Full Guide To Event Marketing
Event Marketing is an important step to any successful event. And the reason why I have created this full guide to event marketing. To help you advertise your next event.
It opens up the event to the attendees allowing them to have a more engaging experience that will be forever remembered. And ultimately that is what you want. For your guests to remember this event for a long time, which will lead to them returning the following year.
Marketing is the tool you use to sell your product. And in this case its your event. So by following this guide you will be able to achieve this goal.
Full Guide To Event Marketing: Pre-Event
Event Goal
Before starting any advertising, you should define your event goal.
This should be a clear definition of what your event is about and what should your guests expect from it.
When defining your event ask yourself these question:
- Why are you holding this event?
- Why do you want people to come?
- What message do you want to pass on to the attendees?
- How can you tell your event was successful?
By answering these questions you will more easily be able to define your event goal and start your event marketing campaign.
Email Campaign
Once your event goal is defined its time to start your email campaign.
Your email to be successful needs to be compelling. And to be so there are a few things you should consider:
The subject line
- The subject line needs to be something that people won’t dismiss. Needs to captivate attention. A good way of learning how to create a good subject line is by looking at your own email inbox and see what advertising/marketing emails have you opened and what was their subject line.
- It should also include the ultimate goal of the event, or how beneficial it will be to attend the event.
Event goal
- The email should include the event goal, make it clear, simple and catchy. The bottom line is you need to hook their interest.
What is in it for the guests
- You should include what will the guests gain from attending. Whether its new experiences, new skills or opportunity to network with other businesses.
Rough schedule of the event
- Here you should include roughly what is going to happen during the day. Not the exact timings but what is scheduled for the morning and afternoon, if there is food being provided. And if there is time to social network at the end of the event with drinks etc.
- These are the type of information that will get potential guests hooked into attending.
Event speakers or special guests
- Another way of getting people excited about attending in any event is knowing who else is attending. From important speakers to any influencers that you have invited to attend the event.
Exclusive offers
- Finally include offers in the email. Just to make the email juicier and even more irresistible.
Advertising
We have just covered advertising through email campaign. And that will reach the guests/attendees that you already had.
So now to get new people to attend and be involved you need to use other platforms to advertise your event.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.
- A good way to achieve this goal in social media is to create a profile for the event itself. Rather than using the companies profile.
In these platforms besides sharing your event to your followers; you should include giveaways: for instance free tickets to the event. And competitions that require sharing the event’s profile to their followers to enter the competition.
All these will help your event look more social and with the trends, and people love good giveaways and competitions. Which is why it should be part of your event marketing campaign.
Another thing you should create before the event is the event’s hashtag. So when people share photos of the event they can use the hashtag.
Promote that.
Share posts that the event has been tagged & the ones that the hashtag has been used. People love when their ports are re-shared by someone. Makes them feel important.
A good presence online today is important. Everyone spends a lot of time on their phones, on social media. Use that to your advantage.
Sponsors
Do you have sponsors for your event? Have you thought about it at all?
Being sponsored by other companies is a really good addition to any event. Not only they can provide goods to the event, but they can also share the event to their platform and mailing list.
Obviously, you need to ensure that it is relevant to your event and it makes sense to have sponsoring from that business. But at the end of the day your main goal is to sell your event to as many people as possible.
By collaborating with other businesses it can help you achieve your goal, so do your research and try to get sponsors involved.
Furthermore, if it works the first time, then you will have a potential sponsor relationship for future events.
Influencers
Another way to get more people interested in your event is to get influencers involved.
Create a partnership (like sponsoring) with that person.
You can get them to speak at the event, share their story or business.
Get them to share the event on their platform and get their followers interested in the event.
This will help the overall attendance of the event, as it will reach a bigger audience.
Needless to say, that if your event sells out, the better it is for you. Announcing that an event has sold out makes people more curious and interested. Which means that the next time you organise this event the easier it will be to get attendees.
Full Guide To Event Marketing: During The Event
Live Stream
A good way to market your event to the people that have not been able to attend is to live stream the event on your online platform.
Why? Because it can spark interest and will make people want to attend when it happens next.
Also, whoever is attending if they know that there is a streaming session happening they will tell others to watch.
Social Media
During the event you should promote for people to share that they are there, by sharing a picture online or by writing a post.
When asking to share, promote them to tag the event’s platform, and to use the event’s hashtag.
A good way to do this is by sharing the posts live on screens throughout the venue. As I have said people love seeing their post re-shared and by having them on the screen makes them more prone to post something.
The best thing about this is that at the end of the event you will be able to recall all the photos and posts from the attendees. You will also be able to share it on your platform.
Survey
A good way to know how things are going during the event is to have surveys throughout the day.
You can send out an email chain to attendees to answer simple bullet point questions (no more than 5). Or via text message.
Also, try and get some feedback machines throughout the venue. These can be placed at the exit of seminar rooms and people can vote on their way out. You should aim to move them around as the day goes by.
Not everyone will answer, but most people will, and it will give you an idea of how the day is going.
Interviews
Interviews are also a good way to get your guests involved in the event.
You can conduct interviews to special guests (or panel speakers) and live stream it online and in the resting areas of the venue.
You can also interview the attendees as a form of feedback to know how the day is going.
Not everyone will enjoy being interviewed but you will get some people that wont mind talking or being filmed. Which will be great content to share on your online platforms to your followers and to the people who could not attend.
Video & Photos
Another great way to get guests to share videos and photos online and tagging the event is by creating a competition.
Set out a challenge throughout the day that the best photo or video will receive some sort of prize. It doesn’t have to be something too big but something that will captivate their attention.
A good challenge would be one that is current. Do your research; see what challenges people are doing on social media and bring that to the event.
Full Guide To Event Marketing: Post Event
Thank You Emails
At the end of the event you want to thank all your guests for attending.
The best way to do it is by sending an email to the attendees thanking them for their presence and that you couldn’t have done it without them.
A good thing to include in the email is, maybe, a discount for the next event. As a way to promote it and to get them to come back. It is sort of a thank you for their loyalty.
You can also use your social media platform to create a post to thank everyone that attended.
Collection Of Event Visuals
Then you should start the collection of the event visuals. Which is basically gathering all the photos and videos that were shared.
You will need a team to go over these and to sort them into categories for easier access.
Not only you need what was shared online but what your team gathered during the event. Then you can create a final post to share the best moments from the event.
Sharing Final Results
So once the media is collected you should share the best content in your social media platforms. So that your followers get to see the results of the event and how it turned out.
You should also create a blog post. Someone to write up what happened during the event. An extensive summary of the day plus visual content.
All of these should be added to your online platform and shared throughout the company and should also be shared by every party. As you want to reach as many people as you can with the results of the event. You want to get them hooked for the next one, because the people who did not attend will not want to miss out again.
Post Event Survey
Feedback collection is extremely important. Because you should always strive to do better; and no better way than by collecting feedback from the attendees.
You can include this on the thank you emails:
- a simple link that they can follow and provide you with constructive feedback so you can try and accommodate it next time.
It is also important that you keep to the constructive feedback and the feedback you can do something about.
Don’t focus your energy on negative comments that you can’t change or that are hurtful.
Once you receive feedback, sort it out and work harder to achieve perfection.
Full Guide To Event Marketing: Conclusion
To conclude, if you follow this Full Guide to Event Marketing, you will achieve a successful campaign.
Arrange enough time to get these prepared and done prior to the event. Because when you need to get things done during the event, you won’t need to think too much about it. It will just happen naturally and it will be great.
After the event, also take your time to go through all the information you collected. Make sure to take it all in and learn from it so the next event things are easier and better.
And remember always strive for better.
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