How to Design Your Own Trade Show Display

If you’re like most marketing and sales executives, you probably spend half your time planning and the other half executing your marketing strategy. If your business is like most businesses, you’ll spend most of your time at trade shows. If you want your company’s marketing and sales efforts to be as successful as possible, you need to design your trade show display. It sounds like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. With a bit of planning and a sense of creativity, you can create your custom trade show display. Here’s how.

 

Before You Start Planning

 

Many people think that the trade show display idea was too ambitious for most marketing and sales executives to consider long ago. After all, isn’t it easier to buy a display from a reputable designer? Won’t one of those consultants make it just a little bit better than what you can do yourself? They probably will, but here are a few things you need to consider first. Here are five things that give your display an edge:

 

 

• Confront the designers with your specifications in advance. Most designers will try to accommodate you as much as possible, so make sure that they know exactly what you need. Write them all down in an email and fax them if you have to because they will send their best designs if they know exactly what your needs are before they start. When the designs come back, they won’t be so surprised that your company wants this or that feature because we have already discussed it with them ahead of time. If you don’t give them enough information about what you want before calling them, then the odds are pretty good that everything you see at the trade show will look great, but it isn’t going to be a very effective display for you.

• Make sure that the designer knows your company inside and out. Make sure that you get someone who has experience working with your company and is familiar with your struggles because they’re likely to see them or could see them in their mind’s eye while they are designing the display. Even if they aren’t familiar with your business, it will feel like déjà vu because it will look as if they have been there, done that when you look at their work. You need to get someone qualified to consult with and design displays like yours.

 

 

• Know what budget you have before you start looking for a display designer. Many people assume that one size fits all trade show displays, but not all trade show displays are equal, so make sure that you know exactly what your budget is before you start looking for a designer. It may be that five-hundred dollars won’t buy everything on your list of wants, but maybe it will do. You can’t expect to get it all for what you budgeted.