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How to Maintain Branding Consistency at Events

By Sandra Christian on August 19, 2019

To keep your audience finding you and coming back over and over again, YOU need to keep the experience familiar — aka consistent. Your brand helps create this familiarity and is so much more than just a custom booth. 

Your brand isn’t just your logo, colors, approved images, and font sizes — it is much more. Your brand is the people that represent you, how the relationships are formed, and at events, it is how your custom booth is set up. Your brand grabs the attention of your audience through the use of banners, flags, and custom business tents — but what happens to your brand when your customers enter your booth? 

The Event Brand Plan: Your Custom Booth

To ensure consistency and alignment with your brand at events, we recommend having an Event Brand Plan. 

An Event Brand Plan is a living document that outlines your brand details, signage requirements, booth layouts, checklists, and all of your ‘how-tos for sales. Your Plan should be so detailed that it will take out the guesswork when it comes to setting up for your next event.

Planning Ahead with your Event Brand Plan

Take the time to plan out your Event Brand Plan. Having a detailed plan will significantly reduce prep and set-up time. When building your plan consider different event sizes and locations. Your plan should include different layouts and requirements for indoor vs. outdoor events, and large vs. small events. 

Your Brand Event Plan could include the following:

  1. Brand Basics or Style Guide: A document that outlines your colors, fonts, font sizes, and approved taglines. Include links or additional pages of examples of these items used in real-life situations.
  2. Event Setup Guide: Details about how exactly you want your booth to be set up. To promote consistency between events you should keep the layouts similar — keep it familiar! Your design/setup should be a reflection of your brand each and every time.

In your guide include layout drawings of your area/booth, including placement of signs, banners, tables, chairs, décor, and anything else that requires a physical location.

Don’t forget about the tables. Detail out a table plan as to where displays should be positioned, collateral placed, and your giveaway (if applicable). 

By keeping it consistent you remove the distractions of any clutter and are able to turn all focus to your relationships and sales. At a large vendor event, familiarity will be a huge asset in the chaos.

Checklists

Event sizes will vary and so will the things you require to have a successful show. Set up a document of checklists of the things you will need for indoor, outdoor, small, and large events. 

Detail what to bring and how much of — trade show canopy, signage, collateral, chairs, tables, giveaways, business cards, and other necessary items. The more detailed the better!

Team Plan

Consider team size and requirements that may be different based on the location, type, and size of your event. 

Layout your expectations of how many team members should be present. Assign each member a role — their purpose should never be assumed or guessed. Consider assigning roles such as an event/booth greeter, networker, or sales lead.

Include details about how you would like your guests greeted, networking/socializing, handshaking, use of personal devices, and sales pitch tips. By taking the guesswork out ahead of time, you will ensure your team is aligned with your brand and focused on a consistent message, no matter what the event. 

Tip: Don’t overcrowd your booth with too many team members as that will clutter your space and may scare off potential visitors. 

Future Planning for Your Custom Booth

Include in your Event Plan reference documents:

  1. Visual Guide of all of your signages and collateral: This document (or you could also use PowerPoint) should be a visual guide of all your signs, banners, or flags. Consider setting up a similar document for all of your available collateral (don’t forget business cards are collateral too). Label each image with the correct size. 
  2. Inventory of all of your signage and collateral: Set up an Excel or Numbers page to log all of your signage and collateral. Include a column for items that are in stock, one for the minimum order, and a final column for any notes on the use of the items. This list will help prevent items from being out of stock when it comes around to your next event.

Where to Store the Brand Event Plan

We recommend you store your brand event plan in a central location so that everyone on your team can access it. You could choose to use a binder or a shared drive. Send out a communication to your team regarding where the document is located and your expectations of how it should be used. Encourage your team to work with you to increase the effectiveness of the document by submitting any suggestions to improve it. Keep in mind that your brand plan should be a living and breathing document, always changing and improving.

Complete Your Branding with Custom Business Tents

To maintain brand consistency at all of your events, we recommend coming up with a very detailed plan as to your expectations for custom booth setup (including your trade show canopy), signage, collateral, messaging, and your team. Don’t be shy when it comes to giving your team tips and tricks on how to talk to your audience and how to use the collateral you have to make sales and gather clients. 

Take the guesswork out of the equation and ensure your Brand/Companies #FirstImpression is a memorable and consistent one by purchasing your custom business tents and trade show canopies from All In Canopies™️. We’ll help you put together a consistent branded display that will make you proud. Contact us today for more information.