Tom, you don’t have to pay a fortune to get people to pay attention.

You can re-skin your booth. You can have a smaller trade show footprint (and in doing so have a smaller carbon footprint). You can use a small space to reduce your costs while keeping your booth packed with people, which looks better anyway.

Too many companies choose large booths because it’s a status thing. Look how big we are! That model just doesn’t work anymore. It’s not essential and it’s not cost-effective. Think about it like this: People will always cram into the smallest room at a party. The same psychology exists at a tradeshow. There’s nothing more depressing than a 50×50 booth with four people walking around … and three of them are the exhibitors. When you have a 10×10 and people are bumping into each other and crowding around a single kiosk or a single monitor to watch a demo, that creates a wow factor and the impression that “there’s something really exciting going on here!”

I say use a small footprint and then put more money into what’s going on IN your booth.  Consider a three-hour training session for your staff.  Then, create real excitement in your booth with a live presentation.  I’m seeing more live presenters than at any time in recent memory performing in the smallest booths at the show. At a recent trade show, the big players had 60×60s and 80×80s—enormous footprints with 12 kiosks. But there were a considerable number of big companies with booths as small as 8’ X 10’.  One had a magician. Another, a juggler. A third had a professional speaker on a podium telling a half-dozen different stories in rotation, with each mini-presentation lasting just a few minutes. Each one played to consistently large crowds.

At this same exhibit, our client had one of those 8’ X 10’ booths.  With a registration desk and two demo stations, that left virtually no room to spare.  I did my presentation on a small riser at the very edge of the booth, stopping attendees as they walked by.  I delivered a short, entertaining pitch to anywhere from 10-60 people per show.  Those people would then come into the booth, get their badges scanned and many would hang around and talk to our booth staff.

Our client for this three-day event got over 2,000 leads. Considering the size of the booth, they paid a heck of a lot less for their leads than the large booth next door.  And, they got much bigger bang for their buck.

So, no, you absolutely don’t have to have the biggest footprint at a show. If you make the biggest splash, create the most buzz and get the highest value for your investment, then that’s a success.  A big success.

Note from Ken: If you’re interested in booth re-skinning or a smaller,  more efficient booth design, a great resource is Tim Patterson with Interpretive Exhibits.

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