Which Event Marketing Strategies Are Truly Effective?
In a recent event marketing report created in 2018 that surveyed 500 senior marketers, a majority of them believed that live events are the most effective marketing channel for achieving business goals.
Nearly 63% of these marketers plan on investing more on live events, and 86% believe that technology will play an important role in making them a success.
If you want to create and organize events successfully, you need to use timeless event marketing strategies that are effective, modern and get people to attend your events. A good event strategy will start with addressing the fundamentals, like:
- What’s your event about?
- Who should attend your event?
- Why should they attend it?
- When is the best time to conduct the event?
- Where should the event be held?
Once you have the answers to the above questions, implementing event marketing strategies becomes a lot easier. In this post, we’ll cover 6 event marketing strategies you can use to spread the word about your events, and get people excited to attend them!
Let’s rock ‘n’ roll!
1. Get On Event Marketing Platforms!
With the plethora of event marketing platforms, it’s a no-brainer that you need to establish a presence on them. There are a few reasons to do this including, but not limited to:
- Bookings: Event marketing platforms provide you the platform to manage the administrative side of event bookings, like ticketing! Most of these platforms offer you the ability to generate QR codes for attendees that they can use to identify themselves at the event venue, which is a very handy feature to have.
- Website Traffic: Platforms like Meetup.com and Eventbrite are being used by people who want to attend events near them. So you have the added benefit of leveraging their website traffic by being on their platform.
- Social Media Integration: Event marketing platforms allow users to share details about the event with their friends on social media. This is very essential to build in some virality into your event marketing. People who share the event details on social media with their network, will further spread the word about your event, leading to greater exposure.
Definitely don’t miss out on these platforms, because more than half the work is already done for you!
2. Digital & Social Media Marketing, It Works!
You need to be leveraging digital, social and mobile marketing avenues to arouse interest in your event before it happens. Here’s how you can:
- Event Website: A simple event website or landing page can be a great way to tell people about your event, gather email addresses, and also get bookings online. Here are some important elements your event website should have:
A good looking home page, like this one:
Important information relating to your event, like speakers & sponsors:
And a way to collect email addresses and letting people subscribe to updates in relation to your event:
That’s essentially all you need. Keep it simple and your event website will be far more effective in doing its job!
- Engage In Conversations In Online: Start talking to your target audience on online & offline forums and engage in conversations meaningfully. Definitely don’t talk about your event immediately or you’ll turn people off, but just network and build relationships for the sake of meeting people. Give value and people will want to know more about you.
The best way to engage in online conversations is to set up online alerts for conversations you want to be a part of. If you’re creating an event around film making, you want to be a part of conversations that talk about it. Just like engaging in a conversation in an offline setting, gauge where the conversation is at, and then slide in with something value adding to be appreciated.
- Facebook Ads: Facebook has more than 1 Billion active daily users. That’s massive. Marketers count on the effectiveness of Facebook ads due to the size of the audience it has, and you just cannot afford to overlook it!
The important thing about facebook ads for event marketing is to use engaging content to attract your audience to click on your ads. You also need to pay attention to the call to action, as you can ask people to message you via messenger, or simply direct them to your facebook event page or website. Choose the call to action that’s most effective for you. The great thing about Facebook ads is the ability to target your ads around a specific location, so you make sure the right people see your ads.
You can also ask people to select if they’re ‘interested’ or ‘going’ to an event. This is particularly useful as you can always follow up with the ones who are interested but haven’t booked yet.
- Newsletters: This is another great avenue for event marketing, if there’s an existing newsletter that people already read in your area. In Melbourne, for instance, if you’d like to know about startup events happening in town, there’s a newsletter by the name of “The Fetch” which curates all interesting events in Melbourne. It’s like your one stop shop for all the awesome events in your city.
Advertising on newsletters like the Fetch which an established subscriber base can be extremely effective for people to know about your event.
- Email Marketing: Ensure you email the subscribers to your event website. These are folks who’ve already expressed an interest in your event, so using a tool like Mailchimp to set up a drip campaign can be a great way to continue to spice up their interest, eventually leading them to book.
3. Strategic Partnerships
You can make event marketing a lot easier for yourself, if you’re strategic about where you put in your effort. Strategic partnerships are one such avenue, that take longer to implement, but once in place, can be a continuous source of referrals to your event.
The trick is to identify the right partners for your event. For instance, if you’re organizing a Golf Tournament, the best strategic partners are going to be sporting brands. If you’re foreign bank that sells travellers checks, the best partners are travel agencies, and so on. These partners share a common target audience, who are naturally interested in your event.
Looking into incentivising referrals from these strategic partners, or asking them to be sponsors at your events can work out to be a real win-win boosting your chances of making your events a success. The best part is that if the partnership works well for one event, it can become a longer term relationship for future events too.
4. Follow Up On Incomplete Bookings
A lot of people get to the last stage of making an event booking and then ‘fizzle out’. These are the people that are your ‘low hanging fruit’ to convert into event attendees.
The best way to follow up with them is via an email or SMS that contains a simple message reminding them of the benefits of attending the event. Put in a timer on how much time they have left to make a book to add in some sense of urgency for them to make an actual booking.
Let them know that they’re only one small step away from attending the event, and you’ll further boost the chances of getting a booking.
5. Ensure Your Copywriting Is Impeccable
Your event needs to excite people to attend it. You simply cannot afford to have it look monotonous. The goal of great copywriting is get people to take action, and book.
Make sure your taglines are punchy, and in line with your brand’s voice and tone. Observe how this landing page stimulates interest by having a ‘call to action’ button that’s catchy, and communicates the value event attendees would derive from clicking it.
Everyone wants to be the “first to know” something. So this call to action is tempting to click on!
Ensure you’re constantly communicating the value attendees would get from attending your event. They want to know what’s in it for them, and why they should attend, so the stronger your value proposition is, the better.
6. Influencer Marketing
On average, every $1 invested in influencer marketing generates $6.50 in revenue. So you need to get the right influencers to talk about your event.
The best approach, of course, is to ask the influencers to attend your event. This is a two pronged strategy, as it makes your event more attractive to attendees, and also incentivises your influencers to share your event details with their network, leading to lots of traction and publicity.
Think about why an influencer should attend your event and why they should share details about your events with their audience. Influencer marketing is a ‘slow burn’ strategy, that takes a lot of time to implement, so plan to initiate your influencer campaign at least 6 months prior to the actual event to see the results.
7. Promotional Products, & Customer Surveys.
We’ve covered strategies you need to implement before the event to maximize event attendance. However, event marketing doesn’t stop there.
During and after the event is a great time to be marketing and building upon the marketing work you’ve done prior to the event. This is where promotional products come into the picture.
By giving promotional products that your audience loves at the event, you’ll stimulate further interest from those that see the attendees flaunting these promotional items.
Not just that, ask people at the event, and after the event, if they liked the event and would attend it again. This can be a great way to know how satisfied your attendees were, and if they would share information about the event with their friends.
Wrapping it up
While there a million ways to market events successfully, it’s important you do it in a timely and organized way to boost your chances of success. Plan ahead, market effectively, and continuously follow up with attendees to create an experience your attendees won’t forget.
Reach out to Good Things to explore how we can help with your promotional product needs.
