During a craft show, you only have a short amount of time to catch your customers’ eye as they stroll by. You need to think about your booth’s call to action. Having an amazing product is going to help, however, here are 10 different strategies you can use to improve your craft show booth and ensure you stand out.

Top 10 Craft Show Booth Techniques:

1. Displaying Your Items Vertically
2. Use Colors that Pop
3. Emphasize Your Brand
4. Tell Your Brand Story Using Signs
5. Display Your Prices
6. Include Freebies
7. Promotional Materials Besides Business Cards
8. Branded Shopping Bags
9. Take Advantage of Upselling
10. Create a booth space floor plan

1. Displaying Your Items Vertically

Vertical merchandising is pretty easy to explain. It’s the grouping of merchandise in a vertical column to get your customers to buy more of your products. How can this work you may ask? People normally focus on what is eye-level. By displaying vertically instead of horizontally, customers can stay still and just move their eyes up and down to view all of your items. It’s an easier shopping experience for your customer, plus it makes it easier
to show off your whole inventory.

a. Pros:

i. Looks neater and improves visibility
ii. Makes your booth easier to shop in
iii. Equal visibility for your products

2. Use Colors that Pop

If you want your booth to be noticed, try one of the following two strategies: creating a booth with bold colors or choosing colors that make your products stand out. We’re not suggesting doing a color overload. Try to keep
your color palette simple with 3-4 colors that pair well together. If you choose bold colors like orange (playful & vibrant) and red (excitement & energy), you can add a level of confidence to your booth. If you have products with strong colors or you sell art prints, try displaying them against all white or all black to make the colors
stand out.

3. Emphasize Your Brand

If you want to grow as a business, it is extremely important to display your brand during important events. If you’ve worked hard on branding and getting a logo made, try displaying that at your booth. Some cheap ways to get your logo displayed at a craft show are using custom banners and using custom table throws. These items are easy to find online and easy to travel with. You can also reuse them for future craft shows, providing a good ROI.

4. Tell Your Brand Story Using Signs

One way to stand out is by visually displaying how your company was founded. Use images on a board or get a timeline printed on a banner. If you have an interesting story or history, people will stop by and get
to know your brand. Establishing an emotional connection with your customers is extremely important for small businesses as often times people turn to small businesses instead of corporations all because of the genuine human connection.

5. Display Your Prices

If you’ve got a deal that you know is great, get ready to shout it from the rooftops. Some of the best booths take advantage of using posters and signs to create a layout of prices. Make sure prices can be easily read and
make sure every item can easily be priced.

6. Include Freebies

People love free things. If you are trying to stand out at a craft show, try to offer at least one freebie to give away to interested customers. We understand that giveaways can be expensive, but there are inexpensive items
such as stickers, bookmarks, or pens that can be given out easily. Get these items branded and fit in a way for your customer to connect with you, whether it’s an email address, website, or phone number.

7. Promotional Materials Besides Business Cards

Business cards are important. But there are other media prints that can have more impact. Postcards and flyers
are great ways to reinforce your brand and talk about upcoming promotions that may not yet be available on the day of the craft show. Promotional materials are the perfect call to action and they can even create repeat customers.

8. Branded Shopping Bags

If you want to go green and don’t want to use plastic shopping bags, then more power to you. A very inexpensive method of giving out branded shopping bags with customer purchases is by using blank white paper bags and utilizing a customized stamp of your logo. As you can probably tell from reading this post, we are heavily in favor of branding. There is a reason big companies like Nike, Chanel, and H&M put their logos on their bags. If they didn’t invest in reinforcing their brand as often as possible, they wouldn’t be as prominent or easily recognized.

9. Take Advantage of Upselling

The easiest way of getting people to purchase multiple items is by using an upsell technique. This is why clothing racks often have a sign that can read “2 for $30”. People love getting deals and upselling is an easy opportunity to sell more of your items. It is much easier to sell a 2nd tshirt to someone already in your booth ready to pay than to sell 1 t-shirt to someone just walking by. Offer bundle deals or suggest related items. An upsell does not necessarily mean giving a discount; it can also be a way to sell an item your know pairs well with what the customer is trying to purchase.

10. Create a booth space floor plan

You know your booth space ahead of time so it can be easy to plan your layout in advance. You do not want to host your craft show booth unprepared, overwhelmed, and anxious. By creating a floor plan, you can get a better idea of your plan of action when it comes to the big day. You can use Photoshop or even draw it out on a piece of paper. Use shapes to indicate where your displays and table are going to be. With this, you can try different
layouts to maximize your floor space and booth navigation.