You need an exhibition stand that attracts visitors, starts conversations, and generates leads and sales. However, if your exhibition stand is not having this desired impact, there may be a few reasons why it is not working as you’d hoped.

As one of the UK’s leading exhibition design agencies, we have loads of experience in designing exhibition stands, so we know what works best as well as what you shouldn’t do. In this article, we highlight the key mistakes to avoid to ensure your exhibition stand is a success.

1. No Goals or Objectives

Having no goals or objectives will spell disaster from the start. Make sure you have clear goals and objectives for your exhibition stand. What goals do you want to achieve with your stand? Why are you attending the exhibition? What are your aims for the exhibition and stand?

Your goals will determine every element of the stand including the design, location, marketing, and strategy so you need to be clear on what you want to achieve and what success looks like to you. Whether this is to gain a set number of leads or to sell a number of products, your objectives are vital to measuring the success of the exhibition stand and improving for future exhibitions.

2. Wrong Exhibition

You stand might be amazing, but don’t just sign up for an exhibition because your competitors are there. You need to make sure the exhibition is where your target audience will be, otherwise you will be presenting to the wrong audience and they won’t engage with your offering and you will have wasted valuable time and money.

The exhibition needs to be the right fit for your business in order to generate leads, so research the exhibition before you sign up to make sure it’s right for you, and try to gain an insight into the audience to make sure they align with your values as a brand and are who you want to be appealing to.

3. Poor Stand Design

Your exhibition stand needs to attract customers, grab their attention, encourage them to interact with you, and generate leads and sales. However, a poor stand design will deter attendees and will not attract customers.

Ensure your stand design creates a strong first impression as it will be the first thing visitors will notice and decide whether to stop by your stand. Focus on an eye-catching design that communicates the central message of your brand and clearly states how your products and services can help solve customer problems.

Design your stand to appeal to your audience and keep them in mind at every stage of the process as your design needs to draw them in. Maximise space and optimise your stand layout for the customer journey with dedicated spaces and zones for demos or one-on-one discussions. Don’t cut corners with the design and skimp on quality as this will lessen the impact of your stand.

4. Unexciting Visitor Experience

Once you have attracted a visitor to your stand, you need to engage them with the hope of converting them from visitor to customer. You will do this by creating an immersive, interactive, and valuable customer experience.

This involves incorporating engaging displays, technology, lighting, exciting demonstrations, and thought-provoking content to create a lasting and memorable impression, spark intrigue, and start a conversation with the hope to engage and convert. A poor visitor experience can send visitors away without a chance of engagement and makes your brand forgettable.

5. Bad Location

Your location at the exhibition can affect your ability to attract visitors, communicate with your audience, and gain leads. You may have a fantastic stand but it is not having the desired impact if prospects cannot see it.

Hence, you need to book a good location in the exhibition hall so that you receive passing traffic and as many prospects see your stand as possible. You will need to get in early to reserve the best space, however, if you are stuck with a bad location, you can design an eye-catching stand for maximum visibility from any location in the hall so that you still attract attendees.

6. Wrong Staff

Your stand may look amazing and attract visitors, but without the right staff you will not maintain interest and encourage a conversation. Choosing bad staff can deter visitors and prevent you from gaining leads and conversions, and even ruin your reputation as a brand.

You need to choose the right staff to represent your business who are fully trained, professional, enthusiastic, motivated, and friendly without being annoying or overbearing. Ensure they are knowledgeable about your brand and are able to answer any questions clearly and confidently. Make sure your staff can start a conversation with prospects and passers-by and engage with visitors, educate about your brand, and achieve your aims.

7. Ignoring Marketing

You need to utilise marketing to make sure customers and prospects visit your stand. Start promoting your attendance at the exhibition months before the show starts using social media, newsletters, and website content to let audiences know the location of your stand and what they can expect to find such as products or demos.

You should also reinforce your stand with marketing materials such as brochures, leaflets and handouts that will emphasise your brand messaging and help audiences remember you, find out more, and contact you to learn more once they leave your stand.

8. Forgetting the Promotion

Don’t forget an incentive or giveaway at your exhibition stand. Exhibitions are awash with freebies, so don’t give away something boring that everyone else is offering like pens.

Promotions can be a great way to gain extra engagement and leads so choose something that’s relevant to your business and different to what everyone else is offering. But also consider whether giveaways and promotions support your overall strategy.

9. Not Following Up

A major mistake is not following up with the opportunities you have created at the exhibition. After all your hard work at the exhibition, don’t forget to follow up with leads or your opportunities and effort will be wasted.

Log and gather customer data during the show including name, company, contact info, which product or service they are most interested in, and how warm the lead is and use this to follow up. Don’t leave it too late to follow up as you need to stay fresh in a prospect’s mind, and work on nurturing those hard-earned leads.

10. Choosing the Wrong Company

Don’t choose the wrong company to design your exhibition stand or your exhibition stand will fail from the outset. Research and choose an experienced company like Open Exhibitions that will design, build, and install an exhibition stand to your requirements and budget that stands out, communicates your brand and messaging, and works to achieve your goals. Contact us now for more exhibition stand tips or to get started with your exhibition stand design.