Bob Sperber, Editor, Branded Content

Your next big trade show is approaching and you're doing all you can to reach attendees. You'll promote your participation to customers with website and newsletter updates and also reach out to prospects you hope will attend the show — and specifically, your booth.

You'll also be considering at-show tactics to help generate traffic in various ways, which range from educational to entertaining:

Live presentations and events at your booth or in pre-reserved show stages. You can schedule multiple events during the show. Informative presentations can feature company experts, outside industry experts, or high-profile customers. In some cases, trivia games or game-show formats that feature general or industry-specific content can work, and prizes can be offered — creating a "show within a show" experience.

Interactive demonstrations can add first-hand engagement to your booth experience. Visitors who can’t handle products or equipment can still use touchscreens as mini-kiosks to interact with your solutions. Motion-activated displays and immersive AR/VR (augmented or virtual reality) demonstrations that can also be shown onscreen may also be worth considering.

Fun and games in the form of giveaways and contests can entice traffic with perks of value to prospects while promoting your brand — and booth presence. You can promote hourly drawings or contests that require booth visits to participate. You can also create photo opportunities tied to your (or their) LinkedIn/social account to promote your brand using hashtags that can also be tied to post-show giveaways.

Strategic snacks and refreshments are a tried-and-true way to give your traffic a bump. While not highly targeted, they can be used "strategically" during slower periods to provide an icebreaker that may lead interested parties toward your booth, where they will have a chance to ask questions that may result in useful leads.

Trained, engaged booth staffing isn't flashy but is the core of guiding visitors to and through your booth. Keep knowledgeable representatives on hand who can listen to specific questions and answer them directly, avoiding scripted or overly general presentations. Also, train junior staffers and temporary booth personnel and rotate booth shifts to keep them energized and enthusiastic.

Once at the show, wouldn't it be great to get the word out on these activities using digital ads, especially if they could be targeted to reach and remind your most valued prospects to visit your booth? Funny you should ask! Thanks to geofencing, exhibitors have now begun to do this.

In the context of our trade shows, geofencing creates a virtual perimeter around the event and can trigger messages on mobile devices to those within the perimeter. It uses technologies including physical GPS beacons to set up a geofence up to a mile around the trade show venue (depending on the event's size) along with cellular technology.

Together, the combination of these technologies allows exhibitors to reach highly targeted attendees for the duration of the event, wherever they are when they access the web on their smartphones or mobile devices — morning, noon, and night. In doing so, this advertising technology allows exhibitors to:

• Deliver ad messages to attendees while they're at the show and the surrounding area.
• Deploy ads over the mobile web wherever they are at or near the event, from the show floor or with their team checking news, sports, weather, or "Googling" restaurants to discuss the next booth they'll visit.
• Craft messages more specific to the show to remind attendees of your show news, demos, presentations, prize giveaways, and other at-show happenings.

All of these benefits bear consideration in your trade show marketing mix, especially for those seeking not just to improve booth traffic, but to attract the highest-value prospects. In 2025, exhibitors have successfully deployed this technology at shows under the Informa Markets – Engineering umbrella.

For more information, contact your current IME representative or Rachel Flow, Custom Digital Sales Manager, at rachel.flow@informa.com or via phone at 470-936-4377.