Businesses participate in exhibitions and tradeshows to enhance their brand visibility and to generate more business. Especially businesses operating in Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi and broader UAE proactively participate in such events. The country is a home to hundreds of international and local exhibitions, attractive millions of visitors every year. The UAE is one of the most favorite travel and tourism destination in the entire Middle East, which make these exhibitions and tradeshows more impactful. Exhibitions and trade shows like GITEX, Arab Health, Arabian Travel Market, Middle East Energy, Automechanika Dubai, Abu Dhabi International Boat Show, and many more are among some of the largest tradeshows in the entire world.
This means that businesses who are participating in such events have great potential to leverage the large volume of highly targeted audience from these events. Every event, exhibition or tradeshow is designed for a specific industry sector, which means that it will attract highly focused and relevant audience. For example, the people who are interested in Arab Health would be mostly from healthcare sector and people who are interested in GITEX would be mostly from the tech sector. That is why businesses regularly participate in such events and exhibitions. In this blog we will discuss how your exhibition stand kiosk can greatly improve your return over investments of participating in any such event.
How Exhibition Stand Kiosks Can Boost Your Trade Show ROI
Capturing Attentions in a Crowded Exhibition Hall
For any exhibition or tradeshow the most important thing is capturing the attentions. An out-of-the-box and innovative design approach will help you winning half the battle, but the rest of the half can be achieved by utilizing the advanced technology-backed strategies. A unique design always attract attendees, but will it be just a look or walk-in? That is a bit tricky, a perfect exhibition stand kiosk creates enough appeal to attract people to come in, talk to you staff or just interact with your interactive screens, tablets, etc. The success and effectiveness of your exhibition stand kiosk depends on number of interaction you have with the visitors and what impression you made on everyone. Businesses does have very specific goals, such as product promotion, brand awareness, lead generation, etc. But the route to success is the same.
In this modern day and age, technology is everywhere and everyone like digital interactions. Apart from the exhibition stand design, offering digital technologies such as digital signage screens, interactive kiosks and ipads, live product demos, etc. can greatly improve the conversion rate. On an average a business can generate a market qualified lead (MQL) out of every 7-8 interactions at a medium sized event, however, a well-trained staff can increase it to 2-3 leads as well. That is way too high comparing to any other traditional marketing channel. Attracting visitors is one thing, but converting them to lead or capturing lead data is the real return over your investments. This is where the technology steps in, businesses should utilize modern digital technologies to boost their ROI for any trade show.
Capturing Attentions in a Crowded Exhibition Hall
Here are the key factors that will help you capturing attention in a crowded exhibition hall:
- Visual Impact and Branding: Clear and consistent branding, bold colors, high-contrast graphics, digital signage, unusual design elements, and a balanced blend of visuals and art work will help you attract visitors from a far distance.
- Layout and Design: The layout also depends on the allocated size of your floor plan. However, an open design, with multiple entrances and selection of right materials are good for higher footfall. For large floor plans you can adopt a pathway design for seamless visitor flow.
- Lighting: This is the most crucial yet underrated aspect of exhibition kiosk designing. A good light combination can not only attract visitors, but also help setting up their mood. Strategically placed spot lights help highlighting important elements. Avoid excessive use of flashy and colored lights.
- Digital Experience: Digital signage screens, interactive kiosks/tablets, AR/VR, gamification, contests, visitor management kiosks, quizzes, surveys, QR Codes, and social media integration will greatly boost the visitor engagement and these tools will also help you easily collect lead data.
- Messaging & CTA: Communicating your value preposition is crucial, use visible taglines, headlines, graphics and leverage digital media. Use digital interactive kiosks to collect lead data, provide downloadable content, allow sharing to email or WhatsApp, or book a demo, etc.
- Social Media Integration: Embrace the social media, share your social media profile handles, leverage brand-specific hashtags, share QR Codes to allow visitors to directly go to your profiles and pages, and offer them some incentive. Integrating your exhibition stand kiosk with digital marketing strategy can add great value to your ROI.
- Hospitality & Comfort: Offer comfortable seating, people love to find a seat at a busy exhibition hall. Offer charging stations, refreshments, etc. to encourage longer stay. Leverage ambient lighting, light music, scents, etc. to reduce the fatigue and make a comforting environment.
- Well-Trained Staff: Your staff should be very well-trained, they should be approachable, knowledgeable and very proactive to engage the visitors. Use tablets, NFC Business Cards, and QR Codes/Barcodes to quickly capture lead data without overwhelming the visitors.
These are a few most important factors that businesses should consider while preparing their exhibition stand kiosk. A good presentation, well-crafted graphics, well trained staff and interactive kiosk for digital experience will not only help you get the attracting of the visitors, but it will also make you stand out among other exhibitors.
Be On-brand and Grab Attention
Turning Visitors into Leads
For any exhibition or tradeshow the exhibitor had some very specific goals. The success of their exhibition depends on two key aspects, the first is attracting the visitors and standing out of the crowd. The other aspect is to be able to convert those visitors into leads. This is a bit tricky, and most of the time businesses lost valuable opportunities because of inefficient conversion methods. Here are some tips to improve your lead conversion strategy by well-thought designing work and smart strategies:
- Seamless Data-Collection and Personalized Follow Ups: Leveraging a digital tool, such as interactive touch-screen kiosk, tablets, QR Codes/Barcode reader, online forms, etc. can be very useful. Using these channels is convenient and quick and these can be integrated with CRM as well. Once the lead data is captured, tag it and add additional information such as interest level, focused product/service, etc. Then within 24-48 hours follow up with a personalized email, referring to their interaction at your exhibition and offer them some incentive to engage them.
- Focus on Brand Impact and Recognition: Using consistent messaging, attractive taglines, striking visuals, catchy digital signage and bold color pallets are ideal to make your brand stand out. When your branding is done right, the visitors will get a great positive impression. This impression is the key component in converting visitors into leads. A good brand impression will not only make your brand recognizable, but it will also help you gain the trust of the visitors. A dull a sloppy branding will not only repel visitors but it will harm your brand reputation as well.
- Integrating Advanced Technologies: Leveraging advanced and cutting edge technologies will not only help you attract more visitors, but it will facilitate the lead data collection process. Technologies such as Customized Digital Kiosks, AR (Augmented Reality), VR (Virtual Reality), Digital AI-Powered Chatbots or Customized AI Agents can help you interact with maximum prospects. The AR/VR are ideal for demos and immersive experiences. Moreover the customized AI Agents equipped with your product knowledge can help you presenting your products are services more efficiently.
- Creating the Most Memorable Experience: The exhibitors regularly participating in exhibitions and tradeshows in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah or broader UAE are well aware that it is not only just about creating a good experience, but the interaction should be the most memorable than all others. Visitors usually remember only 3, 4 interactions after a few weeks of the exhibition. That is why creating the most memorable visitors experience is important. Offering souvenirs, gifts, exclusive content and an immersive experience will make your exhibition stand kiosk more memorable.
- Tailoring Your Exhibition Stand Kiosk to the Audience: Every exhibition and tradeshow is different and somewhat unique. Every tradeshow, exhibition or vent carries a unique theme and tend to attract a few very specific audience type. Thus you should carefully consider this while designing your exhibition stand kiosk or booth. Moreover your location in the exhibition hall also matters, and its an important factor to consider in exhibition stand designing process. Modular designs are excellent and offer more flexibility, and can be easier to customize to align with your targeted audience.
A well thought-off exhibition strategy will help you squeeze the most out of your participation. These simple tips will even help enhancing the impact of a small exhibition stand. Every business have different priorities, some might be interested only in lead generation, some might focus more on brand awareness, some might want to present their new products, and some might want to find more business partners, etc. No matter what your primary objective is, you must be able to deliver a memorable experience with exceptionally great brand impression to maximize the ROI.
Turning Visitors into Leads
Conclusion
Businesses proactively participate in exhibitions and tradeshows to maximize their brand awareness and to promote their products/services. Every exhibition or tradeshow is different from others, thus these events attract a highly concentrated audience group. Businesses participating in exhibitions and tradeshows can greatly improve their ROI with a well-crafted exhibition stand kiosk and a blend of technology and strategies. However, when it comes to the cost, participating in exhibitions can be very expensive. You must have to build a great exhibition kiosk, integrate technology and digital tools, pay for the rent and sometime businesses also have to hire professional staff. All this is to maximize the impact, outcome and ROI of participating in the exhibitions and tradeshows.
See Also: The Future of Visitor Management: Digital Badge Kiosks
In order to maximize the ROI the simplest way is to minimize the cost and maximize the outcome. Regardless of what your core objectives are, the gameplay remains the same. If you want to minimize the cost, you must have to adopt to modern technology and best designing practices. If you want to increase the outcome, then you must have to attract more visitors to your exhibition stand kiosk. In this blog we have covered the key aspects of designing and planning your exhibition stand kiosk which will help you attract more visitors. We have also discussed the key elements of lead conversion strategy. If you want to learn more of if you want our help, please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us form or leave a comment down below and we will get in touch with you soon.