Today’s economy has had a profound impact on the amount most businesses are willing to spend on conferences, conventions and trade shows, yet most marketing research continues to show that having a presence at industry-specific events with a staffed trade show booth can be crucial to a business’ long term success. Balancing the cost of portable displays and tradeshow design in general against the higher cost of manufacturing, installing, storing and designing tradeshow stands is a difficult task at best. While many businesses are trying to trim the fat off their event marketing budgets, they don’t want to misstep and end up with a display that looks cheap and ends up sending the wrong message about their brand. Fortunately, there are tradeshow design professionals who are willing to give managers and CEOs some cost saving tips that will still allow you to have an impressive trade show booth at your next event!
Think Modular: Portable Displays Can Be Customized
For years, international corporations and regional companies have both believed that the surest path to recognition on the conference floor was to have a trade show booth that was custom crafted from the ground up. But the cost of a new design, new manufacture and replacement parts for a custom installation can be prohibitive. If you want the look of a “from scratch” display at a fraction of the cost, consider modular or portable displays. You can choose from dozens of frame designs and banner stands that are standard sizes and customize them with your own graphics and text. It can be as simple as removing one fabric panel and inserting a new one, saving you hours of design and build time.
Compromise (Wisely) On Booth Space
Sure, it’s great to have your trade show booth situated on the end of a busy row of exhibitors, but it’s not always worth the premium price you have to pay. While you don’t want a spot that’s going to be devoid of traffic, you may get more mileage out of an “average” spot in the center of an aisle that frees up more of your tradeshow design budget for giveaways or incentives.
Plan Further In Advance
It’s always difficult to plan everything for an event if you’re already working full time at your routine job tasks. In many situations, this means arranging the shipment of your portable displays and other elements at the last minute, when you’ll have to pay additional fees to get your shipment to the venue on time. To save money the next time around, arrange for shipment of your trade show booth far enough in advance so that you can use inexpensive ground shipping.
Minimize Print Media
Glossy brochures, expensive handouts and other elements of traditional tradeshow design have always been expensive, but the cost of design, color printing and delivery of heavy printed materials has sky-rocketed in the last few years. It’s estimated that less than 25% of these flyers ever make it out of the venue doors. So why bother in this digital age, when potential leads can easily access your information online. If you want to pass out something at your trade show booth, make it a simple, postcard or business card sized piece of literature with a few bulleted, key points about your company’s services and a pithy tagline with your URL along the bottom. If they can fit it in their pocket easily, they are more likely to take it with them as a reminder of your company. When they pull it out later, they’ll likely log on to your website whether it’s in their hotel room or after they return to their own offices.