Trade show displays are essential for any company’s presence at an event, but sometimes you just don’t have the budget or capacity to host the flashiest and biggest booth on the floor. As professionals who have been working in the trade show marketing industry for over 10 years, trust us when we say that size doesn’t matter when it comes to your event display. Here are four tips to help your small trade show show exhibit stand out.

1. Make the most of your exhibit space and design.

If you simply don’t have enough resources to pull together a large, flashy booth, start with the basics of appealing design. Simplify your marketing message to a short, bold statement and blast it out in a visually catchy manner using banners or television screens. You don’t need a lot of text or pizzaz, just enough to solicit the interest of a passerby and make them curious enough to step inside and ask for more.

2. Give away something useful or fun.

Consider stocking up on promotional items to hand out to your booth visitors, and/or investing in one large prize to give away to a lucky winner. These giveaways are important for two reasons: first, you can brand them with your company logo and website, leaving a memorable impression on each person who receives one. Second, you can gain valuable lead information if you require each visitor to hand in their business card in exchange for the giveaway. Check out over 700,000 promotional item giveaways here. Don’t want to hand out trinkets? Think about doing something simple and useful, such as setting up an iPhone docking station in your booth. That way, each professional who needs to charge their phone would be a prospective lead you could influence.

3. Use professional event staff, such as Lead Generators or Crowd Gatherers.

While your company’s staff might have the best technical know-how about your products and services, they may not be the most qualified for attracting people into your booth. Professional event staff are trained and experienced on how to sell and market products/services specific to a trade show environment.  How to meet, greet, and qualify in 90 seconds or less.  How to set short trade show sales cycles to maximize lead generation.  They also learn about your business, are attractive, intelligent, hard working individuals with outgoing personalities that tend to easily engage passersby’s and bring them into your booth. Need a more in-depth description of what event staff can do for you? Check out Vonazon’s staffing page!

4. Engage your audience by giving them a reason to come back for more.

If you design an enticing program that engages your visitors from the get-go, but gives them a reason to re-visit your booth multiple times, this is sure to be an impactful experience that won’t soon be forgotten! One idea is to host a scavenger hunt throughout the trade show floor; this could potentially involve your colleagues’ booths and help give exposure to everyone involved. Another idea is to change up your booth’s displays or giveaways each day, to keep your audience guessing.

Do you have other tips to help your small trade show exhibit stand out? Let us know in the comments below!