Many business owners head to trade shows in order to develop their brand and raise their profile. Businesses use tradeshows as a medium to network, connect, and impress. They hope to secure orders for items, add people to their mailing list, and distribute business cards as if they were carpet dropping them from an aircraft. However, even with all of these intentions correctly calibrated from the offset, it’s not always a complete guarantee that this will happen.

If your trade show is struggling to pick up steam, you might assume the worst. You might believe that your product is unnecessary, or that you have no presentation ability. Of course, this might not be true. Sometimes, it’s hard to strike while the iron is hot. However, in some cases, it can be useful to go back to the drawing board, and next time consider implementing these following strategies:

Display

How attractive was your display? Was it on-brand? Could it have been improved? Just how did you try to greet passers-by? Was a staff member trying to engage and make conversation with those walking past at the convention, or did you expect the audience to walk into your booth and ask you questions about what you had offered?

Did you simply use placards and signs to bullet point why your business is great instead of actually showing people why they should think so too? Some businesses think that simply attending a convention or providing a trade show display is enough. They assume that people will jump on their display and naturally seek it out. However, this will most likely not be the case. What matters is how you manage to engage your audience, to bring them in and reward them for doing so.

Interactivity

How interactive is your trade booth? Will people feel connected to it? Are they given the room to try their hand at whatever you are offering? Offering trade demonstrations can be worthwhile if showcasing a product or even a service. It’s also worth considering how people are to interact with your business at the end of their mini-experience. It is important to brainstorm some actions for potential customers to follow through with following your demonstration. Should they sign up to a mailing list? Give you their contact information? Like your Facebook page? Place iPads around the booth with rewards to incentivize them to do so. Remember you occupy a very small slither of the trade show attendees time and managing that will help you effectively raise the quality of each second they spend with you.

Personality

How is the personality of your business being echoed throughout the trade convention? Trade show displays are known for creativity. Even the top-tier of businesses show some form of creative flair to entice the eyes of those walking past. Without this, it’s quite easy to fall into stagnation, to only relay the facts of your firm, which may come across as robotic. It might be worth hiring a creative team to bring out the true soul of your offering, or perhaps to simply go back to the drawing board and truly figure out how to market yourself through less conventional methods.

With these simple efforts, your business will be ready to ignite some creativity and passion into your next tradeshow convention.