Thirty-Six Guerilla Marketing Tactics for Trade Shows

Virtual Conferences, Q&As, and/or Webinars via GoToMeeting or Facebook

Leverage a virtual event prior to the real-world one to demonstrate your expertise as a host, and to show your public how your products and/or services can help with their most pressing needs. To sweeten the deal and inspire higher attendance, you may offer them a freebie such as an eBook, an industry report, a list of helpful tips, or another item they may find valuable. This can help place your brand as the focal point in their minds when they show up for the event looking for solutions. Make sure to include a hard-to-resist call-to-action during this virtual event to make attendees excited to visit your booth at the real one.

Use Pre-Show Gameification to Engage the Public

Many businesses rely on gameification at the exhibits to generate more interest in their brand, and your business can gain a competitive edge as well if you choose to engage the public via email, social media, or a purposefully-designed app ahead of the time. The gameification can take various shapes, including but not limited to: interactive polls, surveys, assessments, quizzes, online promotions, etc.
If you also set up a web page for this purpose, it will invite more people to your website, generating an even louder buzz. Once this step has been completed, you should invite your audience to visit your stand at the event in order to get personalized recommendations based on their responses, to pick up small gifts, to watch a demo, or to otherwise engage with your brand.

Allow Your Employees to Run Your Social Media

Give your social media manager a break and allow your employees to take over. This can be a fun, engaging way to connect with your audience ahead of the event. The employee you choose should be someone approachable, friendly, and fun. They can offer behind-the-scenes information about your business and the upcoming even, they can tease your audience with new products and/or services, and they can respond to comments in a more personalized and engaging way.

Some of The Best Attention-Grabbing Tactics to Use at Your Next Event

Once you’ve succeeded at generating some pre-show buzz for your business, you can keep the momentum going with the following tactics –

Use Props

Props can be an incredibly fun and engaging addition to any presentation. You can include a giant pointer hand instead of a laser, or you may choose to add puppet animals to your presentation. Your limit is only your imagination.

Hand Out Unique Items

Trade show gifts are an amazing tool that helps companies make an impression on their audiences. You may choose to give them a unique and interesting item, which may come to be of use at the ‘gameified’ part of the presentation, or you may choose something utterly silly that is sure to make them laugh Most people tend to easily and fondly remember the situations and experiences that made them chuckle.

Install and Interactive Station

People simply can’t resist playing with interactive demonstrations, and you should take advantage of this. Build and install a sturdy device that fits the style of the exhibit, and have your audience go wild having fun with it.

Install a Selfie Station

People love taking selfies, we all know that by know. Provide your audience with a Hollywood red-carpet-style step and repeat banner or a fun cutout display to encourage them to take pictures.

Install a Chillax Spot

Free coffee and mobile phone charging stations are staples of most modern conferences, but how many brands have you seen provide their audience with a spot where they can play video games or simply watch some TV?

Gameification, Again

Send your audience on a scavenge hunt or present them with other kinds of interactive games, and don’t forget to give out prizes.

Offer Snacks

Lots of people skip breakfast or simply forget to eat when attending an event, so offering candy or snacks can be an excellent way to get them warmed up to your brand. If you can fit it in your budget, you should certainly consider including branded packaging.

Busk for Your Brand

Street performers, otherwise known as ‘buskers’, are the experts at drawing a crowd in. Hire a juggler, a musician, a magician, anything you like and think would fit your brand, and have them perform outside the venue, or in front of your booth, in order to draw people to you.

Hire a Celebrity Impersonator

Why have any regular person be the face of your brand at an important even, when you can have someone everyone already knows and loves?

Use Customgraphix Pop-Up Banners with Eye-Catching Designs

Many companies bring along their own banner stands to these events, but how many of them have you seen display actually interesting imagery? Stretch your creative muscle and get to work designing some unforgettable pop-up banners.

We already covered quite a lot of things you can do to boost your brand visibility at the upcoming corporate event/s. The ones we have already discussed are more than enough to help you step up your game by a considerable margin. However, you can always do better, and for those of you who really want their performance to be impeccable we have the following, additional tips:

– Create a contest to see who can get the highest number of shares from a post where they use your hashtag;
– Create a flash mob with performances or funny costumes;
– Hire a vendor to give out free hot-dogs or bags of popcorn outside of your booth or the venue with your brand featured on them;
– Stage mock battles with styrofoam weapons to draw attention;
– Allow people to print out postcards for friends and family at your stand;
– Hand out keys, don’t tell the audience what they are for, install a locked display elsewhere on the premises with a branded promotional diorama inside;
– Run a contest such as karaoke, eating, or video game challenges;
– Run interviews and create profiles of your individual attendees through your social media pages;
– Print false newspaper with humorous, exaggerated headlines and mentions of your brand. Set them out near normal newsstands;
– Gift your audience with wearable accessories such as slap bracelets, pin-on tails, or animal ears;
– Use Lego to construct a miniature version of your product or your headquarters;
– Sponsor pedicabs and other local service businesses to sport your logo near the venue;
– Purchase a tab at a nearby bar and have a contest to see who can discover it first;
– Make a mockery of common trade show failures by holding a horrible product demo that falls apart;
– Use chalk art outside of the venue to shine even more light on your brand;
– Hold surveys to learn about the interests and preferences of your audience, and use that information the upcoming year;
– Use mascot performers or mimes on stilts to break up the monotony of the convention floor;
– Have a creative, eye-catching booth design that resembles something familiar, such as mushroom, or a boot;
–  Offer valuable tips to your audience and/or give them ‘cheat sheet’ business cards or other handouts with your brand on them;
– Collaborate with another attending company to tout a humorous combination of both your brands;
– Create a challenge for the purpose of raising awareness about pressing issues;
– Stage an ARG game, such as mystery dinner or escape room. Involve actors and subtle clues;
– Take a page or two form the marketing ideas of other, bigger brands.

Draw Attention to Your Business with Customgraphix Banners and Graphix

Regardless of how innovative and creative your ideas are, you will need the help of the old-fashioned, sturdy, high-quality branding tools such as banners, pop-up stands, posters, graphics, etc. if you wish to stand out and appear truly professional.
You can contact us at Customgraphix Phoenix, Arizona to bring this vision to reality and ensure that your presence at the upcoming event or trade show can really make an impact. Our custom trade show banners simply demand attention, and are guaranteed to attract visitors to one’s display booth or any place such an attention is required. Our custom trade show banners sport a bold, professional look while clearly displaying one’s preferred graphics and/or message. Our custom trade show banners are produced out of the highest-quality material, using state-of-the-art printing technology which is always guaranteed t make one’s design stand out in the best way possible.
One shouldn’t risk their business’ reputation with unreliable printing agencies. Our Phoenix, Arizona custom trade show banners always guarantee the best quality possible. Our printing process is closely overseen by highly experienced and well-trained graphics technicians we are proud to have on our team. They are tasked with examining each coloration layer for accuracy and perfect reproducibility, and are continually referring to our client’s original image file for pixel-perfect design and color accuracy.