Trade shows are fantastic opportunities to promote your business to a responsive, interested audience. With the right signage and marketing message, your business can stand out from the crowd and attract hundreds of prospective customers.

With the wrong signage, however, your business can easily blend into the crowd of other companies at the trade show and generate mediocre results. Trade shows are far from cheap, making it essential that you maximize your business’s visibility.

There are many ways to stand out at a trade show, from designing an eye-catching booth to having a unique offer. One of the best ways to stand out from the crowd is by giving away great brochures and using retail signage to your advantage.

In this post, we’ll share three techniques that you can use to make your business far more visible to attendees at your next trade show, fueling lead generation and sales that help your business grow.

Give away engaging, effective brochures and documents

One of the most important – and unfortunately, one of the most frequently ignored – aspects of trade show marketing is creating engaging and effective brochures, signs and other corporate documents.

Not everyone that visits your booth will stay to interact with your sales reps, but the vast majority of people that pop by to take a look around will take a brochure home with them to read after the show has ended.

Designing and printing an engaging, sales-driven brochure is one of the best ways to generate leads and close sales after the show is over, giving your business a distinct advantage over its competitors.

Start by using a high quality sign or brochure holder so that your brochures are as visible and accessible as possible to attendees. Back it up with a stylish design and benefits-driven copy to make your offer stand out from other exhibitors.

Sometimes, getting your brochure into a prospective customer’s hand is all it takes to kick start the sales process. Make your brochures as appealing as possible with a high quality holder and unique design and you’ll rarely fail to make an impact.

Use high-contrast color combinations in your booth design

The key to standing out at a trade show is contrast. If almost all of your competitors’ exhibits are decorated in a conservative blue, could you possibly fail to notice a red trade show booth in the middle of the exhibition hall?

Contrast is essential not just for designing a great booth, but for designing corporate brochures, business card and other documents that people want to pick up and take with them to learn more about your business.

Use a high-contrast color combination – yellow and black or white and dark blue, for example – to make your booth and graphic design stand out. The greater the level of contrast, the bigger its visual impact and visibility will be for attendees.

It’s always best to choose color combinations that match your brand identity – don’t use colors that your business isn’t associated with. However, increasing the level of contrast to stand out can be more effective than using your exact brand colors.

Don’t just be visual – use a product to attract prospects

Great visual design is one of the keys to standing out at a trade show, but it’s not all there is to it. One of the best ways to attract attention at a trade show is by showing off one of your latest products, prototypes or technologies.

If your company has an interesting product that you think the trade show audience will be interested in, make it the centerpiece of your booth to attract the attention of attendees and stand out from the crowd of other exhibitors.

Product displays can often be combined with signage and brochures to increase the level of awareness attendees have of your business as a whole. Your latest product, for example, could attract people to your booth that enquire about other products.

Combine a product display with an engaging, interesting brochure and you’ll get the ultimate combination: lots of foot traffic from people eager to see your new product, as well as plenty of sales leads from customers interested in your business.