This block goes over the basics of marketing from a publication called The event marketing playbook – How to make your event a success
Content:
- INTRODUCTION
- CONCEPTING
- EFFICIENT EVENT MARKETING AND COMMUCATION
- FINAL WORDS
1. INTRODUCTION
The playbook tells us how set an event, how to market the event, how to get the right participants and what happens after the event.
Good reasons to read this playbook:
- How to boost results from your events and how improve them
- Understanding on what events you should focus on
- Making a impact with events to your marketing plan
- How to exploit opportunities of modern event marketing technologies
- Lastly to get inspired
Why should events be a part of your marketing?
- Events grow brand name and increase sales
- They forge relationships and empower them
- Events are a awesome way of building your brand the way you want, raise topics to discuss, increase sales and get in contact with potential customers
Some of the main points why this playbook will help you:
- Creating irresistible event concepts and customer experiences
- Expanding the re-usability of events, creating even scalability and boosting marketing and sales
- Boost marketing and communication efficiency
- Goes over the best tools and methods
2. CONCEPTING
Concept of the event is the framework for the event.
What questions should you answer with concepting:
- Why the event is taking place, what are the goals, what is the value for the participants and what sort of influence do you want to make?
- Does the content match participants needs, interests, wishes and beliefs
- Who is the target audience. Who should we invite?
- Does the concept support your companies policy
- Does your concept support your brand
- What is the best location for the event, when is the best time for it?
Types of events:
Flagship event
Flagship event has a high position on strategic map, it boosts brand name and marketing
Inbound event
Inbound event directly supports sales, engages customers and creates new sales opportunities
Account-based event
Account-based events are mainly focused on current customers. The aim is to engage customers and boost sales
Trade fair and partner event
On these events the company takes part as a affiliate. Thus not beeing responsible for organizing the event.
Internal event and training
Internal events goals are usually to improve employees knowledge and internal communications. Possible events might be anything from birthday parties to training new employees
What is the ideal participant?
When organizing a event you should know your target audience, know their behavior and interests. You can always take notes from your previous events, what are the participants you want?
The publications lists the following attributes you should list:
Age, position at work, work and leisure interest, value, goals, satus, personalities, what communities do the participants belong to and what kind of events do they attend
You also need to understand the ideal participants relationship to your event:
Do they prefer large or small events, where did they hear about the event, wow effect
You should also plan a road map for this particular participant
Goal setting
1. Set a goal and then select a event type
Things you should think about when setting a goal, why is the event organised, how does it support sales and what is the main goal
2. Define the best possible goal:
Boosting brand awareness
- Goal for boosting awareness could be increasing participants, more social media reach, high media coverage and website tragic
Boosting sales
- Things that will increase sales are generating new leads and opportunities for the sales team
Teaching customers new things and entertaining them
- Customer satisfaction or know-how
3.Set numerical event key performance indicators (KPIS)
- Some examples: Participants, media mentions, website visitors
4. How to prove wherever the goal was reached
- You can asks the participants questions
5. Define objectives that will help reach your goals
- List goals
6-7 Follow up and KPI comparability
- You should gather all the critical information so you can compare it with other events, so you can optimize your event marketing
3. EFFICIENT EVENT MARKETING AND COMMUCATION
Mastering the event stages:
Pre-event marketing goal is to get people to register and sign up for the event. The stages are Advertise, invite and confirm. Advertising should start 1-2 months before the actual event, next up is the invitations which would occur between 2 months and 2 weeks before. On the invitations you should only tell the participants the important stuff: what, when and where? Confirmation should happen instantly.
In the mid-phase or event communication phase there are fore phases and the goal is to figure out how to get people to attend and engage. Send reminders to whom have promised to attended and people who haven’t signed up yeat. One day before you can still send a final countdown to the event. During the event you can take polls from participants, ratings and make reminders for workshops.
Last phase is post-event marketing. At this stage you thank the participants and ask for feedback. You can also follow up with business successions.
5. FINAL WORDS
The publication went in to great detail on how to set up an event. Even though I have been a part of a team setting up an event I have never thought about events as a tool for sales and company growth. It was a great read and a eye-opener. I highly recommend it to everybody on this course.
References: Lyyti, The Event Marketing playbook – How to Make Your Event a Success