What is the significance of event marketing?
In an increasingly digital environment, 95% of marketers feel that live events provide registrants with a great opportunity to create in-person contacts, according to this survey.
The following are some other statistics from the report:
The majority of marketers (31%) feel event marketing is the most effective marketing channel.
The vast majority of C-suite executives (87%) believe in the value of live events and intend to increase their investment in them in the future.
After the event, 84 percent of event attendees say they have a more favourable perception of the company, brand, product, or service being advertised.
The starting point for any event (or organization, or project) should always be WHY?
Why is this event important?Â
The answer to this question outlines the key objective that will determine the success, or otherwise, of the event. This is the criteria against which the event will be measured back to. This is the defining factor which will help communicate and determine the marketing strategy.
The exact question to ask is:
Why should people attend your event?Â
It isn’t about you. It is about the value to the participant and other stakeholders. What is in it for THEM? How does your event meet their needs? What are their pain points? How can your event solve a problem or offer a solution to them?
The Attendee Perspective
Listen closely and think carefully about the benefits of attending your event from the attendee perspective. How will it bring value to the customer? Simply listing speaker names and features for your event (100 exhibitors, 20 keynote speakers….) is not effectively communicating a reason to attend.
Often there are complex motivations for attending an event. Some of the reasons people will be happy to admit (‘I need to learn a skill’) and other reasons people prefer to keep to themselves and will not share (‘it sounds like a nice jolly’). Both public and private reasons are valid. Consider how to appeal to different overt and covert motivations people have for attending an event.
Make the benefits clear and simple. If potential attendees don’t understand the offering they will switch off. They will not spend time looking for a reason to attend an event if the advantages are not clear. On the other hand, if you can capture their attention by giving a possible solution to their troubles they are more likely to sit up and listen.
Stakeholder Motivation
The Event Elevator Pitch
An event elevator pitch is a succinct summary to explain your event to someone without any previous knowledge of it. It is an opportunity to capture someone’s interest and understanding. Think about the best way to communicate the vision and benefits of your event in a couple of sentences, or in 60 seconds.
Social media offers a fantastic opportunity to test and measure the success of your messaging to see what resonates the best. By using this growth hacking approach on your social media channels, you have a low cost opportunity for experimenting and nothing to lose.
Refining your event elevator pitch is an essential and worthwhile exercise. Once defined it should be communicated to all your major stakeholders to ensure everyone is sending out a coherent message. Any opportunity to succinctly share details of the event and act as an ambassador should never be missed.
Be OriginalÂ
- “Last chance to book.”Â
- “Early bird rates extended.”
- “Unmissable sponsorship opportunity.”
- “Only five exhibitor spaces remaining.”
- “The event highlight of the year is here.”
Really?
In the event industry we are guilty of using the same messages and call to actions over and over again. We zone out after hearing the same thing time and time again, so banish these outdated messages and try to slice through the noise and clutter. There is no excuse to not change now. As we suggested, the future is now. You can make a strong impact now.
Keep messaging clear and simple and always focused on your value proposition. Don’t use jargon. Speak the language of your attendees and stakeholders.
Understand Your Stakeholders
The better you understand your audience and investors the better your events will be and the easier it becomes to tailor your message accordingly. One way to improve your communications is for your organization to develop five personas, which represent your core attendees and stakeholders.
Personas are fictional characters depicting your key and most typical customers and partners. By creating each persona, you bring to life their personal details, background and struggles, helping to picture who you are talking to and refine messaging. Personas can help you to select the most relevant trends and tools to be implemented. For example, you may develop personas for:Â
- Someone starting out in the industry in their first entry level job and trying to decide whether it would be worthwhile registering for the event
- The Marketing Manager of an organization considering exhibiting at the event for the first time
- The Founder of a fast growing start up deciding whether to attend the event
- The aging CEO of a company potentially looking to sponsor the event
- An influencer interested in coming along to the event for the third year in a row
For each character you should think about their motivations in terms of attending the event, their fears, goals and pain points and what your event can give that will offer them true value.
Example questions to answer for your persona profiles:
- How do they consume content?
- What technology and social media do they use?
- How much time and disposable income do they have?
- When are they most likely to interact and how?
- Who are their key influencers?
The characters should be created from a combination of educated guesses and data. As you gather more data the personas can develop and become more factual using offline analytics such as beacons, NFC, survey data, Google Analytics, mobile apps, live response data and other tools.
Personalize
Think about a specific elevator pitch which will appeal directly to each persona you have developed. Set a consistent message on how to sell your event to this specific stakeholder and start to segment your audience accordingly to enable you to increasingly personalize your communications.
Look critically at every social media post, piece of content or email you plan to send from the point of view of the recipient. Consider what outcome you want to achieve and think about why the recipient should even care and what reaction or action you can realistically expect. If it has a weak message it is unlikely to break through the noise and clutter to resonate with them.
The Attendee Journey
Throughout your attendee journey you have numerous touchpoints with your participants and stakeholders before, during or after the event. By understanding these touchpoints within the event life cycle, you can gain a better understanding of marketing opportunities, as well as the opportunity to increase satisfaction along the way.
Think about all the ways a stakeholder may come in contact with your brand. To help formulate this better think about different scenarios and the steps they take. Where does the journey start and what are the paths of entry? Record online and offline steps from the marketing and preregistration stage, right through to the post event survey and follow ups.
You should record both major and minor touchpoints. Every step and decision that may have influence over the attendee or event partner. Using post-it notes is a good way to map it out and refine the journey initially.
Minor Touchpoints
- Interactions via social media
- Response time to a question sent via email
- Learning that a competitor is exhibiting at the event
- Event signage
- Greeting on arrival at the event
- How comfy the chairs are
- How quickly the follow up is after the event
Major Touchpoints
- Event website
- Direct invitation
- Exhibitor brochure
- Sponsorship pitch
- Registration process
- Recommendation from an influencer
- Event programme and content
- Discovering that smart badges will be used at the event
- The event experience
- Personalized metrics specifically for how an attendee was engaged
To explore and better understand your stakeholders is a valuable exercise always. The journey can be complex but even if it is only done on a simple level initially it can still be very revealing. You can then develop and build up from the basics.
It isn’t just the direct interactions with your company which have an influence either. Other indirect factors may funnel the attendee on the path towards your event, such as searching for management training and finding your event fits their criteria, noticing that a contact is exhibiting at your event, checking out the what’s on guide for a local venue or realizing that an influencer they want to hear is talking at your conference.
The Tipping Point
Think about how people decide whether or not to attend your event and try to understand their behavior and process. What are the determining factors? These are just some elements which may play a part:
- Reviews
- Recommendations
- Web search
- Researching alternative options
- Price
- Comparing against other events
- Earning a certificate or professional accreditation
It could be several factors combined which tips the balance over to the decision to attend but understanding these triggers helps to perfect your marketing strategy.
Even if you are planning an event with expected or guaranteed attendance, such as an internal team building retreat, a CPD (Continued Professional Development) training course or a company annual meeting, you still want to reach a tipping point for buy in from your attendees. Although guests in these instances do not have to be persuaded to buy a ticket, if you can achieve some anticipation and engagement prior to the experience they are likely to get more from it and the dropout rate will be lower.
Considering every touchpoint along the journey will help to identify gaps, strengths and weaknesses to enable improvements to be made to your marketing offering and communication strategy. It may enable you to streamline and speed up the process to make it simpler for the attendee and quicker to reach the tipping point to convert the potential attendee into a confirmed participant, or to encourage them to engage more closely with the experience to follow.
Recommended Resource: Are you looking to transform your attendees into loyal customers? Just as other marketers trace the buyer’s journey, you must trace the attendee’s journey. Learn how to do just that and much more with our free guide to Optimizing the Attendee Journey.
Process Mapping
Once you have mapped out the attendee or stakeholder journey you can identify key elements and cross roads in the process. Process mapping will help crystallize how to influence specific outcomes and start to develop the strategy behind what you want to achieve.
This exercise will also identify where potential tools can be used and their primary purpose. You want different channels to be used effectively and indifferent ways, rather than broadcasting the same message with a broad-brush approach across all platforms. Each channel identity and purpose can then be refined.
Effective Frequency
It is unlikely that someone will take action the first time they hear about your event. Effective frequency is the number of times a message needs to be heard before someone takes action. This could be buying a ticket or enquiring about the possibility of exhibiting at the event. There are lots of studies about what this magic number is and many marketers swear by the rule of 7. However, for the entertainment industry the average touchpoints needed is actually 9.5 and for not for profits this rises to an average of 16.3.
If you can determine and plan numerous touchpoints for stakeholders to encounter your event marketing you vastly increase your chance of a successful sale or engagement. Of course, the result is not guaranteed but it is always wise to plan to surpass the minimum number of touchpoints required to trigger action on behalf of the stakeholder.
By conveying a strong message, you can build trust and familiarity with the potential participant, sponsor or exhibitor. Ensure that potential attendees and partners can find you and that you can give reminders to those that have the event on their radar but haven’t yet taken action and booked their place to attend or exhibit.
If it is a paying event you need to give enough reasons for people to find a way to register. If someone is unsure you haven’t yet proved to them the value of attending and you need to work harder to convince and reassure them.
In terms of your event you will need to consider how you can inspire attention or provoke thoughts or action ahead of the actual event.
For both of these circumstances, being on trend and using new tools can be an effective way to stand out and get noticed. By earning respect as an innovator, leading the way and doing things differently, you can inspire those involved in your events and hook them. Make a strong stance that this is not a repeat of previous events and demand full attention for the journey ahead.
Putting it All Together
The stakeholder journey should look at the flow and experience of the attendee and other partners before, during and after the event. It is a complex route map and it isn’t just about when a participant buys a ticket or commits to attend the event. There are lots of influencing factors which impact on the whole experience. Although for event planners the primary marketing goal is often persuading someone to register the touchpoints throughout the event process can strengthen synergy, engagement, excitement and loyalty your brand.
Improving the overall experience and interaction makes it more likely fora participant, exhibitor or sponsor to recommend and repeat attend your event, helping to build a customer for life.
Understand Your Event Stakeholders' ROI
Event planners and marketers have never been in a stronger position to attract and keep event attendees and partners hooked and coming back time and time again. By using an integrated dashboard and tools such as beacons we can access joined up data and link it to a wider picture to illustrate the attendee journey. We can identify the possible touchpoints and opportunities to reach them and other stakeholders across multiple channels. By defining realistic personas, we can develop and refine our messaging, which can then be tested intelligently through growth hacking techniques.
It is easier and more cost effective to encourage someone to return to your event, rather than finding and recruiting a new attendee or headline sponsor each time. Keeping the conversations going all year round and building a sense of community around the shared interests and vision of your attendees is a wise strategy.
Recommended Resource: Are you struggling to keep your attendees happy, while also increasing ROI? Don’t worry you’re not alone. Learn how to keep your attendees engaged and happy throughout the event lifecycle with our free guide Enhancing Meeting & Event Success.
Listening and observing your attendees and event partners can enable you to react and pre-empt issues, as well as providing insights and learning for how to improve future events. Never before have we had such opportunity to listen to our stakeholders, understand them and take action based on actual evidence. Event planners have the opportunity to involve them more fully in the whole event experience, for instance by co-creating the conference programme, voting on the event destination, and getting honest input into some of the event decisions. Likewise, if a sponsor and exhibitor can see the valuable relationships and communication around the event it will be easier to get them to sign on the dotted line. This level of engagement and buy in is what will truly define the success of your event from the perspective of all stakeholders.
If you are reading this guide you care about your events, about everyone that has invested time and money into the event, and you want to do things better. The trends, tools and tactics within this guide reveal some of the immediate opportunities to empower event planners to unearth and cultivate loyal attendees, sponsors and exhibitors.
Abhishek Kapoor
Abhishek Kapoor is the founder and creative head of BrandWorks Worldwide. His is an ex-Cvent and has worked in the event space for the last 13 years, providing branding and registration expertise to many clients globally.
