within your exhibit and ensure that all experiences communicate the key messages you want your audience to remember. By focusing first on the strategy and then creatively considering multiple types of events, you can leverage your exhibit to gain continuing engagement.

Our team can help you layer hospitality experiences that are actively interesting and offer a fresh experience to connect and communicate your brand personality while providing value for your team by giving them a space to network, engage, and drive business.

By: Mary Etchison, September 2023