Many small business owners make an attempt to create their own layouts for their initial trade show display. This makes perfect sense because most small business owners are used to doing everything themselves and like the idea of saving a buck when possible. At the same time they may not be sure that trade show marketing is going to help their overall marketing effort. It is often a catch 22 because they are not sure whether it will help, so they try to cut corners to save money on their display which in turn will probably causes their trade show marketing result to show diminished returns. I deal with this more often than not on a daily basis.
Obviously, the best scenario would be to hire a professional to do the entire layout. However since that routinely doesn't happen I'm going to provide a road map for designing your first trade show display layout.
The essentials -
The following are the essentials of trade show display layouts.
1) Design your display for you most important prospect. It should be determined if the audience is varied and general or singular and specific.
2) The 3 primary considerations need to be: WHO are you? WHAT do you do? Say it or show it in 10 SECONDS or less! Keep in mind that most trade shows are like miniature interstate highways with billboards. As people survey the show they have a limited amount of time to spend at any particular booth. So two things happen - when they view your display they either know it is something that they need or do not need, or they aren't sure what it is you do. If its the latter that is just the same as determining that they do not need what you do. This is because there will plenty of people there that they can make the determination about quickly and will spend their time with those exhibitors.
3) Graphics (Photographs or line art) are used to attract attention primarily or set a mood. Copy is used to get across the points.
