Looking for some design inspiration for your banners? These banners from The Happiness Index are a great example of using CTAs!
We love a good banner stand design. A banner designed well can help draw in a crowd and can introduce your brand to a passer-by in a way that makes them need to come and talk to you.
In preparation for the launch of our exciting new resource – our banner stand design benchmark report due to launch in April – we’re showing you a few of our favourite designs.
Happy banner stand
Our first featured banner stand design shows how a good B2B banner can be designed from the happy people over at The Happiness Index.
Brand background:
The Happiness Index is the UK’s leading employee engagement pulse technology. They help organisations to measure their most important asset – their people!
Sasha Hanau, Marketing Manager at The Happiness Index said: “We use our banners for lots of purposes…. Mainly they are taken to trade shows and exhibition either to form the main part of a small exhibition space or to supplement a larger stand (essentially trying to get as much branding and take up as much space at events as possible!).
“We always put them up behind our speakers when running conferences and also have them permanently up in our office to add colour and keep our brand front of mind.
They are a great way to dress up a blank space in your office or reception.”
Three reasons why this design works:
1. On brand. The use of colours and fonts clearly reflect their brand colour palate of yellow (a key brand colour for happiness!) and green.
2. One pain point. When it comes to banner stand design I’m looking for banners that tug on my pain points. That tell me how you are going to help me.
Although The Happiness Index are a B2B business, they understand who their target market is and how they can help them – not just their business – to thrive.
The left banner tells me that their service is stress free. It’s a great example of clever wording.
They could have just used ‘simple to use’, but by using the term ‘stress-free’, it immediately means more to me. It’s not just easy but will help me feel less stressed in the office.
Who doesn’t want that?
The right banner then tugs at my need (if I were a HR manager) to make the most of my staff. It makes me question – Am I maximising my team? I must need this technology to help me do it.
Both then use extra information (but not too much!) to reinforce these single messages.
Sasha said: “When designing banners, because of the limited space and the limited time people usually spend looking at them in a trade show environment I try to be a succinct as possible – get straight to the point of why a prospective buyer would be interested.
“Essentially you want a passer by to be able to instantly tell: What you do in a nutshell – keep it simple and free of jargon; What pain points you can alleviate for them – why are they interested; What differentiates you from your competitors – buzz words that sum up your USPs”
3. Subtle call to actions. I am a big fan of CTAs.
It’s the difference between saying something like:
‘We brew tea’ and ‘Have a cup of tea’. I’d much prefer to know that you’re going to make me a cup of tea. It’s a very simple change but can make a big difference to how much I care and how relevant the message is to me.
They don’t always have to be as obvious as “Buy Now”, they can be subtle.
The Happiness Index banner stand designs show how it can be done with the use of ‘Maximise’ and then reinforced with ‘Get real-time insights’ on the right-hand side banner. It’s subtly telling me that I need to do something. I need to maximise my asset, I need to get real-time insights.
Even in the bullet points, each word is a subtle CTA with ‘boost’, ‘reduce’, ‘encourage’ and ‘improve’. It’s telling me that I can do something positive with their product.
Anything to add?
As a good looking banner, there isn’t a lot that could be changed with this banner stand to improve it. They’ve followed best practice.
But as best practice evolves, I would consider adding social icons of Twitter and LinkedIn to show that people can keep up to date on those channels.
Not everybody is ready to purchase when at an exhibition and it may be too soon in their decision cycle to want to subscribe to emails. Staying in touch via social media is a soft way of keeping people up to date and making sure that you stay at the forefront of their minds.
Controversially, I may also consider taking off the website address. It’s generally assumed that most businesses will have websites and are easy to find. After all, if you’re investing in PPC and SEO and don’t have a hard-to-remember ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ brand name, people will find you.
Unless you have a photographic memory, adding anything to your banner that you want people to remember and recite is a risky business. You could always put this sort of information on supporting literature to hand out after you’ve spoken to them.
Sasha added: “I think what you include (website address, social icons, contact methods etc) all depends on their primary use.
“If it’s for an exhibition or speaking slot then you may want to include relevant hashtags to help promote sharing.
“However, most people aren’t stood in front of your stand writing down your email or telephone number (they’d go online or speak to you/get a card) so personally these things are optional.
“A B2C company or one who relies heavily on social media for promotion would of course benefit from including them but in B2B and HR where we work I wasn’t so convinced it was important.”
If you’re looking for more inspiration, and want to learn how you can improve your banner stand designs, sign up to receive your free copy of our banner stand design benchmark report.
