Comparing Interactive Games To Other Trade Show Promotional Activities

While your ultimate goal in hosting a trade show promotional activity is to drive more booth traffic, that’s not the only thing exhibitors consider when making a buying decision.

While you can choose from a myriad of ways to pull people into your exhibit, only interactive games also meet several key purchasing criteria of many exhibitors. It might be like comparing apples to oranges. Let’s see how.

What Factors Matter To Exhibitors When Choosing Trade Show Promotional Activities?

Exhibitors consider many criteria when evaluating potential trade show promotional activities. These are several common features and benefits exhibitors value highly:

• Fun: Exhibitors know it’s ultimately attendees who decide which booths to enter. So exhibitors want their promotional activity to be fun so attendees will visit and stay in their booth.
• Customize To Brand: While lead generation is often the top reason exhibitors go to shows, #2 is usually to build brand awareness. So most exhibitors desire promotional activities that customize to their brand’s look and feel, with their brand colors, fonts, logos, and images.
• Tech-Based: Millennials are now the largest generation in the workforce. Plus, so many people are in love with their consumer technology. So, exhibitors want tech-based activities, because their attendees want them, too.  And many exhibiting companies also need a tech-based activity to reflect their own high-tech brand.
• Low-Cost: Exhibitors already spend so much on booth space, show services, staffer travel, and their exhibit structure. So exhibitors have a hard time investing in promotional activities, even if promos more than pay their way in more booth traffic. So exhibitors want more for less.
• Easy-To-Setup: Busy B2B marketers and trade show managers have little time to reinvent the wheel for each trade show. They need a promotional activity that doesn’t take many weeks or even months to program and arrange, nor require paid on-site handlers to babysit.
• Captures Leads: Sales leads – it’s why we exhibit! Yet too often, attendees participate in a promotional activity, only to slip away anonymously when they are done. Unless, you have a promotional activity that requires attendees to provide their own contact and lead qualifying data.

How Do Popular Trade Show Promotional Activities Perform On Key Buying Criteria?

These are some of the more popular choices exhibitors consider to create more buzz in their booth:

• Interactive trade show games: Games entice and amuse attendees to compete with their friends, colleagues, and even themselves, to demonstrate skill and luck, win prizes, and earn bragging rights.
• Entertainers: Exhibitors put the “show” back in the trade show business with magicians, artists, dancers, musicians, and more, to attract the attention of curious passers-by. Exhibitors need to ensure the attraction ties into their brand and marketing messages.
• Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality: VR submerges attendees within a 3D digital landscape seen inside VR headsets, while AR layers 3D digital objects over the real world as seen with iPads or smartphones. But they require large investments in time and money to design, build, and implement an activity customized to the exhibitor’s products and services.
• Food and Drink: Hospitality refreshes visitors who are hungry and thirsty, while the smell of coffee or fresh-baked cookies creates an invisible attraction, too. They can also make your booth messy, fail to make you look innovative, and not leave a memorable tie-in to your brand.
• Group Presentations: Exhibitors build a small theater inside their booth to tell their story with a polished presenter, amplified sound, big screen visuals, plenty of seating, and usually PowerPoint. You need an inhouse or hired expert to make your presentation compelling enough to sit through in a busy trade show.
• Charity Donations: Exhibitors appeal to trade show attendees by offering to make donation to one or more charities on attendees’ behalf if they visit their booth. Exhibitors must choose charities well that match their own brand plus appeal to their target audience’s demographics.

You know where this is going, right?

Only SocialPoint Interactive Trade Show Games Meets All These Key Buying Criteria

While all of these potential trade show promotional activities have their strengths and weaknesses, only interactive trade show games meet all these key buying criteria.

You get more than just booth traffic with SocialPoint. Our interactive trade show games are fun, customize to your brand, are tech-based, low-cost and easy to set up, and capture attendee lead data. So you get more of what you want for your trade show program. Orange you glad you did?

If you’d like to see more about how you can drive more booth traffic, keep attendees engaged longer, and capture leads with our fun interactive trade show games, click here to ask for a product demo. We’ll help you generate a serious increase in excitement, crowds, and leads.