No matter your organization's size, creating an event marketing strategy has significant benefits for your business. Event marketing strategies & ideas require a supreme level of organizational skills, time management, and communication skills. Whether you're just starting or have some experience, a roadmap to the event marketing can help you build your business strategy and career.
There’s nothing better than watching your audience enjoy something for which you put in all your efforts. Whether a charity event or any award show, a successful launch brings immense joy to the organizer. But how does one ensure that every event you organize is a hit? For instance, do you remember those birthday parties you had as a kid? A complete guest list of friends, neighbors, and family, spending weeks planning the perfect outfit, chalking out the menu, and of course, the gifts you would receive!
Now imagine for a second, for any reason, all this would fall through, and no one’s here to celebrate the big day with you. You can’t even think of the catastrophe. The simple point we're making here is that no event possible is without the attendees. There are essentially two key components to make any event worthwhile:
- Putting together the plan while considering the slightest details
- Gathering the list of target attendees
What is Event Marketing?
What exactly is event marketing? It's a promotional strategy of the event involving connecting with brands and potential customers at workshops, conferences, seminars, donation camps, trade shows, webinars, and sponsorships. Each event has a different audience, content, and culture. Therefore, every event has its unique way of marketing itself to succeed.
A successful event marketing campaign gets you the attention and footfall of the right targeted audience. If planned thoughtfully, it can bring many wonders to your business. It’s the event marketing strategies & ideas which hit the perfect needle and aptly pulls the trigger to transform your attendees into prolonged customers. However, with a perfect plan, you need a dedicated team working day in and day out.
Here we’ve listed some major challenges and mistakes an event planner could face.
No Brand Loyalty
One of the essential aspects for your attendees is engaging with your organization, and that’s where brand loyalty comes in. If we talk about conventional marketing, your attendees will only recognize you when you push out the marketing messages. And since this only happens right before the event, your target audience will have no solid reason to remember your brand. Always remember that you’re one of many competing for their attention. So get noticed and try to make an enduring relationship with your audience. To become a loyal brand, you need to give consumers a feeling of familiarity, authenticity, and trust every time they engage.
Under Staffing
Event organization can always be something other than a one-man show. Understaffing is one of the major problems for event management. In an impossibly small window of time, you have multiple tasks to complete, which could worsen if you don't have a team to help. So prevention is the key here. Estimate the number of staff members you would need. List down the tasks and functions and who will be handling them. Automate the tasks, when you’re flying solo activities like manually sending emails, optimizing ads, and managing resources will quickly eat up all of your time. Use a multifunction tool, Picktime. An event scheduling software, from events to beauty & wellness to personal meetings to education Picktime has something for every business.
It’s one of the best-rated in the industry by G2, Capterra, and Crozdesk for serving the happiest customers. There’s no extra installation required. All you need is internet access and a web browser to use Picktime. Using Picktime you get 24×7 email support, with SMS & email reminders. Set up a customized booking page for your business with a few clicks, and customers can access it round the clock to book your service.
Time Management
Time is money. With so much to do, you should use every minute. There will always be contracts you need to approve, sponsors you need to win, volunteers you need to train, and whatnot. And between all these, you need to find time for event marketing strategies & ideas. It's not your client's concern, and you're responsible for prioritizing and scheduling tasks accordingly. Invest in part-time helpers, build your core team, structure the checklist with a timeline and share a copy with the clients.
Event Marketing Strategies & Ideas
Event marketing is a broad term to understand. Some would refer to it as a promotional plan for an event; for some, it’s a strategic use of events to market efficiently. As a promotional plan for a specific event, it could be broken down into a more manageable plan.
- Event-based marketing
- Email marketing
- Advertising
- Social media marketing
Events could cost a fortune, so determining your event strategy with budget, goals, and type of promotion you’re running is important. The process begins by acknowledging that an event can help your business reach a goal. Events can add to the sales pipeline, promote a product, help improve morale, and more. Timing is also an important factor when planning event marketing. For instance, marketing during the Covid pandemic was different than normal, so beware of the environment and industry.
Create Unique Branding
The whole point of any event marketing plan is to get recognized. Introducing your brand at the event can create a long-lasting impact on the attendees. Have a signature style to scream out your brand name. Choose a specific theme, shape, colors, and words to reflect your event marketing strategies & ideas. Work with impeccable professionals and market your event on the right platform both paid and unpaid. The easiest way to catch prospects' eye is to be original and fun ‘n fresh.
Promote your event with a user-friendly online booking page provided by Picktime. Picktime is an event management platform for all types of businesses. With Picktime, you get 24×7 business availability, event reminders, and recurring bookings with real-time calendar availability. Sync your calendar (Google/Outlook/Apple) with the Picktime calendar, and you're all set. A fun way to promote your event from anywhere and anytime.
Partner up with Influencers
Partnering up with influencers should not be news for any event marketer. The question here should be, who are the specific influencers for your business, and how can you work with them? The answer to these questions changes every time with every event. Influencers are easy to find promoting products, events, and services. Do proper research to find the best for your target audience. You can contact bloggers, vloggers, social media influencers, and other famous people in your industry. They will then promote your event on your behalf to their audience. Another approach you can try here is inviting influencers to your event. Tips to leverage influencers
- Invest in influencer marketing tools that can make sharing event participation exciting and easy for all joiners.
- Research in your industry for those most active and have huge followers on social media.
- Have multiple channels of communication to understand their area of interest and expertise.
- Depending on your industry, you can consider using an agency to connect with a dedicated influencer.
- Make sure any type of financial exchange should be publicly divulged.
Spark FOMO
Let’s play some psychological tricks with your visitors and create the fear of missing out. Use the content videos and images to show them what they’ll miss if they don’t attend. Contrary to popular belief, humans are more interested in an event when they feel they’re an important part of this and will lose something valuable if they don’t attend.
Early Bird Registration Benefits
This event marketing strategy can be used as a powerful weapon. Early registrations can be paired with a reward system. Early registrants will get significant discounts if there are charges for the event entrance. Or if the entrance is free, top registrations will get a VIP seat. Many visitors forget and lose interest in the event after some time, so it's important to keep them hooked. Once they have their email addresses from the registration forms, you can use email marketing as an effective tool to not lose the interest you sparked. Since we’re on the topic, one other approach you should note in your event marketing strategies & ideas is that email marketing can also be helpful after the event. You can create a database of people interested in at least one of your services. You can use these retargeting campaigns to boost your sales.
Make the Most of Technology
Modern event marketing is all about innovation, so make sure that you make the best use of it. With impressive growth in the event marketing industry, it’s no surprise that marketers are constantly looking for ways to improve their events. One of the best ways to do that is to embrace technological advancements. Picktime, a cloud-based business event scheduling software, continues to be the darlings of event technologists. From easy registrations to payments, Picktime got you covered for all. One-on-one or group bookings, mobile or smart TV, free online storage or unlimited records, robust, secure, and scalable platform accessed from anywhere on any device.
Not only this, but integrate with your favorite apps - PayPal, Stripe, CRMs, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Facebook Pixels, Weebly, Wix, Drupal, Google Meet, Teams, Zoom, Jitsi Meet, and many other apps. To know more, sign up for free today.
Fame and Gain
Before influencers took over the culture, celebrities were the ultimate source faces of events. This strategy still has potential and works tremendously when you choose the right professional for your event marketing strategies & ideas. It will ensure high attendance from fans who admire them as individuals. While it is not easy to convenience celebrities, be ready to invest and pay an amount. Besides the financial part, do thorough research on their values and beliefs and make sure they align with your requirements.
Social Media
Obvious but important to mention. Use social media at all stages of your event marketing strategies & ideas. Social media handles have now become a popular medium for promoting events and shows. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are used effectively to announce important events with good graphics, photographs, and infographics. Social networks are valuable to event planners for many reasons:
- You can get detailed information about any user.
- They have in-built analytics, which makes it easy to monitor the progress of your event in real-time.
- There are both options available for promotions (free and paid). Often working with a combination of both can get you the best results.
According to social media experts, if you want your followers to share your posts, they need to be interesting enough to warrant it. Simply sharing the content is not enough. It should be interesting to share and discuss even after the event.
Website Building
More than 50 percent of marketers believe that their website is the most effective event marketing channel. You should pay attention to this simple method. Create a dedicated landing page for your visitors and ensure it’s optimized for conversions. A dedicated landing page on your website can be the easiest way for people to register for your event. You can also direct your general traffic from blogs, social media, display ads, and pay-per-click advertising to your website. You can also add booking button widget in your website so that your customers can directly book from your website.
Hiring Professionals
Suppose the core responsibilities of your organization are focused on something other than events. Then it makes sense to hire a professional event manager to handle the entire event. Preparation and execution of events could take several hours, and the existing employees' skills could affect the organization's core activities. Therefore, it would be more balanced to outsource the job to taking care of backdrops, arranging invitations, the content of the program, and seating.
Be Creative
An event should create a lasting impression on the attendees. In 2017, to promote the animated Adult Swim series Rick & Morty, Cartoon Network advertised using a car shaped like Rick, the main character and mischievous grandfather on the show. Through this event marketing, the company was able to get the campaign to go viral.
Creativity is an important aspect of the success of event marketing strategies & ideas. The more talented people you have behind the show, the better it will impact. As discussed, in some cases, the presence of film stars adds value to an event, though it could entail higher costs. However, decide on the star based on the industry's relevance as their charisma is important to be a real crowd puller for the show.
Please note that event marketing strategies & ideas are not a substitute for traditional market promotion activities but a complement to them. There are industries like fashion, IT, sportswear, electronics, consumer goods, and equipment where event marketing strategies could be a good payoff. You have worked hard and planned amazing things for your attendees. Now it's time to create a buzz and make your event an exceptional experience for them.