Top Tips For Maximising Footfall To Your Exhibition Stand

Your budget may dictate your stand size, but you can be clever choosing your location. Selecting a stand space near the big brands, along main thoroughfares, near seating areas, cafes or featured attractions on the show floor ensures greater visibility—even if visitors didn’t come looking for you. Try to avoid stands that are backward facing so the majority of visitors approach your stand from the front.  If it can’t be avoided, consider an overhead banner to maximise visibility!

What do you want people to remember about your brand after the show? Whilst lead generation is key, it’s equally important to remember that exhibitions are powerful tools for increasing brand awareness. Raising brand awareness ensures people remember you when they require a product or service you provide—even if that’s weeks or months after the show.



Once your primary objective has been determined, design your stand layout, lighting, graphics and furniture around achieving this goal. Consider the angle at which visitors are likely to approach your stand from and ensure that messaging is simple and clear.

Offering an incentive is a great way to draw visitors onto your stand and capture their data. If you’re looking to promote your brand then perhaps offer up a generic prize tailored to your audience. If lead capture is what you’re after, offer a product or service offer / discount. Be sure to record the show as a lead source, this will enable you to honour these offerings further down the line and enable you to create an engaged mailing list.

Sponsored items such as bags and lanyards are handed out at entrances and carried all day—meaning your logo is constantly visible on the show floor. It’s brand exposure that travels with your audience.



You can also sponsor featured areas, stages and seminar sessions, aligning your brand with valuable content and positioning you as a thought leader within your sector. Additionally, most sponsorships come with a listing or feature on the organiser’s website, social media or email campaigns—amplifying your reach across multiple channels, increasing exposure before the show even begins.

There are a number of ways you can reach out to interested audiences, promoting the show, your presence there and your offering. Email marketing is a great way to advertise to your existing customers, clients and prospects that have already shown an interest in your products and services, while social media is powerful for getting in front of audiences that are less familiar. 

But if you’re looking for a way to really impress your prospects - send them an invite through the post, there is nothing better than good old fashioned direct mail for making prospects feel noticed and special. And if you have too many prospects, hand pick your top opportunities.

Organisers will have direct access to the full visitor list and while some will offer paid advertising solutions, many will offer free opportunities. Consider writing a blog article about your area of expertise that visitors will find useful. Organisers will likely host this on their website and share via social channels and email campaigns. 

It’s a win-win: they get valuable content to engage their audience, and you get your brand in front of potential visitors before they’ve even stepped onto the show floor.