The Importance of High-Impact Graphics

Trade show graphics are the most important part of any trade show booth. It doesn’t matter if you own the best exhibit in town if your graphics cannot effectively communicate your message to attendees and visitors. At MODdisplays, we put a strong emphasis on designing and producing the best trade show graphics on the market.

Whether you’re looking for brand new graphics to go with your display, or replacement graphics for an older display, our graphics department can help you produce well-designed and properly formatted trade show graphics. We work with large graphic houses across the country to produce pop up display graphics, fabric graphics, and outdoor graphics that are guaranteed to remain vibrant for as long as you own your trade show exhibit.

We staff graphic designers who are ready to help you format and design your graphic files. Our designers have a great deal of experience in the trade show marketing industry, and they have been trained to understand what works and what doesn’t work at trade shows. This experience will prove to be an invaluable asset when designing your trade show graphics. On average, we find that clients are much more pleased with their exhibiting experience when they use our in-house graphic services.

Location, Location, Location

Just as in real estate, the location of your trade show booth is one of the most important factors in your success when exhibiting at a trade show. The decision about where to set up camp will determine how much traffic your exhibit receives as well as the quality of that traffic. Why waste thousands of dollars to exhibit at a high-traffic trade show and then tuck your booth away in a dark corner?

When buying a home, families often look for low traffic areas that are conveniently located. When planning a trade show, it is not always best to be in high-traffic areas (e.g. right beside the entrance or exits or right beside the bar area). The best locations are areas that are relatively low traffic, but are receiving the kind of traffic you are looking for.

Upon entering the trade show floor of an American exhibit hall, most attendees go immediately to their right and visit the trade show booths in a counter-clockwise fashion. This is the natural motion for attendees because they are trained to walk on the right side of sidewalks and drive on the right side of the road. For this reason, the aisle furthest to the right is usually very crowded with new arrivals, and can get very congested. While this is a great opportunity for exposure, it reduces your ability to effectively communicate with potential clients.

It is also important to take a look at the exhibitors who have already reserved booths. Visitors to the trade show will get an impression of your trade show booth that is largely based on the surrounding displays. If you can position yourself between exhibitors that have low marketing budgets and poor graphic design capabilities, your trade show exhibit will stand out like a gem. However, if you find yourself positioned between two marketing giants, your booth will be dwarfed and lose its power.

In my opinion, the best place to be at a trade show is in the middle of the second aisle from the right, nestled comfortably between two trade show marketing duds. This way you are one of the first stops on the route of attendees, your booth area is free from overcrowding, and you can stand out as a highly professional exhibitor.

Pre-Show Mailers

Exhibiting at trade shows is a great way to make new business contacts, but you must take a proactive approach to ensure that visitors to your trade show booth leave with a good impression of your company. Sending e-mails or hard copy brochures to attendees before the show begins will drastically increase the number and quality of visitors to your trade show exhibit area.

One of the biggest mistakes exhibitors make is that they do not understand the level of effort that individuals and businesses put into attending a trade show. Most attendees are not just aimlessly wandering the trade show floor (although it may seem that way at times). Most visitors arrive with a detailed map of the trade show floor and a well designed plan that describes which booths they need to attend and how much time should be spent with each exhibitor. Visitors travel great distances to attend trade shows, and they need to get the most out of their investment. If you begin exhibiting with the belief that visitors are aimlessly walking around your trade show, you are already one step behind your competition.

Pre-show mailers will help you get a star by your name on the attendees’ trade show floor map. Highlighting your trade show display before the show even begins can help your booth become a destination that visitors look forward to. You need to ensure that your company’s brand is in the mind of the attendees while they are making their plan, and not just when they are executing the plan.

Trade Show Lighting

When exhibiting at a trade show, you are essentially creating an environment to attract and meet potential clients. The trade show lighting you choose will play an important role in creating that environment. Your lights need to be bright enough to attract visitors to your booth, but not so harsh that your visitors feel uncomfortable when they arrive. It can be difficult to strike this delicate balance, but a properly lit trade show booth space is much more likely to generate positive ROI for your company.

Because your trade show booth acts much like a mobile showroom, lighting your trade show display is a lot like lighting a showroom space. Lights need to be strategically placed and directed to highlight specific parts of your display and hide other parts. You want to place the majority of your emphasis on making your company’s brand and logo memorable, but you may also choose to highlight specific products or prototypes.

There are countless lighting options available to enhance your trade show marketing campaign. LightCraft is the foremost manufacturer of trade show lighting in the United States, and Lumina lights are the most popular choice among exhibitors looking to illuminate banner stands or tabletop displays. In addition to typical lighting solutions, many of our trade show displays come with built-in lighting options. The Exhibit One line of displays come with a canopy that contains recessed lighting. We also offer light boxes for trade shows, and backlit popup towers. Creative lighting choices help to ensure that your trade show display stands out at the next convention.

If you need advice setting up your trade show lighting, please give us a call. Our trade show marketing specialists are able to help you determine your lighting needs and create a solution that works well for you. Call MODdisplays toll free at 1.877.MOD.EXPO (1.877.663.3976), or e-mail sales@moddisplays.com.

Monitor Mounts for Trade Show Displays

Multimedia is quickly becoming a more important part of trade show exhibiting. Many of the displays we sell at MODdisplays support monitor mounts, which means you can easily attach a large flat screen monitor to your display without having to purchase after-market hardware. Our Exhibit One displays and Alumalite displays both support monitor mounts (all Alumalite displays come with a free 19″ monitor with the purchase of your monitor mount).

Many companies need to use their trade show displays to show off a new website or piece of software. How is that possible with a traditional trade show display booth? Popup displays do not support monitor mounts without the addition of after-market hardware, and the monitor mounts that do work don’t give you the professional look you want from your trade show booth. Multimedia is quickly becoming a bigger part of exhibiting strategies, so be sure to stay on top of the trends.

Staffing Your Trade Show Booth

Some of the biggest and most obvious exhibiting mistakes are made in the area of staffing. Companies will often send top executives to conventions instead of sales personnel or marketing specialists. The trip to the trade show is often presented as an executive perk instead of an important job.

When staffing your trade show display booth, you need to consider who will have the greatest impact on your ROI. Not only does it cost you more to send a top executive to a distant trade show, but top executives usually lack the skill set needed to broker deals and handle problem clients on the trade show floor. Trade shows should be viewed as an investment of time and money in the hopes of producing results, not as a pleasure ride for executives.

Choose young, athletic, energetic people to staff your exhibit booth. Trade shows are physically demanding, and you need people who can stand on their feet for eight hours or more in one day and not be exhausted. Choose motivated people that are excited about the products and/or services you are promoting at your trade show. Choose wisely, and your bottom line will thank you for it…

Dye Sublimated Fabric

Every trade show display is designed to catch the attention of passing attendees and visitors. Why not branch away from the industry standard pop up display and do something different? Dye sublimated graphics are the newest trend in the portable trade show display industry, and they are a great way to legitimize your company. If your company looks legitimate and professional, clients are much more likely to purchase your products or contract your services.

The process of dye sublimation is very interesting. In this process, your image is essentially burned into a durable, washable fabric graphic that is guaranteed to resist wrinkling and fading for as long as you own your display. These graphics are usually much simpler to set up than typical trade show graphics.

For more detailed information about the graphics offered in the portable trade show industry, visit our website at http://www.moddisplays.com. We offer trade show advice and product reviews from major display producers to help you figure out the best products to purchase.