Guide: 5 keys to creating a successful trade show

How do we create a successful fair? How do we provide participants with an unforgettable experience? These are undoubtedly some of the questions that, as an organizer, you contemplate before your next fair. Trippus loves fairs, and for that reason, we present our five keys to creating a successful fair and trade show. Join us in the Trippus system!

1. Ticket Sales and Upselling

Selling tickets is crucial for many fair organizers. Without ticket sales, revenue is lost, and the numbers turn red. With Trippus, you can easily create different ticket types, such as various day passes or differentiate between fair visitors and students. We recommend marketing the requirement for pre-purchase to attend the fair to streamline the entry process. If you wish to have on-site ticket sales, you can set up signs with QR codes directly to the ticket page for mobile purchases.

Fairs also offer a great opportunity for upselling. Additional activities that can be sold during the fair include inspirational lectures, lunch packages, and breakfast seminars, to name a few popular upselling areas

Learn more about ticket sales ->

Registration

It is essential to collect registrations for your fair. With Trippus, you can set up a registration page in no time with a complete registration form. Once participants fill out the form, a confirmation is sent via email with their personal tickets.

Key considerations for registration:

• What information do you need to collect from participants?
• Are specific data points needed for statistics?
• What should be printed on a potential name tag?
• Do you need invoicing information?
• Do you need to know about special dietary requirements for catering?

Learn more about invitations and registration ->

2. Exhibitor Management

A crucial component of a successful fair is the on-site exhibitors. They play a significant role and provide participants with a genuine WOW experience. With Trippus, as a fair organizer, you can manage exhibitors directly through our exhibitor portal. Either use registration for exhibiting companies directly in Trippus or import your exhibitor list with company names and email addresses. As an organizer, you can increase permissions for exhibitors in the portal so they can manage their own staff and invite guests to the fair.

Lead Scanning

For exhibitors, it is important to collect customer cards and leads at fairs to get the most and the best – meaning new customers. With the "Lead Scanning" service, exhibitors get an overview of who visited their booth by scanning visitors' name tags with a mobile phone. Exhibitors can also mark which products and services each visitor was interested in. When the name tag is scanned, a customer card is created in the exhibitor portal with the visitor's name, contact information, and company. Exhibitors can also make notes about the customer and the conversation they had at the booth for easy recall and follow-up.

When purchasing Lead Scanning, a Trippus representative is included on-site to assist exhibitors if they need help getting started. We recommend selling Lead Scanning separately to each exhibitor.  

3. Personalized Name Badges

We have seen that personalized name tags are truly appreciated by on-site visitors at fairs and events. Visitors present their booking confirmation at the entrance and scan it with a scanner to receive their personalized name tag. We call this service Print on Demand (PoD), and we always recommend having this service at our fairs. The main reason is that name tags are required for other essential functions such as Lead Scanning to work, while visitors appreciate seeing names and companies of others at the fair.

Learn more about Print on Demand

Design & Branding on Name Badges

You have great opportunities to design and put your own stamp on how name badges should look. Of course, take the opportunity to include your brand and colors. If you want designed name badges, Trippus needs the material 8 weeks before the fair. The material should consist of the design and should be included on the name badges, such as name, company, and title.

Name badges design:

• The size is 10 cm wide and 7.6 cm high.
• The option to purchase double-sided name tags is available.
• You can design name tags with color.

To attach name badges, lanyards are usually purchased. For fair organizers, it is important to decide if they want branded lanyards. Trippus does not order any branded bands; however, we can offer Trippus-branded bands for an additional cost. We do not recommend plastic pockets if the fair lasts one or two days.

4. Check-in

In addition to a smooth check-in at the entrance with personalized name tags, participants can also be checked in for activities taking place at the fair, such as a lunch lecture. The barcode printed on the name tag is linked to all the activities a participant has registered for. To scan name tags on-site, simply log in to the Trippus Checkin web service. Grant access to the camera on the mobile or tablet to start scanning visitors' name tags. Even if your activities are not set up in the Trippus system, you can still use this function to measure the number of visitors for each activity.

Statistics & Reports

Being able to follow statistics and generate reports is of significant importance for organizers and stakeholders. In Trippus, you can easily access statistics and view reports on the number of participants checked in at a specific stage or seminar. This is possible because we track every device (computer, mobile, or tablet) used for scanning. In Trippus, you can access pre-made reports or set up your own!

5. Logistics & Resources

All the planning you have done should result in an unforgettable experience for you, participants, and exhibitors. To ensure everything runs smoothly, personnel and clear instructions on-site are required!

Personnel & Service on-site

People make the world go round. Yes, that's true, and at fairs, having knowledgeable personnel on-site is especially important. We at Trippus have many project managers who can assist at fairs, but we need to know the scale of the fair to decide on the number of project managers required. We recommend having at least one person at each scanning point, in other words, one person for each entrance and any lecture, workshop, etc. For the Print on Demand service, we usually count one person per 3–4 stations. If a service desk is needed, an additional person on-site is required.

Event App

To facilitate for exhibitors and visitors, we prefer fair organizers to use the Trippus event app. The benefits of event apps are many, but the main advantage is that all information about the event is gathered in one place. Another lovely benefit of event apps is that you can easily embed Google Maps with directions to the fair.