Trade shows: Brand stage beats commodity show

Trade show booths designed as brand stages promise greater and more sustainable trade show success than the good old product show. Here are 5 tips on how to turn trade show booths into successful stages for brand presentation and customer experience.

Unfortunately, trade fairs are often still seen purely as a show of goods, with as many products and as much information as possible on the stand. This is a thing of the past and is not at all suitable for turning into a fascinating place of encounter and experience, as visitors expect today. And the integration of sales and marketing doesn't always work either, not to mention a functioning lead management system.

Here's how you can use your trade show budget more efficiently and successfully:

1. Define and synchronize goals

This is essential for the basic orientation of the booth concept and communication in advance. The interests and goals of all parties involved are very different and must be coordinated to ensure that the event is a success for everyone.

• According to a study by AUMA, image goals are the top priority for all exhibitors. They are also the most important for the marketing and communications departments: brand awareness and acceptance in the industry, also in comparison to the competition, among customers/press/employees and strengthening customer loyalty.
• Sales goals are primarily contact goals: New prospective customers, identification of specific projects, closing of sales, which are often made at the trade fair with media attention after long preliminary work, follow-up business and expansion of the customer base.
• According to the AUMA study, the majority of trade fair visitors focus on the following objectives: information about new products (important for almost 50% of all trade visitors to German trade fairs), general market overview, exchange of experience and information, concrete business objectives (business contacts, conclusion of contracts or preparation for decisions, ...).

For a comprehensive trade fair success, these goals are best brought under one hat. The sales goals are achieved with advertising, good invitation and lead management. The conception and design of the booth is crucial for achieving the image goals, but also for the customer experience. And innovations and leading competencies properly staged and brought into focus meet the interests of the visitors.

2. Staging as a brand

It's not the full shelf of products that makes the difference in your customers' attention, "The product is what the company makes, the brand is what the customer buys." (Jean-Noel Kapferer, "The Brand. Capital of the Company"). Brand value is worth money, even for capital goods. Brands provide orientation, create identity and promise reliability. They allow higher prices or ensure price stability in the face of fierce predatory competition. Customers of brands are usually more loyal and thus the customer base is more stable.

Your trade fair stand can only contribute to the value of your brand if it reflects the personality and image of your brand, if it fits in with the overall appearance of your brand as far as possible and if it stages the core of your brand and its competence(s). Basic rule: A trade fair stand is brand staging, not mere performance show or product presentation.

3. Focus

To the point. Your trade fair stand must convey in a focused and clearly recognizable way what your brand stands for and what it has to offer that is special. This makes it identifiable and differentiable - an unbeatable orientation aid for visitors at any trade fair. Selected exhibits and innovations are then the best proof of precisely this promise.

Less is more. Overload obscures the view for the essentials and makes a pointed brand profiling impossible. Today, modern presentation and demonstration techniques offer the great opportunity to completely declutter trade show booths and tailor messages much more precisely to a wide variety of target groups.

4. Emotionalization

For your customers, your trade fair stand must be an authentic, convincing and inspiring brand experience. A trade show presence is a living brand stage that emotionally reinforces existing customer loyalty and attracts potential new customers. Of course, rational arguments count for a lot in the capital goods sector. But here, too, the following applies: For spontaneous and also sustainable success, you need both conviction and enthusiasm, head and gut.

5. Motto and integration

A central theme, a central and great idea as a trade fair motto creates substantial profiling, orientation and differentiation. It's about more than just look and feel: a unified message creates the much-needed integration of all parties involved. Sales and marketing can be motivated by the joint development of objective and message.

A good integrated trade show concept includes appropriate invitations and announcements beforehand, events during the trade show, and follow-up afterwards with good lead management.

Information and experience, argumentation and emotion - that's what makes a good integrated concept.

Does more brand stage also cost more money?

In principle, no. Because the same money that is invested in an appearance that does not conform to the brand can also be invested in a more coherent appearance. Individual brand profiling and system stands are not contradictory. The challenge in this case, however, is to design and play on the standardized material stage creatively and individually in the sense of the brand image. In individual cases, however, it may not be possible to rely on prefabricated systems, especially if, for example, you want to present yourself as a market driver and innovator who has everything to offer other than off-the-peg goods.

Who can do that?

If you see trade fair stands as part of brand management and brand communication, you should generally entrust the conception of a trade fair appearance not first to the stand builder but to your brand management partner. They will then develop a coherent basic concept for the trade fair in line with your brand identity and your specific goals and themes. The second step is to involve the stand builder for the implementation. You should definitely keep an open mind for additional impulses. Trade show appearances are teamwork. If the brand management partner also has expertise in sales support, events and team integration, then nothing stands in the way of a successful trade show appearance.

And in the end it should be said: We can do this. We will be happy to advise you