Design Tips for a Trade Show Presentation #1: Preparation

Your appearance at a trade show needs to be well thought out and thoroughly prepared. What sets your company’s products apart? How can you effectively communicate your business concept? We’ll show you how to optimally prepare for your next trade fair presentation.

Creating an ideal PowerPoint presentation is an important part of trade show preparation. It is often the first impression many potential customers will have of your company. Follow these tips to make sure you leave nothing to chance.

Optimize Your Presentation for the Available Display Equipment

Before a trade show or exhibition, it’s important to find out what equipment will be made available to you. Are the monitors in an upright or horizontal position? What resolution do they have? Using a unique monitor set-up, such as a diagonal position, can help your presentation stand out.

In most cases, your presentation will run on a 16: 9 screen, so don’t forget to use this format when creating your presentation.

Create a Backup and Bring Extra Cables

It has happened to all of us: bags are forgotten or misplaced, and equipment decides to stop working. Even the most trustworthy laptop can act up, so play it safe by saving your presentation to a cloud or a USB flash drive. And don’t let a missing or damaged cable grind your presentation to a halt.

Make sure to bring extra monitor cables (VGA, DisplayPort, HDMI) of different lengths.

Different Versions for Different Devices

Sometimes you can’t be sure what devices will be made available to you. That’s why it’s important to have different versions of your presentation on hand. Having a version without any elaborate animation is a surefire way to ensure your presentation will run smoothly, even on low-performance devices. And if for some reason PowerPoint isn’t available, creating a video version of your presentation is a great way to get around that problem.