The Trade Show—and Other—Blogs You Cared About in 2021

December 13, 2021

If you exhibit at trade shows regularly, you know just how much work goes into even a single-day trade show appearance. From marketing to booth design to the swag you give away, it’s a huge amount of work. It’s also important to continually refine and improve your approach to make sure you stay ahead of the competition! Our best trade show blogs of 2021 offer up a wide range of tips and information, including marketing tips, swag and giveaway ideas, and the shows that are most worth attending.

1. 6 Unique Trade Show Marketing Ideas That Your Competitors Aren’t Doing

Engaging with your trade show audience before the event is an important part of the overall marketing campaign. But around 85% of exhibitors use pre-show marketing, so how do you set yourself apart from the competition?

In this piece, we offer six suggestions for pre-show marketing that go beyond the standard email blasts and social media posts that everyone else is using. Stand out from the crowd with a pre-show mini-event, gamification tactics, and geofenced marketing messages that hit the target at exactly the right time.

2. 6 Travel Trade Shows to Keep You at the Top of Your Game

The travel industry never stands still, and attending trade shows is a vital part of staying abreast of current trends, preferences, and best practices. In this post, we discuss some of the most important and popular travel trade shows, including the Global Business Travel Association Expo, IMEX America, The New York Times Travel Show, and The LA Travel & Adventure Show.

3. The Trade Show Giveaways That Are Worth Your $$

Trade show giveaways—AKA swag—can be an effective way to promote your booth, but not all swag items are equally successful. The best way to use swag is to first decide what you want your giveaway to accomplish and then choose items in line with that specific goal. Giving out large numbers of inexpensive items is great if visibility is your goal, for instance, but not if your aim is to generate qualified leads. Read this piece for more tips on how to choose effective trade show giveaways for different purposes and situations.

4. 3 Essential Elements of Effective Trade Show Brochures

Printed marketing materials are an effective way to tell your brand story when you don’t have time to talk with everyone who visits your booth. But what makes trade show brochures effective?

This post focuses on the three most important elements of a trade show brochure:

Grabbing the reader’s attention
Meeting their needs
Giving them a call-to-action

We discuss how to add each element to a trade show brochure and how to use that brochure to take your reader on a journey that ends with them taking a specific action that you suggest.

5. Which of the 5 Types of Trade Show Exhibits Is Right for You?

Whether you’re attending your first show or are a seasoned trade show veteran looking to replace your existing exhibit, this post is for you! In this piece, we discuss the five main types of trade show exhibit—custom, custom-modular, pre-owned, mobile, and rental—and the types of shows and situations they’re most suitable for.

6. How to Draw Crowds Into Your Booth with a Product Display

First impressions are hugely important, and nowhere is this more evident than at a trade show—because a great first impression is what gets people to stop for another look. With only a few seconds to make that first impression, it’s vitally important to display your products in the best possible light.

In this post, we discuss ways to do just that, including the use of lighting to showcase flagship products and how to use display elements to help build your brand identity as well as to display products. Plus, we talk about the importance of space and proportion in booth design and offer suggestions of unique ways to display products.

7. 6 Food Industry Trade Shows You Need to Book Now

The food industry is massive and covers a dizzying array of niches, from specialty foods to natural and organic products to snack and processed foods. There’s an equally wide range of food industry trade shows held every year, and whatever your company’s role in the industry, it’s almost certain there’s a trade show that could benefit you!

In this post we cover six of the food industry’s biggest trade shows, including the PMA Fresh Product Summit; The Fancy Food Show; Natural Products Expo; and SNAXPO, a premier event for the snack food industry.

8. Do the Most with Your 10×20 Trade Show Booth

A 10×20 booth space gives you a good amount of square footage to work with, but given that it’s one of the most common booth sizes, it can be tough to stand out among the sea of competition. In this post, we talk about some of the ways you can use your booth design to both set you apart and connect with your audience. Even within the relatively small 10×20 footprint, you can create an exhibit experience that delivers brand message in a unique and compelling way.

9. 11 United States Energy Conferences to Book in 2021

Most events in the energy industry are small niche gatherings with only a few thousand attendees. Many are tightly focused on very specific subjects and have similarly specific audiences. When considering what events to attend as an exhibitor, therefore, it’s vital to make sure you’re attending events with relevant audience demographics.

This post includes a rundown of some of the industry’s leading events, including the DISTRIBUTECH Conference & Exhibition; Intersolar North America; the MIT Energy Conference; and Hydrovision International, the world’s biggest hydroenergy conference.

10. Preparing Workplaces to Minimize the Spread of Illness: Custom Partition Structures

Workplace hygiene and safety solutions took on heightened importance in 2021 as workplaces looked for ways to keep employees safe as they returned to work. Especially for open-plan offices and shared workspaces, it became a matter of finding affordable, quick, and easy solutions that would facilitate social distancing.

ProExhibits’ decades of experience in booth design came in handy here, allowing us to quickly develop modern and effective partition systems for the workplace. In this post, we discuss a range of corporate solutions, including workplace partitions, barriers, and cubes, suitable for offices, cafeterias, waiting areas, and other open-plan spaces.

Happy New Year 2022, from Everyone at ProExhibits!

Looking for a little holiday reading? Our best trade show blogs of 2021 are packed with lots of useful information, but there’s more to come! Keep reading in 2022, as we have lots of great content planned to help you optimize your trade show exhibits and experiences over the coming year.