For any event to be successful, a well planned and thought out promotional plan is integral.
If you wish to create a buzz around your event, you have to appeal and reach out to your target audience and gain as much traction as possible to tie it all together.
Be it a business conference, corporate event, trade show or an exhibition, you need some handy event marketing and planning tools and tips in your arsenal in the run up before the big day!
Event preparations can be very stressful, there are so many things to keep in your mind, such as where the event will take place, who are your guests, will there be speakers, how to get food and drinks, etc. Keeping a planner for your event and organizing all the details beforehand can be a great relief. It is also crucial to trust professional companies because they know their work very well. Professional services such as catering for large events are equally important because you can be sure that the problem of satisfying all your guests will be solved. In this article, you can find many helpful tips like this to have a successful event.
Here are some key takeaways to keep in mind before launching your event:
- Choose the best location to hold your event. The place should be accessible to your intended audience, preferably close to their area of residence. Make it unique and extra special, too. You might want to consider holding the event on a private villa, a large event hall, or a spacious rooftop, like what you can see on this list.
- Have a well integrated marketing plan in place to hype your event and amplify attendance
- Use a combination of email, social media, content, podcast and video marketing to expand your reach and to get the necessary exposure
- Marketing for your event should start several months before d-day and should continue both during and after the event is done. This will be especially handy if you’ll be organising your event regularly
Let’s now take a look at the various tips to market your event successfully!
1) Setup a Dedicated Website for Your Event
While you can surely use your existing website to add a basic landing page and enquiry/contact form regarding your event, setting up a dedicated website has its own benefits in terms of how you focus on its marketing, branding and SEO.
Search engine optimization (SEO) strategy includes placing relevant keywords about the event and its location. You can use an SEO keyword research tool to check what most online users type in search boxes to land in event marketing campaigns. Other digital marketing strategies you can apply once you have a dedicated event website include social media marketing, influencer marketing, and even press releases.
Be sure to come up with a creative and catchy domain name and design your CTAs to easily funnel visitors through the registration page.
2) Use Pop-ups on Your Website
Not all of us like pop-ups but you can’t deny that they work to bolster your rate of conversion. When you integrate a nice and fun pop-up on your website informing visitors about your upcoming event, you can successfully lead them to the dedicated landing page or site for more information.
Ensure that these pop-ups appear on your page in a way that it doesn’t affect the user experience of the visitor. You might want to include pop-ups that appear once the visitor has had enough time to browse your website, like two minutes after engaging within the page or before exiting the page.
3) Add Pictures of Guest Speakers Along With a Short Bio
If you have someone popular coming to your event, you need to leverage their presence to create a buzz and draw more visitors and attention to it. Create a standalone speaker page with photos of your guest speakers along with their credentials, expertise, experience and their qualifications and authority to speak at your event.
Get good business headshots done professionally at a photography studio for high quality images. You can also get some candid shots for a more organic appeal.
4) Use Email Campaigning to Market Your Event
Email is one of the most potent and functional channels of marketing you can use especially when you have a loyal target audience base. You can announce early bird tickets along with the speaker lineup via email campaigns several months before your event.
Post this, continue sending regular updates as the event date approaches with handy reminders regarding discounts, deadlines, schedules. This will act as a strategic effort to push last minute registrations just before the event.
5) Create a Unique Hashtag for Your Event and Make it Trend
For effective social media promotion, catchy hashtags is a surefire way to grab eyeballs. Come up with a hashtag that’s easy to remember and use it on every post across platforms to gain momentum.
Using hashtags will help people look for event details via posts easily. It’ll also help encourage more shares and likes, meaning there’ll be a definite boost in engagement in the days leading up to the event.
6) Resort to Blogging About Your Event
Curating blog posts revolving around your event is a great way to popularise and inflate your target audience and push people to sign up. This will also contribute to your SEO efforts as regular buzz around your event will help attract attention from a new audience base who’s probably interested in attending.
In the run up to your event, ensure that you post about it regularly. Start this a few months before so you will have gained enough traction before the main day. By doing so, you’ll spark the curiosity of your target attendees, making them more excited and willing to join your event.
These articles do not have to be detailed – just small tidbits of information along with details and updates regarding the guest speakers and schedules will help pique the interest of your viewers and amplify engagement and interaction.
7) Leverage Influencer Marketing
As mentioned, influencer marketing is one of the digital marketing strategies you can use to promote your event. Influencers are key social media personalities who have plenty of followers. What are the benefits of working with influencers?
Influencer marketing is all the rage today. With the right influencers in your industry, you have a chance to expand your reach and boost registration and attendance from relevant and interested target audiences.
You can tap into the resources that influencers bring to the table to promote your event and see real-time engagement and hype around your business. It’s all about the visuals today, so be sure to choose an aesthetically pleasing venue that’s highly photogenic. Hire professional photographers to capture the engagement of the day.
Encourage attendees to take pictures, videos along with live streams of your event that they can post on their feed and make the most of influencer marketing.
Leverage All The Available Resources At Your Disposal To Make Your Event Memorable!
Online marketing, while the obvious choice for event promotion, isn’t your only option. Experiment with old school offline marketing techniques as well to ensure that you get the word out about your event.
If you have the budget, invest in banners and newspaper and radio advertisements to create the right amount of hype. At the same time, leverage your website and all your social channels to consistently promote your event.
When you make the most of all the available resources, there’s no reason why your event won’t be a big hit!
