Few marketing tools offer the benefits that live events do. These brand marketing vehicles, in addition to having a website with a responsive design, come with unmatched opportunities for potential customers to demonstrate, touch, and even interact with a product.
Usually, live events facilitate community- and relationship-building with like-minded people, and also enable to create a powerful “brain-washing chamber” where these events have complete control over the messaging and environment.
They are custom-made for image sharing on various social networks, too, making it easier to become viral.
Here are some useful tips on how to market your brand using live events.
1. Set clear, quantifiable goals
It’s incredible how often this doesn’t happen, but without articulating event destinations, it’s very important to determine the effectiveness of your live event when it comes to marketing your personal brand.
If you are having trouble with this, try to determine the action(s) you need people to take after the event.
Do you want them to sign up for a monthly newsletter? Refer other people to the event? Like or follow your brand on social networks?
By knowing such quantifiable goals, you will know whether you have reached your target or not.
2. Create an account for your visitors to share
When marketing your brand through live events, you need to consider what you want participants to say about your image afterwards. The content has to be short, straightforward, and convincing.
Every component of your event should be intended to support your message. The main objective is not just for on-location participants to fully comprehend your story, it should also be for empowering them to effectively convey your message to others.
Similarly, try to avoid any message that can confound people, for instance, a marked giveaway which doesn’t fortify your message.
3. Outline the event for participants
If your venue can accommodate only 500 people in the room, you might have another 10,000 people interested to attend online.
Most live event coordinators usually center their attention on the 500 people on-location, but really successful ones also consider others who are interested online.
As such, consider recording the event and later uploading it online so that those who could not attend would be able to still see it.
4. Arrange the costs of the venue in advance
For most live events, the venue, including food and drinks, is basically the biggest cost. It’s therefore imperative to choose and arrange the venue well in advance, taking into consideration all related expenses.
By canvassing several different venues, you can see whether one will give you the best price. The best arrangement, of course, should consider the whole cost of the event, including all related costs.
Some venues, particularly those similar to dance clubs, have lighting, projection, and sound system that could have separate costings. Consider this in your canvassing.
5. Work the room if you are the host
Of course, you would not want to see your employees hanging out together at the event. Your staff members are the image ministers of your company and they need to associate and mingle with participants, request input, encourage presentations, and even create associations with other event attendants.
In fact, this is a great opportunity for you to take someone who is interested in your company, and transform them into a customer.
6. Be prepared for post-event correspondence
In most cases, organizers or coordinators are glad when their live event is over, thinking that their work is done. Actually, what they should be doing is to leverage the connection visitors have already created to the brand.
It’s important to do this right so that it can cultivate an emotional connection in your attendees. For effective brand marketing, use the post-occasion warm glow to initiate an ongoing conversation with these individuals.
Bear in mind that the most watched shows on TV are often live events and there is a reason for that. Such events bring a FOMO (“fear of missing out”) effect where individuals are allowed to participate while they’re happening live.
Lastly, smart marketers already know the impact of live events for their businesses and they also know that if they do it right, they will have a better opportunity to acquire more new customers/clients and strengthen relationships with existing ones.
With these pointers, and by making sure that your website has a responsive design, you will definitely market your brand successfully through live events and other strategies.
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Originally published at www.bookmark.com on July 14, 2016.
