How to make your event a success
Event management software platform Lyyti is designed to help organizations plan, execute and analyze events. It offers wide range of tools and features for event registration, attendee management, communication marketing and feedback collection. The platform is used by businesses, educational institutions and organizations to manage different kinds of events, from small meetings to larger conferences.
The event marketing playbook published by Lyyti is a practical guide to help event organizers plan, market and implement successful events. The playbook is divided into six main sections: planning, marketing strategy, promotion, implementation, post event analysis and continuous improvement. It covers everything from setting goals and understanding the target audience to post- event feedback and improvement. I find this playbook to be interesting and relevant, since it aligns with the themes in customer experience management in tourism study unit. This playbook also provides practical insight that can help me improve my learning goals especially in community events such as festivals.
Discussion of the arguments
The playbook provides structured approach to event marketing and the authors wants to give event organizers tools and strategies to create successful events. The key claims of the playbook are the importance of strategic planning, the use of diverse marketing channels and necessity of post-event analysis.
Strategic planning
The playbook highlights the importance of setting clear goals and understanding the target audience. First thing to do is design the right event concept. That way one can meet participant interests and connect with them emotionally. On top of that producer has to offer some experiences for the target audience. For event concepting organizer should answer questions:
- What are the goals and what kind of influence do we want to make?
- Does the content match to participants needs and hopes?
- To reach your goals, who should attend?
- How is the event located?
- When is the event organized?
When answering these questions organizer should think through customer´s eyes. How will the event look from the participant’s point of view? Knowing the audience´s preferences ,helps to tailor the event to meet their interests. After all when defining the ideal participants is important to understand their behavior and interests.
Marketing strategy
Events increases brand awareness and sales. During events companies are able to create and empower relations, since business is about emotions. Nowadays customers have more options and it might be even harder to get people to attend. It is important to think that how to get the ideal participants to attend and how to follow up and engage with them. The playbook offers practical advice on creating content and exploiting different marketing channels, such as social media, email campaigns and paid advertising. The playbook advises that the content should be engaging and relevant to capture audiences attention.
Social media:
Using different kinds of social media platforms is an essential part of the strategy. The guide recommends using a combination of organic and paid social media posts to reach wider audience. Regular updates, behind the scenes content and interactive post, will help to maintain interest and engagement in the event
Email campaigns:
The playbook recommends segmenting email list and sending targeted messages to different audience segments. Personalized emails with relevant content are more likely to be opened and responded to. Pre-event emails can include pre registration , speaker announcements and reminders. Post-event emails can focus on thanking attendees and gathering feedback.
Paid advertising:
Using paid advertising such as Google Ads and social media ads can help event to reach the most relevant audience.
Content marketing:
Valuable content creating such as blogs, videos and infographics can attract potential audience. To maximize the reach it is recommended to post content to multiple channels. The playbook highlights the importance of SEO to ensure this content ranks well in search engine results.
Post event analysis and continuous improvement
The playbook is highlighting the importance of collecting feedback from participants and evaluating key performance indicators to measure the event´s success. Understanding what worked and what didn’t will help to improve in the future. A structured approach to documenting learned lessons and developing best practices helps to refine strategies and improve the effectiveness of subsequent events.
The Playbook recommends to send thank you and feedback requests with in the 2 days from the event. Since it is easier for the participants to rate the event if they still remember how they felt during the event.
Conclusions
The main pick up from the event marketing playbook is that it gives practical steps for planning, marketing, and evaluating events. The playbook focuses clear planning using different marketing methods. I find the playbook to be helpful and useful to building a closer bond with customers. It offers useful tips to any events, but it mainly focuses company events such as flagship-, inbound-, account-, partner-, internal- and training events.
Resources
Lyyti, The Event Marketing Playbook – How to Make Your Event a Success