Welcome to the third and final part of Into the Blue’s crash course on event marketing. Before you read on, you should catch up on Part 1, which was dedicated to analyzing your audience and deciding your strategy. After that, make sure to get up to speed on Part 2, dedicated toward event marketing do’s and don’ts.
Undeniably, the most important part of planning a strategy is executing it – and executing it well. Your event marketing strategy should surpass the convention floor, parking lot, or wherever you may find yourself. This means engaging not only those in the room, but those out and about. Your aim should be to broaden your reach and connect with as many targeted consumers as possible. Another aim is to shed light on your business to those consumers, whether they’re in attendance or not.
This isn’t all about gathering data – it’s about embracing and connecting with your potential consumer base to open their eyes to your business.
Here’s a comprehensive list of who you need to connect with and how:
Event Marketing to Attendees
Be it a B2B or a B2C event, your first priority should be engaging those in front of you. There’s no better way to establish your credibility and commitment to your audience than directly interacting with them. This doesn’t mean going headfirst for the direct sale, but rather sharing your mission and giving your brand a face. Once you give your brand a personal dimension – it’s time to start incorporating business. A major goal of yours that we’ll talk about later should be to urge the attendees to opt-in to your email list and follow you on social media.
Besides that, other major elements to consider are:
Brand ambassadors: At big events, you may not have the time to greet and talk to every passerby. That’s where brand ambassadors come in. Consider investing in these engaging faces to roam around the arena event on your behalf to spread the word, give out samples, and more.
Snapchat filters: Everybody loves visuals. These custom-made graphics can be used by Snapchat users within a certain geography to be sent to seen by dozens of others. By encouraging attendees to use it, it’s free advertising as well as sharing what other people are missing out on. This will give your brand a creative edge over the others there.
Hashtags: By creating a hashtag specific to your brand, you can view an online scrapbook of everyone who uses it. This makes it easy to go share what your audience is saying on your own social media accounts – and generates brand awareness.
Photo Booths: This is an interactive, multi-sensory activity that attracts people to your brand. Photo booths with props associated with your brand or industry are even better in creating a positive association with your brand.
Incentives: Of course, the caveat to all these useful methods is that people need an incentive to participate.
User Generated Content (UGC): Whether they’re live at the show or virtual, events present the ideal platform to encourage UGC. Try unique show hashtags, creative hashtag contests, photo sharing, creative post contests, and true testimonials sharing.
Event Marketing to Non-attendees
Although attendees are your first priority, the fact is that people are busy and can’t always carve time out of their schedule or support the cost to travel to an event. But that doesn’t mean they should be overlooked – you should strive to make them part of the event, too. It’s important to keep in mind the big picture rather than think about day-to-day. Having a digital and social post-show plan is just as necessary as having a show plan, and part of that is engaging non-attendees.
Here are a few ways to capture the audience that wasn’t in the audience:
Cross-promotion:Don’t rely on a single outlet – the more, the merrier. Different social media platforms serve different purposes to add different dimensions to your event.
Teaming up with influencers: Combining forces with different brands on social media also adds a new dimension. You’re not just showing a few square feet of your booth – you’re showing different audiences from different perspectives, which extends your message outside your normal audience.
Visual media: Recapping your event could be done in as little as a minute when you craft a vibrant recap video like this done by Into the Blue.
User Generated Content:As mentioned above, create a campaign or promotion that engages with the virtual world. Be sure to include event hashtags in your social media to build awareness across a broader audience.
Events are also a prime opportunity to grow your email list. Promoting your email list during and outside the event can yield awesome results for your brand. So don’t waste the chance to do this at an event.
Here are some benefits to emphasizing email list growth at your next event:
You can use email blasts as a way to follow up with everyone who was interested in your business.
Emails can lead to social media engagement, which can lead to sales. It’s not always as linear as a direct sale.
Email marketing keeps your following engaged over a long period of time – people aren’t usually ready to buy into you right away.
Eblasts & Enewsletters with quality content are a way to keep your following after they’ve signed up.
At least half of the recipients will open it (on a mobile device), which creates exposure to your other platforms that people were probably too busy at the event to check out.
Create a email list “sign up” incentive that connects with your events marketing plan. For example: the opportunity to register to win tickets or an all-expense-paid trip to the next trade/consumer show.
After the event, it’s a matter of increasing engagement and favoring quality over quantity when it comes to content. There should be meticulous thought put behind everything at an event – from the way you you interact with businesses or consumers to the way you set up. It’s not just data collection and email growth – there’s a great amount of psychology that goes behind marketing.
So how do you go about increasing the quality of people signing up for your email list? Or keeping the followers you create at an event engaged? If you don’t know where to start, Into the Blue’s team of expert marketers can answer those questions and more. Let us help you make the most out of your next event marketing by emailing [email protected] today.
