Trade show games will make your booth a fun place to be on the business-like trade show floor. But just because your attendees are having fun doesn’t mean you’re being silly on the company dime – quite the opposite! Trade show games help you achieve serious marketing and sales goals, increasing the return on your marketing investment.

Trade show games help increase awareness of your brand

While trade shows are a fantastic place to get your company brand in front of thousands of potential buyers, guess what? There are hundreds of other companies who had the same thought and they are doing everything they can to get attendees’ attention.

A trade show game grabs and holds an attendee’s attention. They want to see what that crowd of people already playing are doing. They want to win prizes. They want to compete. They want to see how well other people are scoring. They want to test their skill.

All these reasons compel attendees to enter your booth and play your trade show game. And in the process, attendees become more aware of your company brand (especially if the game is designed to match your brand colors, fonts, images and logos).

Trade show games help generate more leads

The fun of trade show games – and the potential to win prizes and bragging rights – drives greater booth traffic, filling your booth with more attendees who then become leads. And not just names, but true leads. Your booth staffers can talk to the greater number of booth visitors and by asking qualifying questions to determine which attendees are leads worth pursuing after the show. Here’s a story about one exhibitor who nearly doubled their trade show leads with games.

Look for interactive trade show games that allow you to build qualifying questions right into the digital forms attendees fill out before they can play, giving you another way to rank your leads. 

Trade show games help strengthen relationships

Attendees are on the defensive when walking a trade show floor. There are hundreds of companies vying for their attention, time and potential business, so attendees have their guard up. They are reluctant to engage with exhibitors because they don’t want to be hounded post-show.

That’s where trade show games help you build relationships. Attendees who are having fun in your booth playing games are grateful to your company for the fun – and view your booth staffers more as friends than adversaries. Even if they weren’t initially willing to engage with your booth staffers, we’ve found that they become friendlier by the end of the game. That’s because attendees who are struggling with answering trivia questions rely on booth staffers to get answers. We call it the digital icebreaker and it does wonders for strengthening relationships with attendees.

Trade show games help generate sales

When trade show games help generate more leads and stronger relationships with those leads, it’s only natural that if sales is your goal, then you will also increase the sales from those leads. Depending on your company’s usual sales cycle, you can see the boost in sales as your trade show leads close.

Be sure to track the results of your trade show leads. Remind your sales team to keep in touch with the valuable leads that you’ve generated. Tracking the sales results from these leads is easier when your booth staffers taking the leads are the same people following up on the leads, but that’s not that common. The other way to better track your trade show leads is with a web-based CRM system. If you don’t have one, consider getting it!

Trade show games increase your trade show ROI

When you as a trade show exhibitor are deep in the thousands of details executing your trade show program, it’s easy to lose track of measuring your results. And for many exhibitors, return on investment is the ultimate metric.

We’ve seen exhibitors generate substantially higher ROI with trade show games. They drive significantly more booth traffic, leads and ultimately, sales, all while spending only a fraction more on their exhibiting costs.

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