Going to exhibit at a conference or trade show is a huge opportunity to showcase what your company is all about. By strategically thinking about conference booth design, you’ll be able to tell the story of your product or service, get people’s attention and interest, and ultimately, drive sales.

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5 steps to design an outstanding booth

Last week I was at the Babyboom Salon with my side-project, Wall By Numbers. It’s a mural painting activity that we co-create with the parents based on their ideas. It’s a really cool activity that was a great fit for a live event, because it’s fun, colourful and interactive. Here are the 5 steps I used to design a booth that shared the mission of Wall By Numbers, engaged the attendees and created connections.

Step 1: Think about your audience, their wants, needs and desires

When you are designing your booth, you should always start by thinking about your audience. What are they looking for, what kind of problems do they have and how does your product/service solve that problem? It’s also very helpful if you think about how you want them to feel after an interaction with your booth. Do you want them to feel excited, well-informed, curious, do you want to teach them something?

In the case of Wall By Numbers, I wanted the young parents to feel excited about decorating their baby’s room and get in a creative mood. I wanted them to start thinking about how they can get ready for this new family they are creating and how mural painting can be a gift they offer to their baby  and themselves.

Step 2: Your product/service should be front and center

Whatever you offer, whether it’s a product or service, it has to be clearly visible and instantly understandable. If there is a possibility for people to interact with it, even better!

A while ago, I designed a booth for a science conference and the client wanted to showcase their projects. They had a great idea show showcase them as a little “library”, where people could “rent” a story, read about it, and “return it” to the library. Any subject, no matter how abstract, can be presented in a fun and engaging way, we just need to think a little bit out of the box.

For Wall By Numbers, the whole idea is that we paint a wall in the client’s house, so it was evident that I somehow needed to recreate this activity in the conference setting. With he help of a few canvases and two-sided tape, I was able to mimic the experience so that people could try out exactly what it is.

Step 3: Have a “playbook” or customer journey that you take the attendees through

It helped me a lot to have a sort of “playbook” or customer journey because I knew exactly what I need to say. First, activity, then explanation, then call to action. It doesn’t need to be a complicated journey, and you certainly don’t need to become a robot, but it helps if it’s similar for everybody. If you have more than one product or service, you might need to make the journey a little bit longer, or have two or more separate journeys and decide which one you propose based on what the clients is most interested in. 

Step 4: Decoration is not an afterthought, it puts people in the mood

Decoration may seem like an extra step you would want to skip, but I think it actually matters a lot. These conference booths basically look all the same, so adding the appropriate decoration will make your booth stand out, which is what you are going for. For each booth, decoration will be something different, it can be photographs of past work, posters that explain your process or colourful illustrations. Whatever it is, try to make it as visual as possible, but no need to go overboard either. Using too much decor can backfire, so try to be strategic and strive for a good balance.

Step 5: Make it interactive

This step is crucial in my opinion. Whatever you do, you want to create a situation where the audience can interact with your product or service. In the case of Wall By Numbers, this was rather obvious because I wanted the attendees to actually try painting. But whatever you offer, there are countless ways to turn it into an interactive activity.

One solution that I did back when designing the booth for the science conference was creating a huge collaborative drawing that showcases all the different activities of the client, that people could colour in. It was a mindful thing participants could do, it was unexpected as this is kind of a novel idea, and it allowed people to meet each other and get in the mood of learning more about the different projects. If you need help with coming up with interactive ideas, feel free to get in touch as that’s on of my special skills.

+1: Dare to be different

This is an age-old marketing strategy that you are probably familiar with, and it really works. You might not know how to do it at first but investing some time in coming up with ideas that can help you stand out are well worth the effort. My suggestion? Visuals and fun, these two always work!

If you are looking for a designer to help you create an outstanding booth, feel free to reach out, I’d be up for the challenge!