6 Creative Ideas to Drive Traffic to Your Exhibit Hall

One of the biggest struggles for exhibition planners is getting those attendees into the exhibit hall. You don’t want an empty exhibit hall filled with angry exhibitors who feel like they are wasting their time and money by exhibiting at your event.

To ensure you’ll drive attendance into your exhibition hall and keep your exhibitors happy, we’ve compiled a list of the top 7 technologies and tactics to drive attendee traffic to your exhibit hall. Check it out.

1. Use Data to Optimize Your Floorplan

If you used an integrated event management software solution to collect data from your past events, you can analyze how your past floorplan performed (e.g. identify traffic jams or the most popular places attendees visited) and use this information to improve your exhibition hall layout. When designing and optimizing your floor plan, ask yourself these questions:

4 Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Event Floorplan

• Is my event floor plan detailed, but organized?
• Is my event floor plan mobile friendly?
• Are there self-service options?
• Are there monetization options for sponsors?
• Create an Online Interactive Floor Plan

Your floor plan is an important part of your exhibition, since it helps attendees plan their experience and move around efficiently. To help create buzz around your exhibition hall and build excitement ahead of time, you can create an online, interactive floor plan. Some event management software allows you to simply add the interactive floor plan to your event website so your attendees can map out their journey after they register.

2. Use Mobile Lead Retrieval

To help make your exhibition as efficient and fruitful as possible, you can utilize mobile lead retrieval. With mobile lead retrieval, you can empower attendees, exhibitors, and sponsors by equipping them with a solution that captures business card and other information. All they need is to scan or tap an attendees’ badge. Lead retrieval also gives exhibitors the ability to understand which sessions, exhibitors, and sponsors were the most popular with which attendee population, allowing planners to streamline their exhibition in the future.

3. Cocktail or Coffee Vouchers

People always love giveaways, especially when they are food or drink related. So, reward your attendees for visiting or draw more traffic to your exhibition hall by giving them a cocktail or coffee voucher. You can build a cocktail bar or a barista bar at the entry of the hall and have attendees tap their RFID badges or scan the voucher off their mobile event app to redeem their free drink.

4. Gamification

Using gamification techniques, planners can not only drive traffic to their exhibition hall, but also motivate attendees to stay in the hall. Check out the top four gamification ideas for your next exhibition.

4 Gamification Ideas for Your Next Exhibition

• Poll or survey your attendees during your panel and presentation sessions.
• Create a point or scavenger hunt game to motivate attendees to engage with exhibitor booths.
• Hold social media photo contests and reward the winner.
• Encourage attendees to visit and scan (using their mobile event app) as many exhibitors’ booths as they can for a prize.

5. Experiential Marketing

A large reason attendees attend exhibitions is to experience different products and make connections. So, if you want to drive attendees to your exhibition hall provide them with an experience using experiential marketing techniques. Check out the top 9 experiential marketing trends and tactics driving experiential marketing in 2019 and 2020.

9 Trends Driving Experiential Marketing

1. 1. Event Management Software Technology
2. 2. Ticketed-Events
3. 3. Instagrammable, Photo Backdrops
4. 4. Greater Personalization
5. 5. 5 Sense Engagement
6. 6. Wellness
7. 7. Giving Back
8. 8. Stayable Experiences
9. 9. Big Data

6. Exhibitor Hall Sessions

A popular trend at exhibitions recently has been hosting workshops or sessions in the exhibit hall. Exhibitors can hand out headphones to attendees so they can block out all the exhibitor noise and tune in to the session in the middle of the exhibition hall. Not only does this setup save money, since a room does not have to be booked, but it also allows planners to drive attendees to their company’s booth at the session.