Picture this: you’re a customer, or a potential customer, attending a trade show out of obligation or job duty or just because it was in the area. As you walk through the showroom, passing disinterestedly by booth after booth, you’re struck by how identical they all look. Extraordinarily little sets one apart from another. All in all, they settle into one immemorable, indistinguishable blob inside your mind. Oh well, guess you’ll have nothing in particular to report back to your higher-ups—but wait. What’s that?  There, at the end of a long row of carbon-copy booths, stands a glowing beacon of LED light. A dazzling, one-of-a-kind, fully customized banger of a booth fully leveraging LED technology to attract maximum viewers, increase ROI, and take brand awareness to a whole new level! 

In a sea of identical tradeshow booths like this, how can you make sure yours stands out from the pack? The answer is simple: with LED and other booth technology. In this blog, we’ll focus on how you can use LED technology to elevate booth experiences in 2023, including how to measure your booth’s impact, prove ROI, and plan for a more memorable future.  

The Power of LED Technology  

Did you know that LEDs have been around for over 60 years? Entering the market in 1962, LEDs have been a staple in the lighting industry ever since for their brightness, longevity, and cost-effectiveness. A recent advancement in the field—one we’re particularly proud of—is Elite’s reFLEXion LED screens. This 2.5mm pixel pitch stand-alone LED display is the perfect turnkey solution for an instant trade show upgrade. A versatile, budget-friendly alternative to flown LED walls, reFLEXion screens offer easy control through Wi-Fi connectivity, plug and play convenience with preloaded media, and seamless display possibilities through multiple screen options.  

Elevating Your Booth with LED  

When it comes to using LED tech to upgrade your booth game, there’s more than a little room to get creative. In fact, with LED, the possibilities are near-endless. Here are a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing: 

• Dynamic visuals and immersive experiences – help your brand stand out by immersing attendees in an experience, not just a booth. Don’t be afraid to use the space you have: create a walk-through, a tunnel, an obstacle course, a giant jellyfish hanging from the ceiling, anything you can think of! In short, the aim is to create a totally unique space that launches attendees to another planet.  
• Interactive touchscreens and engaging content – people love interacting with content that engages more than one of their five senses, especially touch! Humans learn best by doing and are much more likely to remember something they can interact with physically, with real, tactile application.  

• Captivating wayfinding and event schedule displays – every vendor is competing for the limited time and attention of the same attendees, so make sure your space is one people want to come back to. Come up with a consistent theme and incorporate it into every element of your signage and branding. Make it memorable, exciting, and fun!  

Looking for something more specific? Incorporating reFLEXion screens can enhance your booth’s aesthetic as well as its functionality. As a self-contained, turnkey display, reFLEXion comes ready to display video content, serving as a dynamic replacement to traditional backlit signage. Its sleek, slim design allows for easy mobility throughout your space, maximizing viewer exposure as well as visual refinement.  

LED in Action 

To stand out among the other vendors at two separate tradeshows, Elite worked with Jackpocket, a lottery ticket purchasing app, over several weeks to curate a bold, eye-catching layout. The design featured a 3.9mm, 18’ halo light with wraparound LED display screens, suspended over a 4.68 LED light pillar at the booth’s center. Thanks to the halo light’s ring shape, the screens displaying state lottery logos and other casino-inspired graphics were viewable regardless of where attendees stood in relation to it, making it the perfect topper to the LED light pillar, which anchored the design back to earth and created a truly unique silhouette unlike any other at either show.   

For another client, Monster Energy, Elite leveraged the power of LED to establish Monster as the show’s designated life of the party. Working together from design to launch, Elite helped Monster build their dream installation, including a five-sided LED jumbotron, vertically hanging lighting ladders, point-tilt-zoom cameras projecting a live feed of activity inside the booth to catch the attention of other attendees, and Monster-green lighting submerging the entire display in a neon glow. 

Measuring Booth Impact and Demonstrating ROI 

While dazzling booth designs and pretty LED lighting have obvious aesthetic value, it’s just as important to have something to show for it ROI-wise. Here are a few practical tips and techniques for measuring impact:  

• Lead scanning and capturing data – when you put effort into your booth design, it shows. Like moths to a flame, this tends to attract more attendees to your booth. And while that’s a good thing, it’s next to meaningless if you have no record of attendance and no way of getting in touch with anyone after the fact. To correct this, be sure to scan as many leads as possible! As a rule of thumb, try and scan everyone who stops by to chat, ask a question, or just hovers around curiously.  
• Tracking attendee engagement and interactions – While collecting data from attendees is a great start, it’s just that—a start. Once you have their data in the system, you should categorize them by interest level and include them in future email marketing campaigns, direct calls, or other forms of communication depending on their place in the sales funnel. 
• Analyzing post-event metrics and conversions – after the trade show dust has settled, take stock of your data. How many emails, phone numbers and names did you collect? Of those names, how many were converted into leads, interested parties, or customers? 

Proving the monetary value of a potential LED investment is crucial to getting things off the ground—but it doesn’t have to be hard. In general, data-driven insights are your best bet. Try to collect as much usable data as you can from attendees and leverage it as proof of a profitable ROI. With good data under your belt, all things are possible.  

Looking Toward the Future  

With LED light technology on your side, the future looks bright. Few innovations have a more powerful, versatile, or immersive effect than LED. Some innovators aim to improve installation using magnets and easy locking mechanisms, while others focus on aesthetic or mesmeric effects by incorporating backlights, LED-paneled tunnels, and even airborne visuals. A good way to stay ahead of the game is by embracing innovative LED solutions. At Elite, we’re committed to staying at the forefront of LED technology advancements. We’re constantly coming up with new solutions to better serve our customers, helping them to elevate their brand, capture more leads, and achieve greater ROI through creative LED solutions.  

LED is always innovating. When it comes to elevating traditional trade show designs to new levels, nothing beats the aesthetic quality, versatility, and cost-effectiveness of LED. In today’s highly competitive trade show landscape, it’s more important than ever to stand out from the bunch, and LED makes it easy—and fun! Incorporating breakthrough LED tech like reFLEXion is the perfect opportunity to get creative, explore new possibilities, and reach as many new customers as possible. So don’t disappear into the background at your next trade show—light up your booth with the LED spotlight-power it deserves. Let’s create a memorable, Elite experience for your attendees.