To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of the tradeshow have been greatly exaggerated. Tradeshows are still a great way to network, form partnerships and relationships, and introduce your business to new customers. Their reputation has slipped a bit because they can be expensive, attendance is down, and some exhibitors treat the whole thing as a bit of a vacation, putting in minimal effort and boring the pants off of attendees. If you put in some effort before, during, and after the show, however, you can have a (personally, professionally, and financially) rewarding experience.

Here are 5 tips for a winning tradeshow experience.

1)     Start promoting your stand before the show.

According to tips on Exhibitor Central, your preparation can start six months before the show, which is about when you should start thinking about what promotional media you’re going to use. This is a good time to design a logo that suits your stand’s theme. It doesn’t need to be fancy; for example, if you’re going to promote your new eco-friendly range of products then you could wrap a vine of green leaves around your existing business logo.

With four of five months to go you should have ironed out your email and direct mail marketing list. You should also be working on the content for the broadcasts that you’ll be sending out. Don’t forget about in-store promotions during the lead-up to the show. Flyers and brochures are old standards but aren’t likely to generate huge interest. Do something a little different, like the company that gave out bags of pineapples, complete with tips on what to do with the fruit, to suit their Hawaiian-themed booth.

2)     Interactive is in, static is out

The days of flat walls and tables with banners, posters, brochures, and samples are over. Now, you need to be interactive if you want to catch attention. At the very least, you need a TV or two with a promotional slideshow or mini-movie. But you really ought to make your displays more interesting than that.

So, using the eco-friendly product line as an example, you can set up your display on different levels, with each level joined by winding creepers or vines (like your logo) and decorated by pot plants and perhaps a trendy desk water fountain and Zen garden or two. Have some background noise to create some ambience, like bird song or a babbling brook. Have a diffuser that releases a soft, natural fragrance. Engage every sense you can think of and you’ll make your stand truly memorable.

3)     Use bribery

People love free stuff, so give away free stuff. You can be boring and give away pens, but that’s hardly going to raise a blip on anyone’s interest-meter. Think pineapples. In other words, think of something different.

Back to our eco-example; if it’s an eco-cleaning product, you could give away grass- or mud- or other-muck-stained t-shirts with a sample of the product, and invite people to put it to the test. You need to be absolutely confident that it will work, however. And you need to ensure that the t-shirt is decent enough so that people will actually want to wear it afterwards.

If you’re not that confident in your product (then shame on you), you can give away something related to it, like a goodie bag made from recycled canvas (which can double as a shopping bag) and which contains things like fair trade chocolates, organic vegetable seeds, and a coupon for your product.

4)     Give serious thought to your stand.

Your stand and not your display. You need to know things like access to power points, lighting conditions, position relative to entrances and exits, and your location. Your location is important because corner and standalone stands should be planned differently to stands wedged between other exhibitors. You also need to know the size of the stand so that you can plan which display units to bring. These days, you can get customisable display systems that you can adjust to suit stands of just about any size. Modern materials, like tension fabric and aluminium frames, are easy to setup and shift around, so you can make some last minute adjustments to your stand if you find that there was a mix up with the specs, or if the design you had in mind doesn’t quite work in practice.

5)     Choose the right people.

Exhibitor Central makes another important point: Your booth is only as good as your representative staff. Remember that a good salesperson doesn’t necessarily make a good booth showperson. It could be that your chatty and winsome receptionist is the best candidate to represent you at a tradeshow. You’ll want to give her some additional training, of course, but the lesson is: Don’t close your eyes to people’s potential.

There is no reason why, with the proper preparation, you can’t make attending a tradeshow fun for you, your staff, and your customers. And, a fun experience can turn into a lasting customer relationship.

Our guest blogger, Jemima Winslow is a tradeshow junkie. She loves exploring stands, trying samples, and challenging staff with intentionally tricky questions. She’s the reason you want to choose and train the right staff. And she’ll definitely take you up on the clean t-shirt challenge.