As we covered in this blog post, storytelling is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing toolkit. The human brain is wired for stories. We learn through stories. We connect to others through stories. Stories let us put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and expand our experience beyond what is normally possible.
Your trade show booth is a marketing opportunity and a storytelling opportunity. The goal is to attract leads and make sales, but stories are what draw people in. Something happens, and you want to know more. Why did it happen? What will happen next? For the most part, stories make sense of that “something” by filtering out everything unnecessary and creating a chain of cause and effect: because this happened, this other thing happened. Because a character reacted like this, another character did that. So how do you tell a story with your trade show booth?
Know Your Message
You should come to a trade show with a unified sales message in mind as part of your event strategy. How does your booth support that message? Both the design and how visitors experience that design must support that message.
The Visitor Is the Main Character
In the story your booth is telling the attendee is the main character, not your business or the employees working the booth. Instead, they are the narrators guiding the protagonist through the story.
The Three Act Structure
At its most basic, the three act structure describes the beginning, middle, and end of a story. To get a little more granular, you have a “beginning of the beginning,” “end of the beginning,” beginning of the middle,” and so on to the “end of the end.” These points or doorways through which a story progresses from one stage to the next are often the most intense and dramatic moments in the story, with their intensity rising as the story progresses.
When an attendee first comes upon your booth, what will they be drawn to first? That’s the beginning of the beginning. Like the hero of an adventure story, they have to decide whether they want to accept that “call to adventure” and interact further, or just move on to the next booth.
Where do they enter your booth? That is the “end of the beginning,” where they transition from asking “do I engage?” to fully committing themselves to the experience. When they enter “the middle” of the story, they are committed to hearing your message. This is where you deliver that message.
Most characters in stories, however, do not progress linearly toward their goal. Often, they find out that they can’t achieve their goal the way they had planned. This moment of realization, and the dawning understanding of what their true goal is, is the doorway from the “end of the middle” to the “beginning of the end.” In books and movies, it’s often a painful moment of growth for the character, but in a marketing context, this should be an unexpected moment of delight for the customer. What happy surprise do you have in store for visitors to your booth? That will lead them to the “end of the end,” the final message or call to action you want to leave them with.
Deliver Pleasant Surprises
For attendees, trade shows are all about the pleasant surprises that make attending memorable. Those memories make people look forward to seeing you again at the next show. Deliver the unexpected by telling a story that engages visitors and drives sales with your booth design.
