How do we engage with customers, partners, prospects AT SCALE ? How do we convey product’s “MESSAGE CUSTOMER FIT” at the blink of an eye ? How do we convert prospects to customers as well as X-sell & Up-sell at LIGHT SPEED? All these can be accomplished through NEXTGEN EVENTS MARKETING !!!
Stats : 3 M+ events happen per year, 500 B+ is spent annual for corporate events, Approx 25% of annual B2B marketing is spent on events. This depicts the importance of events to do it the NEXTGEN WAY – whether exclusively our own events OR presenting at someone else events.
Events Success Mantra: is to follow innovative PURPOSE DRIVEN APPROACH complementing USERS INTEREST with BRAND GOALS in an extremely authentic way all through the 3 event stages of pre, during & post - leveraging SOCIAL AMPLIFICATION with extremely rich content which users eagerly wait for .
SOME USEFUL STRATEGIES:
Extremely clear purpose,
Rich educational content ,
Integrated event platforms encompassing expanded mar tech suite,
Social amplification marketing culture, out of the world coordination not only with marketing , sales, service teams but also with partners, customers, sponsors to champion all around .
Be present at all the places where our audience is right from the get Go.
KEY GOALS:
Building brand awareness,
Acquire new customers,
Retain, grow & build loyalty among existing customers,
Championing Product differentiation & Value ( Functional , Economic & Emotional ) ,
Expand Educational & Innovative Community / Industry Groups
PEOPLE’S EXPECTATIONS FROM EVENTS:
Learning about Organization, Products & Services :
Learning industry innovations :
Hearing Customer Case Studies :
Getting inspired to build niche products :
Expanding personal & professional network :
Interact with like minded personas
MOST IMP: Event MUST have a clear purpose for others to attend.
TYPES OF EVENTS:
ONLINE
Webinars, Live Videos ,
Low cost
IN-PERSON
Tradeshows,
Conferences,
Exhibitions,
Seminars ,
Product Launches,
Award Ceremonies ,
Meetups ,
Sports Day Activities
Small or Medium to Large Scale with varying budget needs
Event types define the approach needed for Marketing to accomplish the goals & objective and realize the ROI
STAGES OF EVENTS:
BEFORE THE EVENT
Goal is to encourage people to attend, Creating awareness about the event & communicating event detailS
All platform setup for planning, monitoring, publishing , promoting , encouraging & measuring each ste
Sharing Event’s 360 degrees along with images, videos, sessions of the PAST EVENT
Encouraging users, customers, partners to share their experience across various channels
Increase user’s Registration
Keeping everyone informed
Creating the Event Hashtags
Creating the tags for capturing the end to end journey and determining ROI
DURING THE EVENT
Posting event details across social channels to increase excitement
Live feed about what happened, what’s about to happen & what’s coming up next
One-On-One or Group Customer Sessions
Impromptu Product Demos guiding, educating & solving users needs & wants
Distributing Gifts, Giveaways, Display Materials, Printed Items
AFTER THE EVENT
Sharing photos, content, feedback with users
Following up on any remaining Q & A
Uploading each video sessions to the Event Website & Landing Pages
Measuring ROI
Post event activities will be the input to the next Pre Event
EVENT MARKETING PLAN:
Summary of the event
Goals & Objectives
Target audience
Key Messages
Marketing channel mix
Budget
Detail Action Plan with owners & timing
RESOURCES NEEDED:
ONE DEDICATED Website / Landing Page : Where all the information would be there
ONLINE EVENT REGISTRATION TOOL: Like Eventbrite
COUNTDOWN CLOCK : To show the urgency
VIDEO ACCOUNTS : For hosting the videos
SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT SETUP : For posting rich content with audience
DEMO PLATFORMS: For all products to perform live demo
UNIFIED DATA CAPTURE/INTEGRATION TOOS : For Segmentation, Targeting , Emails , Pipeline etc integrated with ONE ANOTHER Event Platforms with MA, CRM, EDW, SEARCH, MARTECH
KEY INFORMATION:
TIME DURATION NEEDED: For Large In person events 6 months, Small to Medium Seminar 3 months, Online Event 2-4 weeks, Live Event Realtime
BUDGET : Minimal for small event but can cross 6 figures for large event
PRICING / FREE : Tiered Pricing with early bird & group discounts
VALUE : Create a package with Unambiguous & unquestionable benefit that user will get WITHOUT A DOUBT
AVOID SCHOOL HOLIDAYS if possible
RICH BRANDING: Unique name, symbol ,design with CORPORATE / EVENT SPECIFIC BRANDING to have unified brand experience in all the artifacts of the event starting from website to speaker presentation slides or the swags WITH THE GOAL OF making the event recognizable & differentiating it from others
KEY MESSAGES:
Describing the offer and main benefit for the users to attend without missing
Who are the speakers
Who are involved
Who are coming
What is the event type
What is the agenda
When the event is happening
Where the event is happening
Location & travel info
How much does it cost
WHY, WHO, WHAT, WHEN , WHERE, HOW
CONTENT NEEDED:
CONTENT is the fuel driving the success of Event, it attracts and entices users to attend our event
TYPE OF CONTENT NEEDED : Written , Visual , Video to bring our event to life
Customer Testimonials from previous events
Rich Digital Assets including Videos,Podcasts for upcoming innovative products
Recorded Demos & Videos for each product line
Speaker slide decks
For each product line , HOW WE ARE DRINKING OUR OWN CHAMPAGNE as CUSTOMER # 0 ?
Tagging all the content with journey stage , industry segment, product line, personas, competitive advantages , differentiating factor etc
Unifying all the content showcasing the various use cases it can accomplish for our customers to help them in their day to day activities
Event is an EXPERIENCE and we should try our best to make it a memorable one for everyone.
PROMOTING AN EVENT :
ADVERTISING & PR
EMAIL
POSTAL MAIL
TELEPHONE
MOBILE
LINKEDIN
FACEBOOK
INSTAGRAM
TWITTER
METRICS & ROI
PIPELINE GENERATED
BRAND AWARENESS
EVENT CONTENT EFFECTIVENESS
EVENT CHANNEL EFFECTIVENESS
SESSION METRICS
OVERALL ROI
DETAIL PLATFORMS TO LEVERAGE:
ADVERTISING & PR
Paid Advertising to promote an event
Traditional advertising using newspaper & magazines
Media relevant to industry like print week, marketing week
Pay Per Click advertising
Display advertising to show your advertisement to audience throughout the internet
Re-targeting ads to people who come to site but didn’t register
Social media advertising
Earned advertising through PR
Involving Key influencers
Key search terms and google alerts
Showcasing the story behind the event
EMAIL
Most effective tactic
It is most likely the final piece of communication before register/ sale
Target list & segmentation will help if u already have a list else u can purchase relevant list
Before the event : Announcing the event, details with who/what/where etc , countdown to event, benefits of event , early bird, tiered pricing etc
During the event : What’s happening , speakers, key attendees etc
After the event: Thank you & all resources
Different kinds of emails for different event types with GREAT HEADLINE, STRONG CALLS TO ACTION for registering etc
POSTAL MAIL
Might be little expensive but quite useful if we have large content to share
Success is about using right mailing list and sending a personalized message with a strong CTA
You can also use to share printed materials in the event itself
TELEPHONE & MOBILE
It has reduced but business are quite receptive if it relevant & provide valuable info
Very helpful to GAUGE THEIR INTEREST, WHAT THEY NEED, ANSWR ANY QUERIES & OBJECTION
FEEDBACK COULD IMPROVE OTHER AREAS OF MARKETING CAMPAIGN
This is useful for cold calling as well as converting warm leads
MOBILE MARKETING
Search for information
Registering
Receive reminders & alerts
Location of the next event
Receive emails
Use social media
Upload photos
Mobile messaging into our promotional activity
Love to receive text message before the event begins
LINKEDIN , GOOGLE PLUS & OTHER LOCALE SPECIFIC PLATFORMS
Core business focused social media platforms
Post on company page & encourage all users to share
When it comes to Corporate events, these are great place to share
Post the event on company page & encourage all the colleagues to share the post
Post status updates , event announcements, countdowns & other event info
Encourage everyone to share blog content on linked-in
Involve everyone in doing this employees, family, friends, sponsors, partners, speakers, confirmed attendees etc
Send direct messages to network , use in-mail to send to prospects
Use paid options to reach more groups & networks
Leverage linked-in groups as well following the groups guidelines
Leverage Google Plus as well to create events etc
FACEBOOK
Facebook – the largest social media platform is the ideal place to promote an event
Company facebook page can be leveraged to post the event details & then encourage everyone to share
LIVE VIDEO ON FACEBOOK PAGE is brilliant on the day of event
Leverage facebook number of paid options to reach large audiences
INSTAGRAM :
OWNED BY FACEBOOK is awesome for storytelling
Images of venue, picture & videos of speakers of different sessions can be shared in Instagram
For webinars & other events, u can even share the images from slide decks etc
Paid ads in Instagram is also a great option as many people are hanging out there
TWITTER
REAL TIME NATURE OF TWITTER MAKES IT THE PERFECT PLATFORM FOR EVENT MARKETING
On the event day, it is the best platform to leverage
Even people get involved in lots of events discussion even if they are not attending
Also twitter is very much used in pre event stage to
Posing announcements
Background information
Content previews
Speaker information
Registration links
After the event pictures, videos, feedback etc are posted in twitter
Twitter’s highly targeted advertising platform is useful to GAIN FOLLOWERS, GENERATE LEADS AND INCREASE AWARENESS
Creating an event specific hashtag to use across platform is critical
Live tweet during the event,
Twitter wall to display all the event activities surrounding the event hashtag
Twitter & events are deadly combination to generate great success
With innovative event marketing strategies, we can expand our footprint to grow our business at light speed !!!
More in next post !!!
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