Everybody knows AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. It’s the world’s oldest, simplest and most powerful formula to design communication that engages and involves target groups. Unfortunately, it is not the best formula to be successful at trade fairs. There, at the live and face-to-face forefront of doing business, you need one change to the AIDA formula to achieve great results!

This is the AIDA for Trade Fairs^©. It’s for everyone who participates to get new contacts and new leads. It rises above communication. This the AIDA that gets you engaging interaction:

Activation | Interest | Desire | Action

The two ways of activation

The most successful, crowd-pulling stands are those that activate their visitors in the interaction with them. If your brand in itself is not a guarantee to harvest new contacts, activation of visitors is the answer. How to do it? There are two ways.

Activation in your proposition

If for your business growth you need your target group visitors to understand, acknowledge and adopt your vision and promise to them: activate them in a proposition experience. Make visitors the interactive actors or audience in an engaging “WHY” and “What’s in it for me” experience on your stand. Let them experience pains and gains they can relate to and make them experience the proposition you have for them. Keep the experience simple, fun and personal. As emotion precedes logic, stay away from rational or detail solution presenting. Go for creating strong emotional connection to your proposition, motivating visitors to start thinking: “This could be something for me”.

Activation in your exhibition goals

If for your business growth you do not have a proposition that needs explanation to get it across, simply activate visitors in your main exhibition goal: getting to as many leads as possible. As leads always originate from contacts, activate visitors in the contact part of your interaction with them. For the purpose of massively generating contacts, make visitors interact in whatever activity on or around your stand. This can practically be anything. And does not necessarily have to relate to your company or product. It can range from having them pick a chocolate that you personally offer them, to making them play a slot machine to win a free prize. Approach your visitors pro-actively with an on the spot take-away.

Activation is a contact and engagement accelerator. When designed well and executed right, activation is an exhibitor’s best well-appreciated permission provider to start conversations, interact and engage for new business.

WANT A GREAT ACTIVATION CONCEPT TOO? FEEL FREE TO MAIL THE AUTHOR

Published              : 2020

Author                   : Ton Willemse, international trade fair trainer and expert consultant

©AIDA for Trade Fairs, Intraservice BV, The Netherlands