What is the best exhibition stand for me?
This is a great question and possibly the first thing to consider when you start to think about taking on some space during an event to showcase you/your company and your products and services, and it probably needs to be investigated much further before you can decide.
It's probably best to initially start to jot some ideas down. Below is a guide and a series of questions which may help you to explore this further.
What are your requirements?
What are you looking for in your display area? Do you have a table top stand at a market or fair? Or are you renting exhibition space at an expensive specialist centre, like the NEC in Birmingham, or Olympia in London? Will you have information and leaflets to give out, or demonstrations to show?
What is your goal from the exhibition?
Are you hoping to sign people up and make them aware of your brand and your company, or are you hoping to make sales? What does your stand design need to achieve to give the best impression and to convert passers by into clients and leads who sign up to your email or marketing list?
What are your competitors doing?
Do you know how they are exhibiting and presenting themselves to the world? Can you research this perhaps by looking at their twitter or Facebook pages to see if they are doing events and how they look? Is there a company that occupies a higher position than you within an area you would like to target, can you be inspired to be creative based on what they are doing?
If all of your competitors have fantastically designed exhibition stands with interactive media areas and you have a printed tablecloth and empty walls, will you have the same visual impact and build as much trust? Alternatively if you are paying for a table in a local hall a huge pop up stand with interactive iPads might make you totally un-approachable.
Have a look at what is out there, and then trust your own instincts.
Can you see something that you can do, that currently isn't being done?
This is the start of a journey of information gathering for you. If you don't get it right first time, and believe me you won't be alone in that, take the opportunity to learn and to grow and to do better next time.
Are you setting up on your own?
Or will you have a team of people who can help you to set up. If it is just you, or a two man team, how will you carry your exhibition stand and display items from the car to the centre, and how time consuming and difficult will it be to set up and put away your stand.
You may have a lot of products or promotional freebies to carry as well so keeping your stand simple might be a good idea.
Alternatively you can enlist the help of an exhibition company, who can transport and build your stand at the exhibition hall.
Nowadays the Pop Up exhibition stands and also the fabric display stands are easy to carry, lightweight, and easy to install and put away, and there are numerous videos that you can watch to give you an idea of this process before you make a purchase.
How many events are you doing?
If you want your stand to be used again and again, how do you make sure that you get the best value for your money? If you think the information you have on your stand may become out of date, can you keep the information and messages generic and timeless? Or can you pick a product that you can update at a later date?
Both the pop up stands and the fabric exhibition stands allow you to change your graphics. They are also designed to look good over time. If you are putting the stands up and down will the PVC panels last as well as the fabric graphic sleeves? In our experience both of these systems are good, but I would hedge towards the fabric being the best option for very heavy use.
If you think you might end up outside will you need a printed gazebo or perhaps a waterproof printed tablecloth rather than a standard fabric branded tablecloth?
What is your exhibition stand budget?
And at the end of the day this is probably one of the most important questions you can ask. How much do you want to spend, and how much do you have in your budget. If you see a stand you really like but it is way out of your budget, can you tweak the stand design to look similar, but to suit your own budget better?
For example, if you don't want to spend on a pop up stand, can you recreate the same sort of appearance using a wide roller banner for a backdrop and a printed tablecloth for a display table?
We have a couple of deals available that allow you to buy more than one item in a budget pack and one of our most popular is the exhibition stand package deal, which gives you something to cover the wall, the two side areas and a display table.
This also allows you to use any combination of your items, so if you need any of the four items you can interchange them as you need to.
How much space will you have available?
Our exhibition stands can be up to 6m in length, and our wide roller banners at 150cm give the illusion of a backdrop, without taking up too much space.
Once you have identified a potential venue to exhibit at you will have a much better idea of how much space you have to play with and how you can use it best. We can help you to put it together and turn your stand from a sketch on a note pad, or an idea in your mind, to a wonderful real life exhibition display.
Hopefully this checklist will help to get you thinking about some of the options available.