Event Marketing Definition

Event marketing is a promotional strategy that involves face-to-face contact between

companies and their customers at special events like concerts, fairs, and sporting events.
Brands use event marketing entertainment (like shows, contests, or parties) to reach
consumers through direct hand-to-hand sampling or interactive displays. The practice works
because it engages consumers while theyre in a willing, participatory position.

A successful event marketing campaign provides value to attendees beyond information

about a product or service. A discount, free sample, charity alignment, or fun event will make
customers feel like they are receiving a benefit and not just attending a live-action
commercial.

Event Marketing plan developed and employed

Event marketing is unique because each event must be approached differently in this
respect, a marketing team doesnt necessarily need an overarching plan for their various
events. Instead, it is important to base each individual event marketing tactic upon the brands
overall marketing plan and how it fits into the personality of the event. By approaching each
event as a separate chance to make an impression, a brand can tailor their efforts to best
impact each audience.

Still, teams must consider three aspects when developing an event marketing plan. First, the
company should consider the personality that their brand is trying to convey. A brand like
Coca-Cola, who has historically tried to place their product as a harbinger of global peace,
happiness, and simple pleasure, made an excellent choice by installing vending machines that
dispensed happiness along with soft drinks.

Second, company must keep their target audiences in mind. In recent years, grassroots efforts
by mens heath coalitions have popularized Movember, a November-long moustache-
growing contest to raise awareness of prostate cancer and other cancers affecting men. This
initiative would never have taken hold if not for the ironic popularity of moustaches among
young men, the audience who could most benefit from mens cancer awareness. (See also
Event Marketing)

Third, companies need to consider what lasting impression they wish to leave on their
audience. Many people remember the 2005 Sony campaign where the company dropped
and filmed 250,000 bouncy balls on the streets of San Francisco in order to advertise the
color display their new Bravia LCD television was capable of.

Brands can impress event crowds through a variety of creative tactics, not just sheer visual
appeal. For example, one tactic that brands use is to create an event within an event. The idea
is to create a compelling reason for patrons to stop and explore your brand, not just another
booth for them to walk past. At the Sundance film festival, Ray Ban sunglasses put on a truth-
or-dare themed campaign, which was fun for participants and also translated into social
media shares after the event was over.
Event marketing can also be much more subtle many companies use QR codes on their
posters and branding materials that work to integrate physical and virtual branding. These QR
codes can lead users to mobile sites offering discounts and special offers on physical
products. Additionally, some companies offer exclusive event benefit coupons to those who
like them on Facebook.

How to Promote an Event

Pre-event

Pre-event page: One of the most common mistakes people make in marketing their event
happens before theyve even started! Too many organisers forget they can create an event
page and make it live to capture early interest, even if all of the details arent yet finalised.

By creating a pre-event page, you can have a central page to drive people to, use it to capture
leads and early interest (which can then be contacted later) and it will help build up your SEO
authority with Google.

If you do go down this route, then you could also offer a super-early bird incentive to those
who pre-register, helping you to capture even more early interest.

Blog post: The next totem in your pre-event marketing strategy is to tell people why youre
organising it. This is your mission statement.

You can use this to fuel the rest of your pre-event marketing and rally people around your
idea and convince them of the need for your event.

Social media: Getting on social media early is important to creating momentum for your
event promotion, building a community and spreading the mission that youve written about
in your blog post (which you can link back to in your posts).

Partner outreach: Event marketing partnerships can be crucial to your events success, so
you need to start reaching out to potential collaborators, media partners etc. early, before your
event has officially launched. This way they can help you spread the word from the very
beginning.

Event launch

Email: In the event industry Pulse Report, email was voted the single most effective tactic by
event organisers, so it will no doubt be central to your campaign and ticket sales too.

With your event now ready for prime time you should get your first major email blast out to
your potential attendees, including those who pre-registered.

Press Release: While its unlikely your event will be picked up by national press, its still
worthwhile issuing a press release and getting it sent out through free distribution channels.
If you are looking for wider press coverage, then you need to avoid talking about your event
in a formulaic way, where you focus only on the date, location, price etc.

You cant focus on features or even benefits thats sales copy and not a news story. Instead
you need to focus on one of two unique angles.

The first: why your event is completely novel, strange, a landmark first, quirky etc. Think
about whether commuters would chuckle about it or be curious about it if they read it on page
5 of their paper on the way to work. Chances are if they would, a journalist may also pick up
on it.

The second: dive into the human element. Are you (or anyone involved in the event) an
interesting story? Have you overcome adversity and challenges? Is there a weird or funny
story attached to how and why youve come to organise this event? Telling the human story is
a universal strategy of mainstream press, so play to that if you can.

Blog and social: Your second blog post should focus on main benefits of attending your
event, which usually centres on the schedule. Who are the headline bands, keynote speakers,
celebrity chefs etc.? You can then atomise these benefits to create a series of social media
announcements.

Partners: Now is the time to ask your partners for their marketing support. The event is at its
hottest when its first launched and all the details are fresh and new.

Dont make them work too hard for you though, otherwise youll find they dont actually do
as much as youd hoped. In order to counter this, you might want to write the emails and
social updates you want them to send, and then just ask them to copy and paste.

Its good for all this activity to hit more or less at the same time, because even if the same
people are being targeted, it should give them a sense of the events momentum and
importance, while help to reinforce your message.

If you want to track how well your various event marketing partnerships are doing, you can
use custom tracking links to do this.

Day-to-day

Regular email, social and blogging: Youre now into a pretty tough stage of event
marketing. With the initial excitement of the event launch behind you, its time to knuckle
down and find ways to keep the momentum going.
If you continuously send out sales messages, these will get old very quickly and turn your
audience off. You therefore need to balance them out with high value, interesting content that
your target attendees will appreciate.

You can then use your social channels to promote this content to your audience, invite them
to comment (or create their own) and keep a conversation going about your event.

Email is also a great support tool, helping you get your content directly in front of your
audience, and offering them something of value beyond asking them to register for your
event (again).

Thought leadership and guest posts: Blogging on your site is important, but you need to
reach new audiences beyond it in order to find new attendees. The best way to do this is
through guest posting or creating pieces of thought leadership that others will be happy to
share.1

Again, what the specifics of this look like will heavily depend on your event. For conferences
and B2B events its relatively straight forward as you can create an industry report or offer a
white paper that combines top tips from all your speakers.

For consumer events, it might be less obvious: You could create interesting infographics, gifs
or other visual assets; write about whats hot and breaking trends; or produce a series of
YouTube videos that capture their attention.

Early Bird discount(s): As mentioned above, once youve gone past the initial launch
excitement for your event, youll need to engineer more reasons to encourage people to
register (and register now rather than later).

This where you can utilise the early bird discount. Early bird discounts work by staggering
your ticket sales to go up in price the closer to the event it gets. Its not uncommon to have
more than one of these events.

The rest of your marketing activity should be geared towards building up interest and leads in
the run-up to the expiry of your early birds, helping you create spikes of ticket sales.

Paid promotion: The day-to-day event marketing period is the best time to invest in paid
advertising. Theres no point doing it too early when you have nothing to sell. But wait until
too close to your event and you wont give it the time to have a meaningful effect on results.
So whether its paid social media (promoted posts) or Google Adwords, nows the time to put
cash behind your campaign if youre going to do it at all.

With any of these options you can turn them on and off at will, so you could concentrate your
spend just a couple of weeks or so before each early bird offer, helping to reinforce and
amplify all your other marketing activities so1 everything enjoys maximum reach and impact.
Last call

Final email blast, social & blog: Whether youve been marketing for a matter of months or
weeks, your event will eventually loom large in front of you, and with just a couple of weeks
(or even just a couple of days) to go, its time for your last-push marketing.

This will probably be in the form of another volley of blogs, social media updates and email
blasts.

If there is any networking involved, then its a great idea to utilise the concept of social
proof at this stage and show the world who is already going to be at the event, which will
help convince others they should be there too.

Your final blog posts, social media updates and emails should now take on a more urgent,
sales-focused message as youve spent the past few weeks or months building up a
relationship now are the time to include direct calls to action and convert that long-term
strategy into ticket sales.1

Attendee referrals: This is a frequently missed opportunity. Many organisers focus solely on
bringing in new attendees, forgetting that they have a potentially killer marketing tactic at
their disposal those who have already been convinced of your events value.

Why not reach out to your existing attendees and incentivise them to promote the event on
your behalf? Word of mouth is consistently shown to be one of the most powerful and
effective marketing tactics you can utilise.

Influencer outreach: If youre looking to fill a few last-minute places or get word out in an
impactful way, then influencers could be your best shot. While it may be advisable to contact
them at the start of your campaign, theres a good chance theyll be busy and so wont have
committed. Even if they did, by now they might have forgotten about it.

Nows the time to engage with them and, if they are free, theyll no doubt appreciate the
invitation and repay your generosity by telling their network about the event.

Phone: Employing telesales teams is expensive, and only effective if youve got a great
inbound marketing programme to support them with lots of fresh, warm leads.

However, that doesnt stop you from picking up the phone yourself!

If youve noticed that a few of your targeted attendees, or some of those pre-registered leads,
have still not bought a ticket, why not give them a call?

Ask if theres anything you can help with? Do they have any questions? It doesnt have to be
a hard sell, but its much harder to ignore a phone call than an email or one of a thousand
tweets on their timeline.

Youll probably find its a relatively time-intensive but effective way of securing a few more
sales.
Steps Content Can Rule

1- THINK AHEAD

One of the best event marketing tips is all about planning ahead. Even if you dont have a
year to get started, a few months can also work well, given that your event is not taking place
in a remote part of the world. Use this time to plan your editorial and promotional calendar,
and ensure that you have the right amount of time to start creating it.

2- PROVE YOUR SOCIAL STANDING

If you want everyone and their brother to attend your event, you need to prove that the
numbers dont lie. From client testimonials and videos to stats about attendees from your
events in years past, you need to show the world that your event is the place to be.

3- BLOG ABOUT IT

Youve certainly heard that content is king, but did you know that content marketing is
queen? Creating a blog that focuses on the upcoming event will drive traffic and new
registration. If your event is new or old, starting a blog that puts the focus on the purpose,
goals, and educational aspects behind your event can prove to be very beneficial, according
to Event Marketing Maven Michelle Bergstein.

So what kind of content should you be creating? Focus on the purpose of the event, interview
speakers, talk about the venue, and even talk about what there is to do in the city the event
takes place in. Event marketing can work well if you have an editorial calendar to work with.

4- USE YOUR SPEAKERS INTEL

Promotional content is still content and you can certainly leverage it for your event marketing
efforts. From guest speakers themselves to the content of their presentations, you can create
serious interest and start a dialogue on various social platforms.

5- TALK LOCATION

Like I mentioned before, talking about the city the event is taking place in can certainly drive
guest interest. If someone had planned on visiting Montreal, for example, and your event is
taking place there, then mentioning what there is to do in and around the city can boost
interest and drive registration.
6- BIG UP YOUR SPONSORS AND ASSOCIATES

Never underestimate the power of community. It bodes well for you to put the spotlight on
your sponsors and speak to their contribution. This will help you to perhaps retain them as
sponsors in the future and can lead to reciprocal mentions and links.

7- STRUT YOUR STUFF SOCIALLY

If you want attendees and followers to share your social posts, they need to be interesting
enough to warrant it. Sharing the content you create is not enough; you need to engage with
followers and give them something interesting to share and discuss.

Creating buzz is an important part of event marketing, according to social media and content
strategist Jay Baer. So make sure that youre keeping your audience interested.

8- CREATE PPC ADS ON SOCIAL

With social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn offering super affordable ways to
reach your targeted audience, now you can hone in on your intended audience and pay only
when they take action (i.e., click on a link, like the post, etc.).

9- ALWAYS HAVE A CALL TO ACTION

Too often, I see great social execution only to discover that the landing page is all over the
place and there are no clear calls to action. You want to make sure that when attendees and
prospects land on your page, they understand immediately what the offer is and how they can
take action.

10- DO A POST-MORTEM

The beauty of online advertising and content strategies is that you can figure out quickly what
works and what does not. This allows you to do constant A/B tests and make quick changes
to measure what works best for your campaigns.

After every event or media campaign, its important to have an in-depth meeting to go over
the numbers and figure out what you should put more effort into the next time and what may
not require so much focus.