Experiential marketing applied to trade show booths
Experiential marketing is gaining more and more importance: many companies, to make their marketing strategies effective, have chosen not to start from the product to develop a sales strategy but to start from the customer’s experience.
Experiential marketing is the branch of marketing that focuses on the experience perceived and lived by the customer during the decision-making and subsequent purchasing process.
Experiential Marketing can also be used in trade shows, especially as a tool to stand out during industry events where competition is fierce and innovative methods must be leveraged to attract the right target audience of potential customers, partners, and suppliers.
The goal of experiential marketing is not direct sales but building stronger relationships, stimulating the senses, aiming to achieve the final objective.
This may mean collecting leads for the sales team or laying good foundations for profitable partnerships.
Providing a memorable experience to booth visitors has become indispensable.
People at trade shows are overwhelmed with messages, information, and content, making it difficult for them to choose where to focus their attention.
Companies that want to stand out must focus on emotions and experience, and the trade show booth is their most powerful asset to achieve this.
As professional booth designers, we continuously update ourselves, researching innovations, systems, tools, technologies — everything that can help us create setups capable of proactively and effectively moving emotions, not just for show.
The booth as an engagement tool, not just an exhibition space
To beat the competition, companies need to engage people: those who do it gain an advantage, but those who do it using the right levers are the true winners of the battle.
How can experiential marketing be leveraged at trade shows to succeed?
First, it always starts with an experiential project; every detail, element, message, communication, colour, image, video — everything must be created with the goal of evoking specific emotions and experiences.
These experiences must properly stimulate people and lead them to interact with the company during the trade events.
What types of experiences can be created and leveraged?
- Aesthetic experiences — related to the perceived beauty of the booth, careful design study, blend of lights and colours, ability to use the surrounding environment to create an aesthetically pleasing and effective booth;
- Passive experiences — those the visitor “undergoes” once inside the booth, such as background music and sounds, perceived scents, images, and videos;
- Active and immersive experiences — deriving from the interaction between the booth and the visitor, using technology to communicate, touch screen totem displays, augmented and virtual reality, staff engagement — all elements creating a direct and active experience with the audience.
The right mix of experiences is the foundation of success for companies at major trade shows: each must be calibrated, thought out, and designed to be part of the booth and work towards achieving objectives.
From our recent successes, we can confidently say the experience that can never be missing today is video, where cutting-edge technologies allow creating true Hollywood-style short films with unparalleled image quality and emotional impact.
To emotionally engage visitors in our clients’ booths, we often install high-performance LED wall video solutions.
Through audiovisual communication, we propose messages that create a unique experience for both visitors and exhibitors.
Emotional videos dedicated to the company's soul, products, and services from a highly emotional perspective are just some experiences this solution can offer.
Videos capture visitors' attention, are an indispensable communication tool today in companies’ trade show marketing strategies because they can emotionally engage even in the most technical fields
The use of emotional videos is one of the most important aspects of applying experiential marketing in trade show setups, but they are not the only tools, as we have seen.
Every single element must be skilfully used, perfectly combined in the overall strategy, and have a defined goal to create a unique experience.
We handle this daily: creating solutions that are beautiful but not self-serving, that evoke positive emotions, allowing companies to establish effective contact with visitors and thus achieve the expected return on investment.
