Event marketing remains a powerful tool for businesses that wish to boost audience engagement and convert leads. In fact, more than 50% of businesses believe events provide the best return on investment compared to other channels.
No wonder the events market is expected to be valued at more than $500 billion by 2030.
Does that mean hosting events without the proper planning suffices for businesses to reap these benefits?
Of course not! There’s still a right way to perform event marketing.
Learn everything you need to know about the concept so you can get the most out of your business events.
What Is Event Marketing?
Event marketing is the process of promoting a brand, product or service via events. These events can be hosted live, virtually or both, and can come in different forms, including:
- Webinar events
- Trade shows
- Conferences
- Product launches
- Workshops
With the immersive experiences event marketing provides, brands can benefit from it in many ways. Let’s get into the specific benefits in the next section.
Benefits of Event Marketing
Event marketing is a powerful tool in any business’s arsenal for these specific reasons:
Increases Brand Awareness
Research has shown that events such as trade shows can increase brand awareness and recognition by 76%. More than 80% of consumers even say they have a positive opinion of a brand after attending a top-performing event hosted by that brand.
Facilitates Direct Engagement with Target Audience
Unlike traditional marketing that typically leverages broad messaging, events enable brands to connect with their target audience on a more personal level. Whether it’s a live, virtual or hybrid event, brand representatives can directly speak with attendees, allowing them to tailor their messages according to attendee experiences and preferences. Brands can also receive real-time feedback, which also enables them to provide prompt responses.
Aids in Networking
Event marketing helps foster a sense of community among event attendees by enabling real-time interactions amongst themselves. Almost half of consumers want brands to bring people together toward a common goal.
Helps Generate Leads
Event marketing has been found to be a powerful lead-generation strategy. Over 40% of marketers believe that webinars and other online events performed better when it came to generating leads for them in the last 12 months.
Events drive conversions as well. More than 80% of B2B marketers, in particular, believe events are the key to their success, with over 20% of lead conversions attributed to the same.
Mastering Events with an Effective Event Marketing Plan
Convinced event marketing is the way to go. Here are some tips you need to follow as part of your event marketing plan to reap the best results:
1. Define Your Goals
You need to specify your event goals from the get-go. Goals will help guide your event-related decisions from start to finish.
So, ask yourself, what do you want to achieve with your event? Do you want to increase brand awareness, launch your product or enhance your brand reputation? Whatever your goals are, make sure they’re Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. These will enable you to set the right key performance indicators you’ll use to determine whether or not your event was a success.
Assume you want to increase brand awareness with your event. Then some SMART goals could be:
- to get 10,000 people to attend December 20, 2024 trade show
- To boost Instagram engagement (likes, shares, comments) by 20% through social media posts related to December 20, 2024 event
- To increase Instagram followers by 10% by January 10, 2024.
Based on those goals, your KPIs for this campaign would be event attendees, Instagram engagement (likes, shares, comments), and Instagram followers.
2. Understand Your Target Audience
Your event marketing strategy won’t be successful without a deep understanding of your audience. When you know whom you’re trying to reach, you can tailor event experiences according to their preferences and ultimately achieve your event marketing goals. Besides, this understanding of your target audience will come in handy once you start crafting marketing collateral to promote your event. When you know your audience, you can also craft marketing messages that drive your desired action, in this case, event attendance.
Start by researching your target attendees. You can use your data analytics tools to determine their demographics, preferences and interests. Send them surveys, too, to gain more valuable insights. Collate all your audience data and create an audience persona or a semi-fictional representation of your ideal audience.
You’ll use your audience persona as a guide when planning your event and marketing strategies.
3. Develop a Marketing Strategy
It’s not enough for you to plan your event. You need a strategy to promote it, too. You can’t expect people to attend something they don’t know exists in the first place.
Choose your marketing channels first. As a general rule, you need your own event website. This site shall be the central hub for all your event content. It’s where participants will find all your event details–from your speakers, if any, to your event schedule and venue, among others. It’s also where they’ll sign up for your event.
If you know code, you can create your own site. But if you don’t have the technical knowledge for this, just hire a developer. Whatever you decide to do, just make sure your event site reflects your company branding. It should use the same font, colors and language tone you use in your other brand materials. Generate domain names and choose the one that best showcases your company values.
As for your choice of other marketing channels, this should depend on your target audience’s preferences. Just check out your audience persona for this.
Once you have your marketing channels, you can start creating your promotional content. Whether it’s a blog post, an email, or a social media post you’re creating, just make sure you highlight the features that make your event stand out. Is there a Q&A session with industry leaders? Is there a workshop after your event lectures?
Emphasize the corresponding benefits as well, of course. For every feature, just ask yourself how exactly your attendees can benefit. For the Q&A session with industry leaders, for instance, you can say they can get the opportunity to interact with authority figures and learn industry trends.
Again, be guided by your audience persona to determine how you should craft your marketing messages and ensure they resonate.
You’ll need to monitor your marketing campaign to determine which strategies work and which don’t. With these valuable insights, you can make the necessary adjustments to your ongoing campaign and ensure the best marketing results.
4. Set a Budget
A well-defined event budget will help you allocate resources properly and ensure you don’t overspend. That’s why setting a clear budget is key to a successful event marketing strategy.
To establish a realistic budget, list down your expected event-related costs. These may include:
- Event venue rental fees
- Event technology expenses
- Catering costs
- Speaker fees
- Logistics costs
- Staffing fees
- Marketing costs
Your estimated expenses should be based on research, of course. You can get your ballpark figures from each provider’s official website. If they don’t have a website, just ask them directly for an estimate.
Include a contingency fund for unexpected expenses as part of your budget as well. This should be 10% to 15% of the total. With a contingency fund, you’re prepared money-wise even when things don’t go as planned.
Once you have your budget, stick to it as much as possible.
5. Measure and Analyze Event Results
Your job doesn’t end after you’ve hosted your event. You’ll need to determine whether or not it was successful in the first place. When you analyze your event results, you can derive actionable insights you can use to fine-tune your event marketing strategy. As a result, you can ensure your next event drives even better results.
So, go back to your set event goals. Take note of the specific strategies that worked based on your achieved KPIs. You’ll double-down on them again when you set up your next event. List down the strategies that didn’t work, too. These are the strategies you’ll tweak the next time around.
Don’t forget to ask for attendee feedback as well. You can send them post-event surveys asking them to comment on everything from your event speakers to the food and venue. You can use the multiple-choice format with an option to elaborate on answers to boost survey completion rates. You can give specific incentives for completing the survey, too. For instance, why not offer them a discount on tickets to your next event? This way, you don’t just increase the likelihood of them answering your survey. You boost the likelihood of them attending your upcoming event as well.
Conclusion
If you want to succeed as a business, you shouldn’t discard event marketing. Events are a great way to connect with prospective customers. With the immersive experiences they provide, you can leave a lasting impact on your target audience and, ultimately, get them to convert.
But for you to get the most out of events, you need a strategy.
You learned tips to ensure effective event marketing efforts with this article.
Define your event goals, understand your target audience, and develop a marketing plan for your event promotional efforts. Make sure you set a budget, too. Your budget will help ensure you don’t spend beyond what you can. As a final tip, measure and analyze your event results. This will help you gain valuable insights you can use to tweak your event marketing strategy. With this new and improved strategy, you can ensure your future events are even better.
Ready to reap the benefits of effective event marketing?