Exhibitor Tips & Ideas: Making Great Virtual Booths

Well I'm learning that manning a virtual booth at the conference is in many ways the same as manning an in-person booth - some of which surprised me - and that in many ways it is different.

As exhibitors, we have the same concerns as at live shows: we want the interaction with the people. Heck, without the personal interaction, folks might as well just be visiting our web site. In this case, interaction means chat and video-chat.

I'm noticing that many people come into the booth, stay for maybe 30-90 seconds, and then leave without chatting or interacting. I think there are several reasons for this, including that people are just figuring out how to visit booths, clicking buttons, and seeing how it all works.

At in-person shows, there is that avoidance factor... people will slip past a booth and not make eye-contact because they don't want to get pulled into a 10-minute sales pitch. I would think that factor would be greatly reduced in a virtual expo floor, but maybe old habits die hard.

The in-person exhibitors often offer a counter-motivation to that fear-avoidance factor by giving away freebies: hats, shirts, pens, toys, candy, water... you know the drill.

So how do we encourage chat interaction?

TIP: Have a URL of a fun thing or freebie thing to give to folks that chat with you, and give it out only in chat (or in video-chat).

TIP: Help buzz about other exhibitors. When you are done chatting, send them to a booth you like with a specific tip: "Jerry's giving away a free MP3 in booth 441", or "You like past life regression? John in booth 506 specializes in that, he might have something you'd like. Maybe he's got a freebie!"

TIP: Create buzz about your own booth by offering something fun in video chat. Tell a joke, teach a brief induction technique, give a freebie, or do something kooky that have people talking. I'm just waiting for the first exhibitor to do something Letterman-esque and be sitting in a kiddie pool with plastic sharks singing, or the one that does celebrity impersonations, or give a live 1-minute puppet drama/comedy show using office supplies. You get the idea. As always, keep it safe and sane, kids.

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A few of the fellow exhibitors and I were brewing up ideas for some kind of clue-hunt game and a prize drawing that people could enter by visiting all the booths and getting all the clues, or something along those lines. I think that's something we can work on for September's virtual conference; with Saturday (today) expected as the prime traffic day for exhibitors, I think we aren't ready enough to make it fly well this time. One of the first obstacles we discovered is that we don't even know how to create/call an exhibitors meeting to coordinate such an activity (something we'll want to figure out before the next conference, I suspect).

What ideas and perspectives do you have on making a virtual booth work well for everyone?