Small Exhibition Stand, Big Impact

Sometimes, great things do come in small packages and when it comes to your trade show or exhibition booth, bigger isn’t always better. But for your small stand to be mighty, it needs to pack a punch way above its weight. So how can you do that?

Making your small booth into something different

As you can imagine, we attend a lot of trade shows across a range of different industries. And that means we experience a lot of different booth designs. And when it comes to the smaller booth, we have seen some great ideas.

But, you may be thinking, why opt for a smaller booth in the first place?

• Budget – trade show booths can be very expensive, even for smaller booths tucked away in the corner. If your budget is already creaking under the weight of exhibiting but feel that a no-show will do your brand more harm than good, a small trade show booth can still tick all the boxes.
• Can often be in great locations – exhibition and trade show organisers want to maximise the number of companies that are exhibiting on the trade show floor and so you’ll find that smaller or budget trade show stands are often in great places such as between two competing brands or in a small section close to the café or refreshment area.
• Less space to ‘fill’ – you may think the footprint of your trade show stand is small but when you come to fill the space, all of a sudden it seems a lot to fill!
• Opportunity – frankly, the smaller the space, the more creative you need to be and that’s why you shouldn’t shy away from booking the smaller trade show booth.

Ideas for the small trade show booth

No matter how big or small your trade show booth is, you need to make it eye-catching without ditching your brand personality and voice. But how do you do this? We’ve got some ideas…

#1 Place a branded counter at the front of the booth

The thing about a smaller trade show booth is that you haven’t got the space to welcome crowds of people ‘onto’ your stand. We’ve seen some great use of space with a branded counter at the front of the booth which isn’t a problem if you have proactive promotional staff meeting and greeting customers. Don’t forget, there’s nothing in the rulebook that says you can only talk to customers on your stand, so get out there are get mingling.

#2 Light, lights, lights

A small booth will appreciate plenty of lighting so think of lights in layers. You’ll need task lighting to light the space so you can see what you are doing and you’ll need ambient or softer light to either hide or pinpoint things and backlights to cast a warm welcoming glow (and make your booth seem bigger).

#3 Get techy

People love technology and ‘playing’ with things and so anything from a touch screen display to a chance to handle the latest tech will always be welcome.

#4 Get really creative

There are all kinds of creative stuff you can do but one thing we saw recently was a photographic floor. For a smaller booth, this could be well within your budget. Photos were printed onto laminated wood panels which then clicked into place to give the booth a really different feel.

#5 Open it up

If you have a small trade show booth, try to choose the one on a corner or one that has two or even three open sides. This way, it won’t feel too small or closed in.

And so you see, smaller sometimes is better!