We are all aware that social media platforms and other online communities are stealing the spotlight for all forms of marketing. When a digital tool becomes popular, it affects how everyone consumes products and experiences. There is not much time for the marketers to think about how the audience will care. Social media sites will adjust to become part of the hype, and it will just become the new way of doing business.
So how does that affect the business-oriented environments? We might be tempted to think this does not apply to our day-to-day lives. Open rates, conversion rates, and click-through rates are all going down. To succeed in such an environment, marketers need to remain on top of the game in event marketing.
Before you get amazed by the latest tools, you should build effective event marketing strategies. Having a clear guide to event marketing would definitely help. That’s exactly what this post is for.
What is Event Marketing?
Event marketing is a marketing and promotional strategy involving face-to-face interaction among brands and their customers at occasions like trade shows, seminars, and conferences. Every event has a different kind of audience, diverse culture, and different content. Therefore, every event must be marketed in its own unique style. To be successful at event marketing, you need to have competitive event marketing strategies.
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Importance of Event Marketing
According to a study, 95% of participants agree that live events give attendees an excellent opportunity to build in-person connections in a world that are otherwise becoming increasingly digital. Further statistics from the report of this study include the following facts.
- Most businessmen believe that event marketing is one of the most effective means of marketing.
- 97% of C-Suite executives believe in the value of live events and are willing to invest in them more.
- 84% of event attendees claim that they think more positively about the business, brand, or product being promoted in the event.
The thing that makes all the difference between a good and bad event is the extent of knowledge the attendees have about what is happening. If you want to do successful event marketing, you need to be aware of the significant shifts in trends happening both online and offline.
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7 Effective Event Marketing Strategies
Here are seven ways of using event marketing at its full potential.
1. Figure Out Why the Event is Important
The critical objective of deciding on an event's success relies on meeting specific criteria to produce the desired result. But to get there, you first need to figure out why your event is essential. Only then you can logically construct a marketing strategy focused on achieving these objectives.
When you are indulging in event marketing, you need to think from the perspective of the event’s attendees. Why is the event necessary to those who will attend it? What is the value of the event in the eyes of those who will be invited to it? What exactly is in it for them? Does your event meet any of their needs? Does it solve any of their problems? What are their pain points? Does your event have a solution for them?
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Once you start having this line of thought, it won’t be long before you can figure out the importance of your event. Simply listing the features of an event does not communicate a reason for your audience to attend it. You need to provide more authentic motivations to your audience for attending the event. For example, if your event helps the attendees learn a new skill that they are interested in, they are likely to come to it. Think of ways like this to make your event appeal to different people.
2. Prepare an Event Elevator Pitch
Now that you know why your event is valuable to the audience, you must create an event elevator pitch. An event elevator pitch is a compact summary of the event that explains it to someone who previously knew nothing about it. It is a major aspect of event marketing. It is an opportunity to grab someone’s understanding and interest. It is a means to communicate the benefits of your event by using just a couple of sentences.
Social media these days offers a great opportunity to test, measure, and analyze the success of using event marketing tactics to grow your attendees. By test running different marketing campaigns, you can determine which one resonates the best with your audience. It is a low-cost method of experimenting and figuring out the most effective event marketing method.
3. Understand Your Stakeholders
The better you understand your stakeholders and target audience, your event marketing strategies will be more successful. Some businesses do this by developing a buyer persona. Personas are fictional characters that represent your most typical and ideal customers. By creating personas, you can bring your target audience's personal details, preferences, choices, backgrounds, and struggles to life. When you can picture your ideal customer right in front of you, it helps develop refined marketing messages that your audience will totally resonate with. Personas help you choose the most relevant event marketing trends and tools to implement.
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4. Personalize Your Elevator Pitch
You need to keep certain things in mind when writing an elevator pitch for your event. A very generic pitch is not too impressive or influential. The more you personalize it, the bigger crowd you will attract. Look at every social media post that you plan to make critically. Try to see it from the perspective of your audience. If you can see that it has a weak message, your audience will likely feel the same and not take any desired action after reading it. Build marketing content that you can be sure will impact the minds of the people who see it. Use that content in your event marketing pursuits. Also, use such content in your event elevator pitch.
5. Consider the Tipping Point
Think of the reasons why people may or may not want to attend your event. Try to understand their thinking, attitude, and behavior. What factors determine whether or not they like being there for an event? The following elements may play a role in this area of event marketing.
- Reviews and recommendations
- Web search
- Price
- Comparison with other events
- Chances of getting a certificate of participation or personal accreditation
6. Do Process Mapping
Once you have mapped out the stakeholder’s journey of deciding whether or not to attend your event, it is time to identify the key elements in the process. Process mapping helps you crystallize how to impact specific outcomes and strategize what you want to achieve.
This exercise will also help you identify where and how potential event marketing tools can be used. It is preferable to use various channels differently instead of broadcasting the same marketing message across all platforms. The identity and purpose of each channel can be refined.
7. Put It All Together
The last step or strategy is to put it all together. You have identified your audience’s needs, developed an elevator pitch and personalized it, done some interesting process mapping, and are now all set to put all these pieces together to implement your event marketing plan. Event planners and marketers can cross-reference data with touchpoints to create a complete picture of the attendance. It is good to have a rough estimate of the number of people you think will attend your event. This helps in budgeting the right amount, including the pre-event and post-event incidents.
By listening and responding to your attendees throughout the process, you can better understand them and implement event marketing strategies based on what they say.
If you are reading this post, it means you care about your events. Do you know what’s the best platform to conduct event marketing? It is your very own, professionally-built brand website.
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If you want to create a professional website to showcase your business or event, check out Strikingly. Strikingly is a growing website builder with user-friendly tools to create appealing web pages. The best part is that you can build your website on Strikingly without writing any code. Our drag and drop interface and other features make it easy for you to add and update any content on your website that you like.
Your journey to build and run a successful and attractive website begins by registering for a free Strikingly account on our landing page. Once you select a suitable template for your website from the ones available on our platform, you will be all set to finalize the layout of your site and add content to it. Add details of your upcoming event to it, and invite people to visit your site to find out your event’s details. This is a great and simple way to do event marketing.
