How to Create an Effective Event Marketing Strategy

Events have become a popular method to attract prospects and customers. Splash That has revealed that event planning makes for 21% of corporate marketing budgets! It is an effective strategy for lead acquisition and creating brand awareness. Events provide a direct experience to the attendees and give a better understanding of the business, its products, mission, and vision. Event marketing requires effort, planning, compelling content strategy, and execution to achieve the defined goals and objectives.

What is event marketing strategy?

Event marketing strategy refers to activities designed to promote a product, service, organization, a cause, or for networking purposes. The events can be conducted online or organized offline. Companies can use a hybrid strategy including both offline and online events. If you want to make your events successful and attract a large number of attendees, help from marketing experts can make a difference.

Steps to create an effective event marketing strategy

To make your events successful, you must plan the entire process leading to the event to attract the audience and register a high number of attendees. You must adopt the right strategy to attract the audience and implement it to get the maximum traction. Let’s discuss the step-by-step process to create an event marketing strategy.

• Set goals: The first step is to decide what you want to achieve, what are your expectations from the event. There are a few questions that one needs to ask. Do you want to promote a newly launched product or seek investment for business expansion by networking with investors and influential people? Perhaps you might want to strengthen your relationship with your customers. A business can create a successful strategy after defining the goals, setting milestones, and implementing the plan to achieve objectives.

• Identify the target audience: Companies must first identify the target audience depending on the objectives set for event marketing. If you are organizing product launches and promotional events, you’ll want your customers and prospects to attend the event. If there’s a networking event or a conference, then the attendees’ list will include industry leaders and investors. Companies need to define the attendees to identify their preferences and pain points and organize an event that aligns with their expectations.

• Research the target audience: After identifying the target audience, it is vital to know more about them. Monitoring their online behaviors and collecting feedback helps companies understand the likes and dislikes of their target customers. They should research their favorite brands, their media consumption patterns, age group, gender, location, etc. All these factors will help create an ideal buyer persona profile that will help the business understand the target audience better and guide the business to develop a highly successful event marketing strategy.

• Decide the content: After deciding on the target audience and understanding their requirements, the next step is to curate an effective content marketing strategy. Dedicated landing pages to events help attract the right audience to events. Companies can use press releases, social media campaigns, video marketing, influencer marketing, podcasts, etc., to create buzz around the events. The best type of strategy is to develop a mix of offline and online content to promote the event.

• Event format: There are different event formats, such as seminars, conferences, and product launches. Conferences include attendees from the industry. They are experts and speakers who add value to the events with their expertise, knowledge, and experience. Conferences are an excellent platform to network with industry leaders. Workshops help attendees upgrade their knowledge skills with the help of experts who deliver lectures and offer training to the attendees. Exhibitions allow businesses to showcase their products to a broad audience and create awareness about their innovations. Live demonstrations attract the audience’s attention and allow companies to engage them effectively. Other forms of events are cultural events, charity, and fundraising events.

• Platform: It’s essential to decide whether the business wants to conduct the event online or offline. Live-stream events became popular during the pandemic and the post-pandemic era when companies successfully managed to stay connected with their customers. There are several online platforms to stream events. Companies can use the recorded versions to reach a wider section of the audience via video marketing. They can create immense brand awareness with recorded events. Finances Online has revealed that almost half of the marketers have replaced some of the live events with web events during the pandemic. Online platforms offer ease to businesses to connect with prospects from anywhere. Companies can choose any platform depending on their target audience and requirement.

• Platform: It’s essential to decide whether the business wants to conduct the event online or offline. Live-stream events became popular during the pandemic and the post-pandemic era when companies successfully managed to stay connected with their customers. There are several online platforms to stream events. Companies can use the recorded versions to reach a wider section of the audience via video marketing. They can create immense brand awareness with recorded events. Finances Online has revealed that almost half of the marketers have replaced some of the live events with web events during the pandemic.

• Measure the results: It’s vital to gauge the effectiveness of event marketing campaigns. Most digital marketers use the number of attendees to measure the success of the events. There are other key performance indicators (KPIs), such as the number of registrations, ticket sales, number of leads and revenue generated. The data collected from the events help in identifying the areas of improvement and amending the strategy for future events.

Conclusion

Event marketing is an effective method of lead generation and acquisition. It helps companies strengthen their bond with their customers. They can register a large number of attendees with an effective event marketing strategy. However, businesses need to adopt the right strategy to increase the number of attendees and engage them effectively. Companies must research to understand the target audience and use appropriate channels to syndicate content likely to appeal to them. Event marketing services involve a multi-layered process. Huge efforts are required to organize a highly successful event and achieve the desired results.

How can Markable Solutions help?

Markable Solutions is a leading B2B marketing company that offers event marketing services. We help you navigate the complex process of organizing successful events and attracting more attendees. We adopt a holistic approach toward event marketing with the right mix of traditional and digital marketing channels – organizing successful events and achieving your goals with the right marketing strategies.