Are you looking for a way to increase interest in your company the next time you exhibit? Cardinal Expo is here to help with trade show scavenger hunt ideas!

Scavenger hunts are a great way to incorporate an interactive challenge for expo attendees to get involved with your business, while also getting rewarded for it. Keep reading to learn about the benefits of using scavenger hunts, ideas for your own scavenger hunts, and options for virtual events.

Why Use Trade Show Scavenger Hunt Ideas?

Studies have shown that 90% of trade show attendees are going with the intention of finding new products or services. As an exhibitor, you need to capture their attention to make your efforts worthwhile. But how?

When you’re developing your trade show business plan or program, one of your top priorities is determining how you’ll attract visitor attention and engage attendees with your business. This not only includes planning your booth design itself and training your staff, but also thinking about how you’ll educate and entertain your guests.

An excellent way to do this is to include an interactive component in your booth. Opportunities to interact with visitors include:

• Promoting conversation by having tables and seating where customers can talk to staff, ensuring staff are standing or seated at standing height to make them more accessible to visitors, and training staff to be open and engaging with guests.
• Displaying products so visitors can examine them up close and even pick up, handle, or test products out themselves.
• Performing product demonstrations so your staff can show potential customers how products work and answer questions in real time.
• Offering a raffle or giveaways to attract guests and encourage engagement.
• Providing games or challenges to entertain visitors.

Customer interaction is crucial to running a successful trade show booth. Scavenger hunts, in particular, offer a creative and unique way to engage visitors with your business. Not only will visitors have fun and potentially receive a prize, but it’s something different to help grab their attention.

Keep reading to find some great examples of trade show scavenger hunt ideas you can incorporate into your business’s next exhibiting experience.

Trade Show Scavenger Hunt Ideas for Your Next Expo

It’s important to note that at most expos, you aren’t allowed to advertise outside of your physical booth space. That may sound limiting, but the best ideas are the ones that come up with a creative solution to this issue, getting attendees involved throughout the expo regardless of this rule. Just be sure to read the rules for exhibitors at each event and make sure that your scavenger hunt complies with them or get special permission.

Pin Matching

Trade show attendees are at these events to network with businesses and other attendees alike. Why not help them out?

For this trade show scavenger hunt idea, supply pins to the attendees that visit your booth. These pins should be marked in some way, whether it be color, number, letter, or shape. Each pin should have one or more that it matches with. Any attendee that finds another person with a matching pin can bring that person back to your booth to both claim a prize.

This method is great for generating interest in your booth by word of mouth from attendees looking for people with a pin that matches theirs. It also brings people back to your booth a second time and puts them in conversation with your staff, creating additional opportunities to engage with them.

Brand Ambassador Hunt

An alternative to the pin method, this is another great way to get visitors curious about your booth and engaged with representatives of your brand. This method doesn’t require attendees to visit your booth first, so it can direct more first-time traffic to your booth.

Select a few representatives for your brand and send them out to various areas within the expo. Arm them with tickets, keys, or any other item exclusive to them, and allow them to give these out to anyone who asks for one.

Tickets can be redeemable for certain prizes or keys can unlock boxes with specific prizes. If you want to reinforce your impression on more qualified leads, you can give higher value items to those who have longer and more meaningful conversations with your brand ambassadors.

This method allows for more control than the pin-matching strategy. Here, your designated brand ambassadors can begin to seek out attendees that haven’t yet made it to your booth if you’re lacking foot traffic.

Virtual and COVID-Safe Ideas

Depending on the social and health climate in the area where an expo is located, you may want to explore touchless trade show scavenger hunt ideas. Alternatively, your expo may be completely online. In any case, these limitations don’t have to stop you from creating an interactive and engaging experience for your visitors.

Website Scavenger Hunt

In a world where more business is being conducted online than ever before, websites have come to supplement and even replace some physical storefronts. Take advantage of this!

Hide secret messages, Easter eggs, or images throughout your website for the duration of the trade show. If an attendee can provide proof of having found a hidden item, give them a prize.

In a completely online scenario, discounts on products or small gift cards may be more effective than providing physical prizes.

Password-Based Scavenger Hunts

Regardless of if you’re operating within a physical, hybrid, or digital space, providing verbal information to attendees is effective in every medium. You could create a riddle and have your brand ambassadors provide clues, passwords, or any other verbal key. When a visitor presents the correct information, they win a prize.

By providing the keys verbally instead of through physical objects, you can keep your organization and employees safe while still engaging with the community.

Before You Invest in Scavenger Hunts

Scavenger hunts are great, but only when you provide an excellent trade show experience to back them up. Before you put too much focus on coming up with trade show scavenger hunt ideas, make sure you build the foundation for an engaging visitor experience.

Your booth design will dictate the kinds of experiences your visitors will have, from the way your products are displayed to how they’ll interact with your staff. Cardinal Expo has the customizable options and industry expertise to design, fabricate, ship, and set up your perfect booth for any event.

Prepare for Your Next Show with Cardinal Expo

No matter what trade show scavenger hunt ideas you’d like to implement, Cardinal Expo can design the right booth to meet your needs. Not only that, but we’ll create a layout that takes into account your products, staff, customers, and business objectives too.

Our exhibits come in a variety of sizes, each with their own benefits and use cases. We also offer exhibit rental options to save you money and allow you to update your booth from show to show. With our comprehensive exhibit management services, you never have to worry about your booth’s logistics, shipping, on-site supervision, set up, take down, or storage.

Contact us below to start planning an exciting new booth with our experts!