3 reasons why people don’t stay at your booth

There are many reasons why people don’t stay at your booth. The lack of engagement by visitors is a marketeer’s worse nightmare. Everyone want visitors to have a great experience at their activities. Express interest in your products or activity.

In client meetings, we are often asked “What can be done to improve our engagement figures?” – before taking action we advise clients to first learn about the reasons behind existing challenges. Understanding the reasons why people don’t stay at your booth is key to address challenges and drive your booth back to success.

Today we take a look at the three main reasons why people don’t stay.

There is nobody to greet visitors

This is most likely part of the marketing 101 playbook. It’s so obvious and also by far the most overlooked reason behind why people don’t stay. If you ask store managers in retail, they will be the first to tell you: “take the initiative, go greet visitors that enter and ask how you can help” – even if they don’t want help!

Greeting new visitors is quite appropriate on trade shows, especially on the busy floor of a business trade show.

What we often notice is that greetings isn’t part of the pitch rehearsal. Saying hello is so simple and basic that it rarely get exposure in pre-event meetings. This results in a devastating impact on visitors conversion.

Our recommendations:

• Reach out to every single visitors who enters the booth.
• Find-out “fast” about what they want and direct them towards the most time-efficient solution.
• If you cross eyesight with someone that is obviously waiting for someone to reach out, don’t wait, go!

Remember,

“The longer you wait to break the ice, the more awkward the first contact will be.”

 

Too much stuff, it’s overwhelming

We’ve all heard the saying that goes “less is more”. But as soon as you prepare for your next show, every single product person in the company wants a piece of floor to showcase the latest and greatest their BU came up with.

Too often the process involves a great deal of internal politics and logistics at the expenses of simplicity and clarity for visitors.

“It’s too busy, I don’t know what I am suppose to look at!”

The second reason we identify as part of why visitors don’t stay is clearly about what is presented to them. It’s not an easy one to address, especially for large corporations in the consumer goods business, but this is a tough call you have to make to succeed. Clarify your message, streamline the experience and don’t overwhelm visitors with the unessential.

“An empty square foot of booth isn’t necessary a waste of money.”

 

Environmental noise

The devil is in the detail. When it boils down to the improvement of conversion ratios and engagement times, every detail matter to make visitor stay at your booth.  The looks and aesthetics is what makes a first impression, but sound is more subtile yet as important. Too often the audible environment gets greatly overlooked and it can in some cases greatly damage the visitor performance of a booth.

Noise on a trade show isn’t just about sound levels, but sounds in general. Sounds from the ad-hoc keynotes taking place, product demos and videos, sales reps doing their pitches and sadly sometimes the competitor next door with an annoying video on loop all day.

Booth design, and sound proofing placed strategically can help to moderate noise and create a much more enjoyable environment for visitors. Your booth could be a welcome refuge for visitors. Ask you exhibit house about this – they will able to help and advise on solutions adapted to your next show.

 

Final words

We hope that this article helps identify areas of opportunity at your booth. Place yourself in the shoes of a lambda visitor and try to imagine their feeling as they aim for your stand.

Finally, make sure to use proven technology to precisely measure trade show ROI and visitor engagement – contact us to learn more.