Although digital marketing is all the rage, in-person events can still be your bread and butter. Event marketing gives your company a chance to connect in a way that is now considered unorthodox, and as such, more memorable.
Target Your Customers
Marketing events are exclusive, not inclusive. You want to marry the people you invite and the strategies you incorporate into your production as closely as possible. Drill down into your attendee list before you begin spending money on production. This will focus your efforts and keep you from trying to please a foggy nebulous of prospects that may or may not be viable partners and clients.
Poll Your Customers
You do not have to come up with all of the ideas for your next event on your own! One of the best ways to ensure success is simply to ask your clientele and prospective clientele what they are looking for in your company and from your events. This can be done in an indirect way through social media content aggregation. Simply get the conversation started, step back, and let your audience tell you how they want to be sold. People are offering their opinions to you on a daily basis for free - take the advice.
Identify Your Customer Journeys
If you have not created buyer profiles for your prospects, do so. You should be able to precisely identify your first responders, high loyalty customers and casual shoppers. Each of these groups has a customer journey that you can emulate at your live events. If your first responders tend to participate in closed circuit industry discussions, you can give them this experience with an exclusive insiders meeting at your event. If your casual customers tend to enjoy your crazy mascot, make sure that mascot shows up at the event.
Match Your Event to Your Brand
This is your time to shine! Make sure that your color schemes, fonts and other visual aspects of your brand match your displays, language and overall event branding. Customers, prospects and leads should have no trouble picking your company out of a lineup. Fostering confusion will only negate your production efforts. We shared the three keys to successful branding in this post.
Incorporate Social Media
Every marketing event can exponentially increase its audience through the judicious use of social media. Livestreaming events as they happen can catch the attention of a top prospect that would not otherwise be able to make the event. You can also use the event to gather great looking pictures of your staff and customers to use for future marketing collateral of all formats.
Customer Participation
How can you incorporate your audience into the event? Interactivity is popular for a reason - it works. Gamification is a proven method of both entertainment and participation. You can create a simple video game app with your logo as a playable character or create a contest to give away swag to your best customers. Raffles still work effectively as well.
Go Big or Go Home
Once you have identified your customers, streamlined your production values and taken care of the logistics, make sure that you are going as big as possible, within your own set budget and what is reasonable from a company standpoint. Yes, the sky is the limit, but be realistic. Marketing events are no time to play coy. No matter the industry, people come to see a show, so give it to them!
