Most unsuccessful exhibitors walk out of a show believing the problem is either their booth or their budget. So when it’s time to exhibit again they spend weeks obsessing over the banner, the display of their products or their giveaways. Spoiler alert: that won’t change anything. And so they will come back, again, wondering what went wrong.
What if I told you the problem was most likely in their brain?
And about brains, I got good news, because neuroscience has studied human decision-making for decades now and we know more about it than we did only 10 years ago. Far more.
We know, for example, that there are more than 200 cognitive biases that affect decision making, and because they compound each other, I’ve decided to create a series of articles about them and how they affect trade shows.
This article is the central hub where they are classified.
Decisions on a show happen in milliseconds
What researchers have found out, is that most of what happens between two people at a trade show takes place below the level of consciousness. The visitor who walks past a booth without stopping, or the exhibitor team member who decides not to to engage, both are under the influence of these cognitive biases.
Understanding how the brain works at trade shows won’t make you a neuroscientist, yet. But it can definitely make you a better exhibitor.
But under one condition: that you study both sides of a booth encounter. Ready for it? Let’s go.
The exhibitor's brain
You thought you had it all figured out. The booth looks beautiful, the team is briefed, your new video about your product on the screen is rolling. What can go wrong? Three things might be wrongly evaluated: the preparation, the execution, the follow-up.
What affected your trade show preparation without you knowing
When deciding how to prepare a show, most exhibitors will rely on their experience. That is great because experience saves us from pitfalls we have spotted in the past, right? It's called wisdom. But what if we didn’t remember the past the way it actually happened? What if, after a show ends, the brain does something strange: it rewrites history. It happens, my friend, it is called the rosy retrospection effect. And it makes past events look better in memory than they actually were (yes that’s why after a break up…) Combined with other memory biases (more about them when I’ll update this article) that layer on top of it, and it creates a pattern where exhibitors believe they performed better than they did. Why is it important? Because it means they never get to fix what needs fixing. A way out of this? Use KPIs to break the loop. The numbers you collected won’t change, so you won’t be able to lie to yourself.
If you want to know more about it read why trade show results are always worse than expected or how a client of mine had it all backwards and how he fixed it with the right KPIs.
Why exhibitors overestimate how difficult trade shows are
Ok let’s say you’re exhibiting for the first time. No experience to be distorted, you’re like a blank page right? You’ll make the right decisions, right? Wrong. The Dunning Kruger effect is waiting for you. It is the reason most first-time exhibitors think a trade show will be easy, and the reason many experienced ones never seek help even when the results keep disappointing. In simple terms it is overconfidence in one's own abilities, and it affects people with no experience (yeah remember when you were 20?) or not enough to be expert at something and this, my friend, is the silent serial killer of trade show performance.
Read Why exhibitors underestimate how difficult trade shows are to discover more about it and what you can do to avoid it.
Ok, now about the show execution itself. Here’s another one: the availability heuristic. What is it? The brain's tendency to rely on the most recent information it can recall rather than the full picture. So if the last conversation went fine, the show is fine, even if you had 16 lousy encounters before that. Yes, that is why you stayed with your ex so long… It erases what just happened.
And it’s even more damaging than that…
Cognitive biases that kill trade show follow-ups
If you have ever wondered why visitors could not remember your conversation two days later, look no further than the above availability heuristic. Actually look further, cause it compounds with other biases.
Even when a show goes according to plan, 6 cognitive biases (at least) affect how most exhibitors would think about the show that just happened (oh and add the rosy retrospection effect) distorting results and feelings about the show. That keeps exhibitors in a constant denial loop. You can read about them in Cognitive biases that kill your trade show follow-up. That is worth the read if you’re planning on improving your trade show results.
The Visitor's Brain
The visitor's brain is a different subject from the exhibitor's brain, and it deserves its own body of content. How do visitors process what they see at a show? What makes them stop at one booth and walk past another? What happens in the first three seconds of an encounter, and how does that determine whether a conversation begins or ends before it starts?
These articles are in development. When they are published, they will appear here.
Why This Matters for Your Next Show
Knowing about cognitive biases is, unfortunately, not enough to fix them. Strange? Actually, logic. Because if we can think outside the box, we can’t think outside our brains, and they are biased. Awareness does not override the automatic systems our brain uses to process information. But this is your lucky day.
Having a method that accounts for these biases in how you prepare, how your team behaves on the floor, and how you capture and evaluate results after the show can neutralize these effects. That is exactly what the M.A.G.I.C. Exhibiting™ Formula was built for: help exhibitors make each of their trade shows a real success instead of a feeling or an impression of success.
If you want to see the full system in action, the Exhibitor’s Edge masterclass walks you through it step by step. And it’s one click away.