You put in a lot of time and energy in planning your event.
What if your prospects don’t turn up for the event?
All your effort in producing an event becomes worthless.
Hence, you want to make sure that you market your event properly and be in constant touch with your attendees leading up to the event.
This would ensure that you can generate the maximum number of registrants and hence a better turnout.
In this article, you will find the best practices you need to follow to market your event successfully. This would include which tactics to choose and how to use them to communicate your invite.
Segmentation
Before identifying the tactics and devising a marketing plan for your event, it is important to identify and segment your customers.
You can read here about segmenting your customers for your campaign.
You should be able to get the following information about your prospects:
- Which industry are they in?
- What is the company size?
- What is the location of the company?
- What are their preferred communication channels?
- What is their current location?
There might be cases when the company might be located in another city, but your prospect might be located where you are hosting that event and vice versa.
Segmenting your customer helps you identify the channels you want to promote and the communication of your campaign.
Here are 5 channels that you can use to promote your event effectively:
E-mail is the first thing that comes to mind when you think about promoting any of your campaigns.
Its success, even at a time when our mailboxes are filled with marketing e-mails, tells us how important a channel it is.
ROI on e-mails is 40xwhich is more than any other channel of communication
However, many marketers fail to utilize it properly or overuse it, thereby decreasing its effectiveness.
It is not about whether you should use e-mails or not. Rather it is about when and how many e-mails you should send.
Smart tip: The number of e-mails and time required for the campaign is directly proportional to the scale of your event.
If you are hosting a roadside tradeshow or a webinar, you can start sending the e-mails 2-3 weeks before the event.
However, if you are conducting a large workshop or an offsite, you should start intimating your prospects at least a month before the event.
It is important to constantly stay in touch with your prospects by sending them regular e-mails. This keeps your event top of the mind of your prospects, thereby increasing conversions.
As you can see in the above image, Marketo is sending e-mails regularly to engage its prospects and increase both the registration and attendee rate.
However, it must also be kept in mind that it does not rate the prospects by sending them too many e-mails.
Paid promotions
Your organic reach might be limited due to a limited database or digital presence.
In such cases, paid promotionspaidpromotions help you to expand your reach and drive new audience registrations.
Here are some of the paid channels which you can use:
- Paid searchPaidsearch – You can promote your events on search engines. Based on the keywords you bet on, the ad for your event is shown to them when anyone searches for anything related to your industry.
- Paid e-mails – You can also consider buying a database from a third-party vendor to run e-mail campaigns on it.
Remember to cross-check the vendor's past records before buying any such database.
- Banners and displays – These types of ads appear on a website (not necessarily your company website) and can be quite effective in driving new registrants. You can use Google Display Network services or talk to other affiliates to publish your ads on their platform.
- Paid social ads – You can also consider running paid social promotions. Considering the amount of engagement and reach on these platforms, you can reach a large number of audiences and also increase your registrants.
Before running any paid promotions, you should evaluate the effectiveness of each one of them for your campaign and audience.
Social media
More than 2 billion people are already present on social media. People use this platform to stay updated and engage with people and brands.
You can use this as an opportunity to interact directly with your prospects and have them share your message.
You can explore multiple platforms and their available options to promote your event. Both paid and free options are available on all platforms, be it LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook.
Here is a sample social media plan by Marketo, which you can use to plan your promotional campaigns on social media.
Based on your own reach, the scale of the event, your budget, and target audiences’ behavior, you can choose the right social media platform and decide how much you want to invest in it.
Here is a great article on using social media for lead generation.
Influencer outreach
Social media has made it easy for marketers to connect with influencers and have them promote their message to their audience.
You can also identify influencers in your industry. They could be bloggers or experts in your space.
Once you identify them, you can drop them an e-mail or connect with them on LinkedIn, asking them to share your message with their audience.
It does two things: First, it is a great way to expand your reach. Second, it builds the credibility of the event and of your company.
Smart tip: You should try to make your influencers feel special by scheduling a short video interview or reflecting their names in your promotional material.
Tele-calling
While we have multiple tools at our disposal to increase our reach, it is through tele-calling that you can actually seal the deal.
Getting key prospects to register for the event is half the battle. Getting them to attend is the other half.
Tele-calling provides that final touch to your campaign, which can increase your registration and attendance rate.
Conclusion
You spend a considerable amount of time and effort to host an event.
Hence, you want to ensure that you follow the above best practices to get the maximum number of people attending it.
Apart from the practices mentioned above, you can also tap the traffic on your blog and website to increase the event's visibility.
This would ensure maximum returns on your effort and investment, making your event a success.
What are the best practices that you follow to market your event? Please comment below.
Ready to elevate your event marketing strategy? Explore these best practices to successfully market your event. Need assistance implementing these strategies? Contact us to boost your event's reach and impact!
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