Everything you need to know about Event Marketing

With contemporary digital marketing practices, businesses have the opportunity to reach potential customers with greater control and lower cost using strategies that break down the barriers of space and time. Yet, none of these strategies allow you to be face-to-face with your target audience.

According to a recent study, a large majority of senior executive-level marketers say that live events are the most effective marketing channel, and 80% of marketers attribute the success of their businesses to organised events.

When talking about a successful event there are many elements to take into account for its organisation: logistics, location, security, lighting, gastronomy and more, but today we will focus on communication and marketing as a key factor for the organisation of a successful event.

what is Event Marketing?

Event marketing is defined by the tools, techniques and channels to be used to promote an event to a particular target audience, such as potential attendees of a corporate event, which will be reached through marketing channels such as email marketing, social media, online and offline advertising, among others.

When planning your event marketing strategy, there are a number of things to consider. The strategies you use will depend on the target audience and the particularity of the type of event to be publicised, as each event, with its own characteristics and resources, is unique.

However, there are three basic and general guidelines to follow that should be part of your event marketing:

• Before the event: Before the event, efforts should focus on brand and event visibility, attracting attendees, sponsors and exhibitors.
  
  
• During the event: In this phase of event marketing you are no longer looking to convert, but rather to activate attendees and enhance the reach of the event.
  
  
• After the event: Even though the event is over, the actions to be taken in this phase of the event marketing plan is also very important because it will help measure the success of the event.

Events provide attendees with a valuable opportunity to make connections with brands and vice versa, and marketing is one of the most effective channels to do this successfully. In fact, attendees have a more positive opinion of the brand when its products or services are promoted after the event.

4 effective strategies for organising an event

• Establish the objectives and purpose of your event

Long before you start organising and planning an event, you need to be very clear about your purpose. To do this, you need to find the right direction and avoid having a vague purpose for your event, such as saying that you just want to find more customers. You can follow a simple but effective concept: go for your SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely) goal.

SMART objectives can guide your project with a clear and realistic goal to plan and implement the event. You can have more than one goal in mind, as long as you keep them in mind when you start planning the event.

• Create Engaging Content and Mark Calendars

You've decided to hold an event and you already have your goals clear, you also know which audience you want to target, great! Now we'll talk about what you need to do to generate interest in your event, strengthen your brand awareness and increase the level of affinity with your target audience.

• • Create a professional website: One of the best ways to promote your professional event to generate interest in your audience is to create a website to advertise your event. One of the things to keep in mind when creating a website is the user experience, it should be memorable to increase the likelihood that they will register and attend the event. To achieve better long-term results, you can improve your website's organic ranking on Google through SEO strategies.
    
    
  • Reach your audience throughemail marketing: According to a recent Hubspot study, 40% of marketers say that the best way to promote an event is through email. With a tool as efficient as email, you can reach out to your current customers and their contacts by making a newsletter full of compelling content to let them know in advance why they should accept the invitation and attend the event.

• Promote your event on social media

Social media has become an essential tool for people, and therefore for companies, who have identified the need to strengthen ties with their customers and to reach out to potential customers in one of the places where they spend most of their time.

Social networks provide many useful tools to make possible the diffusion of our event. Choose well the social networks that you are going to use in your marketing strategy for events. Not all platforms serve the same purpose and not all audiences are on the same networks.

Choose a representative hashtag for your event. This is very important as it is a perfect way to generate conversation around your event. And make your audience become your promoter by sharing your event and adding hashtags.

• organise your event online

One of the biggest current trends we see during live events is the initiative to create an opportunity to integrate those who can't attend through a live stream. It's a great way to show interest to your entire audience and offer them exciting ways to connect with each other.

Streaming events will allow you to engage current and potential customers in the room, while extending the reach of your message to those who cannot attend.

You can achieve this through YouTube streams, Facebook Live, or Instagram feeds.

The success of an event is closely linked to its reach, and this is where event marketing comes into play, so keep these strategies in mind so that you can apply them when creating your next event and make it a resounding success.