How To Capture Audience Attention At Tech Trade Show Booths

After understandably dropping in popularity in 2020, trade shows began to make a comeback during 2021 as in-person events returned to the world of business. While they are a fantastic place to generate new customer interest and promote your company’s product or service, it can be hard to stand out in the sea of competing vendors.

A lot has changed in the last couple years when it comes to customer buying habits and interests, and if your organization hasn’t attended a trade show since 2019 or before, you might need to do a little research to make sure your exhibit can still catch and hold audience attention.

The best place to start is to understand what buyers are looking for. In our new research piece “What Integrators Really Want To See at Your Tech Trade Show Booth,” we ask integration firms and tech buyers what types of trade show booths capture their attention.

Who Was Surveyed?

51 percent of respondents are categorized as commercial integrators, 42 percent are residential, and the remaining 7 percent consider themselves security-only integrators. Of the respondents, 70 percent represent a business with less than 100 employees. Large firms over 1000 employees was the second-highest percentage of respondents (9.7 percent).

Why Do Integrators Attend? 

80 percent of respondents declared they are planning on attending a trade show during 2022. The top reason why respondents reported attending trade shows was to learn about new products. Networking activities helped round out the top three, with meeting vendor representatives at number two and meeting with colleagues at number three.

This being considered, having a simple and direct approach to showcasing and explaining your product may perform better than lengthy product origin stories. After all, trade show attendees have a lot pulling at their attention span, so focusing your booth on the highlights of the product may generate a more meaningful interaction.

How Do I Attract Integrators To My Booth?

Simplicity is key to attracting and capturing an integrators attention. Over 50 percent of those surveyed responded that product demonstrations are the most important when it comes to visiting a booth. While it can be more time consuming to plan, set up, and execute live demos of your product, the investment is often worth it due to the amount of interest it can help generate in your organization’s booth.

What Do Integrators Dislike Seeing?

It’s just as important to know what audiences dislike as it is to know what they like. The surveyed responses included an interesting set of responses to this prompt including: print material without visual demonstrations, crowded booth traffic, difficult to access product info, pushy sales conversations, and many more.

Download our full report about integrator preferences here. See all of our monthly research reports here.