Create a Successful Event Marketing Campaign
If you want to introduce a new service to the world, promote a new brand or get people to attend a conference, you need to rely on promotional tactics. You have a great marketing team, the budget, and you know the date of the brand reveal or the conference, but now you need to get people talking about it. Not only that, you need people to show genuine interest. People are constantly connected and consuming content on their phones, so a billboard or a flyer might not do the right marketing trick. You need to plan and execute an event marketing campaign to promote a brand event, promotion of a new service or a conference. So, where do you begin?
Start with the event goal
Every event is different, so each one might have a different goal. For example, a goal for a product launch event can be to showcase the product, discuss its features and get people to either buy, test or at least spark their curiosity. If it’s a company event, the goal might be to have all partners attend and have a good time.
On the other hand, if the event introduces a new brand to the public, make sure to invite all the right influencers and have them post about the event on their social media. The goal of such an event is to build brand awareness and get people to show interest fro the new brand. So, define your event goal because it will have an impact on all other steps during the event marketing campaign.
Have a fantastic dot com
If you want to launch a fantastic event, you need to give people a relevant source of all information. You need to build a good old website, the-name-of-the-event-dot-com. If the name of the event is unique enough, and that domain name is free, this will make it easier for people to find your website if they know the name. Get content writers to write quality, informative and optimised copy, add all relevant pieces of information and keep all data up to date. Especially if the event you want to promote is a conference, when speaker names are revealed every week, you’ll want that piece of information to be on the website.
Build the momentum
Before the actual date of the event, even months before, you should work on building momentum and building people’s interest. It can be done in the form of blog posts, each one revealing something new. You can also build momentum with short videos, behind the scenes moments, and short messages by speakers inviting people to get the tickets or sign up for the conference. The goal here is to get people curious and excited by the upcoming event so include this into your event marketing strategy.
Appeal to your target audience
Your marketing team has done a great job of defining your target audience. Now’s the time to communicate directly with your target audience. Whether it’s through a series of videos, social media posts or other forms of communication, you need to create a quality message and content. Since you’ll have to plan the entire marketing campaign to engage your target audience, you should also work with event management companies that have rich experience in all areas of event promotional campaigns. While you might be strong in some aspects of event marketing campaigns, they know how to produce, manage, stream and add to a great event experience.
Choose your channels for promotion
Not every channel is suitable to promote your event, thus you’ll need to focus on the right kind of marketing channel. In case of a conference, you should work on social media strategy, both paid and organic. Posts, videos and reels should be informative but also build the momentum. Make sure you do a slow reveal through posts and engagement with followers. You can also benefit from email marketing campaigns, especially if this isn’t the first conference and you have a base of emails and previous attendees. You can offer early bird offers to those on your email list and take them to view the offer on the website. This will boost the website traffic and also get other people to sign up for tickets. If you want to build a community around a new brand, utilise social media marketing and even paid marketing like paid ads to get more people to learn about the brand.
Map out a detailed marketing timeline
Since your entire event marketing campaign has to cover an exact timeline, from the initial announcement to the date of the event, you need to map it out. It’s like a countdown – six months out, four months out, one month out, a week of the event, the date of the event and other variations. By mapping the entire marketing timeline, you’ll know when and how to reveal the relevant information and engage with your target audience. This is especially important when promoting a conference because the tickets probably won’t cost the same six months or a month before the event. Also, if you have a detailed timeline, you’ll know how to adjust it or push a promotion earlier if the ticket sale isn’t going as expected or you need to get more people excited about it.
Partner up with others
Partner up with influential people in your niche who share the same target audience and have them talk about the event. Have them as special guests, ambassadors, cover faces of the brand or even hosts at the event. Every event must have a host, so he or she can talk about this event on their social media or share posts for the official event page. Conference speakers can announce their attendance and the date of their lecture or talk to their audience. This can also boost attendance and get people interested in the event.
At the core of every successful event marketing campaign are these seven tips, their variations and combinations. Another important ingredient is creativity, dedication and devotion. Once the event finally arrives, and everything goes smoothly, remember to get the feedback so you’ll know how to elevate future event marketing campaigns and deliver even better results.
