Personal Experience on Trade Shows

I worked as a college instructor before at an agricultural college where we trained entrepreneurs. We usually conducted or joined trade show to let our budding student-entrepreneurs meet many potential customers face-to-face in a brief period of time inexpensively. It is also a way for our college to personally meet possible sponsors and partners and reinforce relationships.

Preparing for our exhibit booth is not an easy task. Though we cannot afford decorative truss , we managed to purchase presentable used trade show displays. We refurbished the damage and replaced missing pieces, we did still come up with an effective, original display for very little cash. We wanted to decorate our floor with logo floor mats but it's way above our budget already.

For the informational items on our booth display, we prepare written materials to distribute such as flyers and information sheets. We displayed items that appeal to multiple senses, including photographs or posters of our product or service (grafted mango, grafted durian,grafted rambutan, seedlings)), music that communicates a mood or a sense of place, and taste samples if we are introducing people to a food product like shrimp and crab kroepeck or polvoron with crab shell powder.

There were times that I'm assigned to look for our exhibit booth. I need to learn as much as I can about the product, service or issue that our booth represents. It's not easy to speak about it to people who are knowledgeable as well as people who are unfamiliar with it. I prepared myself for questions they might ask and prepared answers for them.

Another thing, we purchased inexpensive giveaway items to attract passersby to our booth like pens or key chains to complement our school's image.

I would love to hear any personal experience from you on how you prepare your trade shows.