But, what does it mean to be ‘unique’ in this age of brands, likes and trends? How do you implement these ideas within your stand design? Learn from our many years of expertise in powerful designing, here are 10 ideas to let your stand design be a driving force to engage with your audience and provide them with an experience they’ll remember.
Preparation is Key
It is important to consider your exhibition strategy whilst creating a design for your stand. It is fundamental to ensure you truly reflect your brand and offerings to create a stand that will drive successful leads. Think about:
- Clear and consistent brand identity
- Planned and well defined exhibition strategy
- Consider bespoke videos and animation
- Integrating your marketing strategy
1. Appealing Graphics
Eye-catching visuals can elevate your exhibition game significantly. They possess the ability to either captivate individuals and draw them towards your stand or, if of poor quality, potentially harm your brand equity by failing to represent your brand’s ideals through design.
Images have a remarkable impact, as they are processed more quickly by people compared to words. They serve as catalysts for visitor recollection, making the smallest details essential.
2. Stand Location
Considering your stand location within your design can impact your results drastically. No matter what type of space you have, by taking advantage of the space, you can attract more people by standing out from the crowd.
Keep your stand design open, and eye-catching if you are operating in a small, congested area. However, if the area you are in is highly populated and busy, make your stand minimalistic and open, create a serene place for tired and overwhelmed visitors to take homage and relax.
Consider the customer journey as they work through the show, and adapt accordingly. Remember to consider your neighbours, the placement of competitors, any obstructive columns, and dead-end aisles.
3. Lighting
Set the ambience of your stand and, more specifically, how you want your brand to be perceived. Lighting is an underrated yet powerful aspect of your exhibition stand design, which allows your visitors to understand your brand personality intuitively.
Is your brand loud and energetic? Utilise a lit back wall to outshine your competitions. However, if you want your customers to feel relaxed and comforted, use warm, calm lighting to create such perceptions.
Again, it’s essential to consider location too; where do you vision your lights on your stand? How would it be a key part of your design? Downlights and spotlights may be best placed to be utilised for showcasing products or key messaging. Lamps, however, can create some atmosphere whilst on the exhibition stand.
4. Scents and Sounds
Sound can be just as effective as visuals for people wandering close to your stand. Whether it’s music, ambient sounds, sounds of nature or the sound of your product in action, it floods the senses and makes everything that little bit more real.
Scents can also be used to your advantage, to intrigue visitors beyond overbearing visuals within a crowded exhibition floor. For instance, emitting the scent of coffee if you have a coffee stand (bonus idea) can intrigue visitors to relax within the exhibition space.
You don’t want to disturb neighbouring stands, so keep it relatively low (it’ll help you speak, listen, and not work in overwhelming scent), and focus them into a small yet outer open area, which works perfect for all types of stands.
5. Digital Engagement
VR and AR components create a whole new dimension to your exhibition stand. From virtual tours, gamification, storytelling and interactive product demonstrations, utilising technology can maximise your space and give visitors a hands-on memory which they can enjoy as an experience, rather than just a brand’s selling point.
Whitespace Digital specialises in virtual and augmented reality production for events and exhibitions. Take a look at our work to be inspired on how you can create interactive experiences on your stand.
6. Photo Booths
Everybody loves a photo booth, and at a party – they’re the focal part of the event. So why not enhance that at your exhibition space?
Invite visitors to have their photo taken. In addition, ask them to create a caption for the photo that relates back to your brand. After the event, you can share these photos and captions online, or encourage them to post it to their social accounts, creating valuable User Generated Content. This allows people to share them, providing enhanced engagement and visibility outside of the event.
7. Q&A
Encourage your audience to ask questions via social media platforms and host a Q&A session throughout the exhibition to widen your audience and also improve communication between customer and brand both online and in person.
It also gives you valuable insight on your consumers regarding their thoughts, views, and questions on the brand, allowing you to customise approaches at the exhibition.
8. Shapes
Stand out through incorporating unique shapes, curves and unusual angles to draw people in. Not only does it diversify your appearance, but making it relative to your exhibition goals, more specifically how it relates to what you’re trying to sell, it can entice the right people to take a step inside.
The use of shapes can also relate back to how you want visitors to perceive your brand personality: does the uniqueness of shapes represent who your brand is?
9. Competitions
Sure, competitions are a commonly used tactic at exhibitions, there is always mileage for innovative competitions to take the stand. For example, incorporate social media networks prior to the event, and encourage people to get involved.
Brownie points if you can incorporate gamification to create interactive challenges, making an incentivised experience, rather than blending with the crowd. Additionally, continue the incentive by making sure the prize is something your visitors will want. Make it relevant to them and tie your offerings in, and you’ll be surprised by the result.
10. Games
Games are also a fantastic opportunity to encourage brand awareness, as well as a fun and creative way to implement customer engagement. Introduce a game that visitors can play when they visit your stand, and after the event, make it downloadable as an app (Check out our top 5 games for more ideas).
These will help you attract more people, and keep them engaged for longer. Why not display a scoreboard somewhere on your stand to encourage a competition between visitors?
Using interactive technology is even better! Remember, you want your visitors to keep a memory of your brand – and the unique experiences they had – make your content relevant and stand out from the crowd.
As professionals of exhibition stands, we understand the importance of creativity, and offer quality, modern and artistic modular exhibition stands as well as bespoke stands to meet our client’s needs. To speak to a member of our friendly team, please do not hesitate to contact us!