The events industry is no exception with many people moving towards digital marketing tactics to successfully organise, promote and enhance the experience of events. This blog post looks at our 7 ultimate digital marketing tips to ensure your event is more successful than ever before.
Using information gathered from previous events and competitor insights, think about who you are trying to reach out to.
Who are your audience? Think about age, gender, where they live but also dig deeper and think about what they do for a living, how much they earn, what problems they encounter day to day, where do they go to find information? (social, google, websites, apps etc.)
The more information you have about your audience, the better equipped you will be to reach them.
The key to any successful marketing strategy is to create something that is valuable to your audience. This follows the popular inbound marketing techniques of allowing people to come to you rather than the dated outbound marketing strategy where marketers had to go out and find potential consumers.
A blog is a great inbound marketing strategy to showcase everything surrounding your event. Blog posts could be directly linked to the event such as an interview with a speaker or performer or they could be more subtle like a list of top 10 places to visit in the city it is being held.
Each blog post you write could expand your reach to potential attendees. Make sure you share your posts on social networks and by email.
Email remains a very strong marketing channel in all industries. With most people connected to the digital world 24/7 thanks to mobile devices, email can be used to reach out to your audience anywhere and at anytime.
Use email campaigns to build excitement during the run-up to your event and send through any offers, contests or new information that will encourage people to sign up.
Video is now a vital digital marketing channel and one that every event planner should invest in, but this doesn’t have to be a big financial outlay.
Wistia have a great video showing you how to create a video studio on a budget. This could be used to film interviews or to announce new information about your upcoming event.
If you’re running an event you have held before, post videos from the previous events to get people interested. Film any preparation or behind the scenes action.
Video is the perfect visual tool to promote events so use it as much as you can.
Plan a content schedule, including your social media posts, blog posts, emails, videos and other content. You can even schedule social media posts and emails to be sent out at various times/days in the run up to your event.
Tools such as Hootsuite, Mailchimp and Hubspot are great for organising and executing email and social content ideas.
It is essential to tap into the world of social networking to expand your reach and get people talking about your event. Social media is about more than just reposting content. Use it to create a buzz; give your followers something to share and discuss.
Create event listings on websites such as Facebook, Eventbrite and LinkedIn and think of original ways to engage with your audience, such as using videos, humour and unique ideas to get people talking. Look online for ideas to create the best social campaign.
Remember, the more people share your content, the further your social reach will go, so don’t forget a catchy hashtag!
There is no point to any of the above strategies if you don’t know what worked for you and what didn’t, so remember to measure all of your campaigns. Finding out what your most popular blog post or video was or seeing which emails got the most response is fundamental in planning your next event, e.g.
Question every part of a campaign and use the answers to make your next event even more successful.
All of these tips will help you to create the perfect digital marketing strategy for your event, but do also remember that if you are providing someone with a valuable product, be it the answer to a question, interesting and unique facts, fun videos or the event itself, people will come to you and you won’t have to rely on the old outbound marketing tactics: it’s your content which is key in any digital marketing strategy. Be creative and come up with ideas that will get noticed and lead to the ultimate event success.
