An interactive element at your booth can make a huge difference in the success you see at conventions and trade shows. Interactive booths can increase engagement levels by approximately 50%, giving your company more opportunities to bring potential new franchisees into the fold.
This increased success, however, isn’t guaranteed. To make the most out of interactive booths, creating an experience that best represents your brand and attracts your target audience is important. With that in mind, let’s look at several ways you can add interactivity to your booth that will encourage franchisees to engage with your booth and to listen to what you have to say.
Five Ways to Bring Interactivity to Your Trade Show Experience
1. Proactive Staff Engagement
Staff interaction might sound like a given, but in reality, many companies don’t take full advantage of the skills and knowledge their staff can bring to the table. If your team acts largely passive, handing out brochures and fielding questions only when prompted, then you’re not embracing interactivity.
Encourage employees to proactively approach attendees with engaging questions to initiate conversations about products and services.
- Train employees to ask open-ended questions that prompt attendees to share their interests or knowledge about the company.
- Provide employees with quick surveys or prompts to gather valuable information about attendees' preferences and interests.
- Use surveys to identify potential leads or opportunities with franchisees who may have overlooked the company otherwise.
- Foster a culture of proactive staff engagement by recognizing and rewarding employees who effectively engage with attendees and generate interest in the company's offerings.
- Continuously evaluate and adjust the questions or prompts employees use based on attendee responses to optimize engagement and capture relevant insights.
2. Hands-on Product Demonstrations
Mostare more likely to purchase a product if they get an up-close-and-personal look at it, feel it in their hands, or demo it for themselves. In other words, the more chances you give show-goers to try out your product for themselves, the more success you can expect.
That might mean using virtual reality to give customers a test drive of your product, or it could be handing out free samples and encouraging people to stop and give those samples their full attention for just a moment or two. Whatever the approach, if you can get people to do more than just passively look at your product, you’ve increased your chances of converting those attendees into buyers.
3. Games and Contests
These are straightforward and fun ways to attract people to your booth. Your contests can be as simple as spinning a wheel to win a prize or putting your business card in a fishbowl, or they can be more elaborate, such as a mini-golf setup or a trivia contest.
Games like these are excellent opportunities to attract people to your booth and get them coming back, and they’re also great ways to expand your contact base. For contests, for example, you can notify the winner via email or phone, which means that every entrant needs to provide that contact information if they want to win.
4. Live Entertainment
One sure way to get people flocking to your booth is to deliver exciting presentations and performers. These can be music acts, magicians, comedians, or interactive presentations like game shows, just to name a few.
An entertaining show can help cement your brand in people’s memories and get them talking. Don’t be shy about branding the stage to ensure everyone knows who is putting on the show. You can even insert informative elements into your shows, using professional presenters to drive the message of your company home.
5. Photo Booths or Selfie Stations
Everyone loves a good photo, especially now in the age of social media, where people are eager to share their exciting experiences with the world and boost their brands. Even if you don’t spring for a Photo Booth in the traditional sense, there are plenty of ways to add a photo opportunity element.
- Incorporate interactive photo booths or selfie stations to captivate franchisees and maximize growth.
- Offer fun backdrops or props that align with your brand and encourage franchisees to take photos.
- Use a green screen with customizable backgrounds to enhance the interactive experience.
- Promote the photo booth or selfie station through signage, announcements, and social media.
- Provide incentives for franchisee participation, such as exclusive offers or giveaways.
- Train booth staff to engage with franchisees and create memorable experiences.
- Capture user-generated content for future marketing efforts.
- Continuously optimize the setup based on feedback and engagement levels.
Delivering an interactive experience can help your company have very attention-grabbing trade show displays and get the message out about why you deserve to be seen in the first place. Whatever tactic you choose, as long as you pick something that feels right for your brand, the chances are strong that you’ll be on the right track.