Instagram influencer Alquincia Selolwane is a prime example of leveraging your reach and connection online to promote an event. The Black Virtual Mall, developed by Selolwane, was a huge hit thanks to its uniqueness and to her ability to reach her target audience through Instagram. This venture showed the power of event influencers and how they can help startups and mature businesses expand their ROI.
The newest model of using event influencers as a marketing strategy is widely adopted by businesses in this digital age. It is a fresh way of impacting the audience by people from within and enhances credibility. You can take over the social media feeds with branded content through the most loved event influencers and boost your brand awareness much more effectively.
What Is the Buzz About Event Influencers?
Influencers have a significant impact on the community and can play an imminent role in building genuine connections. It’s a way of creating hype around your brand by affiliating event influencers with your company to promote your exclusive events. This collaboration helps businesses reach a larger and more relevant audience and develops trust.
People tend to believe recommendations made by relatable influencers rather than big celebrities and that’s the whole concept behind event marketing using influencers.
Here are some stats about event influencer marketing that help paint the picture:
- According to Think With Google, 70% of the teenage audience is influenced more by YouTubers than celebrities.
- Around 50% of millennials trust the recommendations from influencers and only 38% believe celebrities.
- 92% of marketers have confidence in influencer marketing as an effective way of promoting one’s brand.
How to Onboard Event Influencers
Organizers can collaborate with event influencers who may be thought leaders or renowned professionals with a dedicated following that trusts their expertise. Here is how you can onboard event influencers and organize a productive partnership for event promotion:
1. Plan Your Influencer Strategy
Jumping right into influencer marketing for your event could cause you to miss important things. In order to avoid getting overwhelmed, make sure to create a well-planned event influencer campaign and strategy. Only a well-planned event influencers campaign can be fruitful for your brand so make sure to plan ahead of time.
A good place to start is contracts. Leave no ambiguity and ensure that the event influencers know what’s in the agreement. Be flexible and guide them about your value and image that they can present in their own unique way. Even if you’re going online, it’s important to design your virtual event marketing plan ahead of time.
2. Target Event Influencers From Your Niche
Before you select your influencers, it is important to understand your target audience and decide accordingly. The event influencers that you ask to promote your event must belong to a niche related to your business. A targeted niche for event marketing can direct your promotions toward your future customers that actually generate business out of it.
You can also do some research and go for a wider range of spectators that can be potentially attracted to your business. For example, if you have a fashion brand, along with fashionista Instagrammers, you can also target make-up artists to study how their followers react to your product.
3. Offer Incentives
When looking for event influencers to talk about your brand, think about what you can offer in return. Money, free products, influencer event invites, and gifts are common ways to compensate influencers.
However, make sure that whatever way you choose, the influencer is on board with it. Clearly communicating will help you please the influencer and hopefully develop a long-lasting partnership. This is where you earn credibility for your brand because otherwise you might end up with an angry influencer and it can leave a totally opposite impact.
5 Ways to Promote Your Events Through Event Influencers
It has been a common practice for brands to use influencer marketing and now it is penetrating to all kinds of businesses including events. This way brands can directly reach out to the right audience to promote their next event.
Here are some ways you can get help from event influencers for the promotion and marketing of your next event:
1. Create Aesthetically Pleasing Content
Since it’s all about the content, make sure yours is visually appealing for the audience. When you ask event influencers to promote your event, it must catch the eye of the people you want to target.
Go for selfies and Insta-worthy pictures, or follow the trend like the popular Wes Anderson-inspired symmetrical videos. The options are limitless. Ask your event influencers to be creative and make sure to offer them opportunities to create some eye candy Insta posts.
2. Spark Curiosity Before The Event Starts
It is important to understand how the content will reach the audience. It requires context, hype, and consistency to convince the audience that you’ve got what they need.
One way of making this happen is to get your event influencers to generate hype before the event has begun. Offer some sneak peeks into what’s coming so that people are already talking about it. You can ask the influencer to go live on social media or post ‘Ask Me Anything’ stories to engage with the audience.
3. Keep Posting During the Event
You must keep your audience up to date with what’s happening in the event. Little details going up can help with your brand awareness.
Think about the Met Gala. People are waiting for every look and the moment it gets up, it’s the talk of the town.
Work it into your agreement with your influencers that they must post a certain number of times about their experience at the event as it’s still running. You can even get specific about what types of posts and platforms you’d like them to share.
4. Upload Interesting Post-Event Content
Get your event influencers to post about the event even after it’s over so it stays in the memory of your audience. This way you can take your brand awareness a step further.
Create some cool content during the events that can be posted afterward. Keep interesting aspects in your event that influencers can later talk about and keep the spirit alive.
5. Engage with the Audience After Launching the Campaign
Replying to comments and connecting with people who have queries on social media posts is an important aspect most people forget about. What’s the point of all this hustle if you would just let your important leads go?
Make sure that your social media manager is keeping an eye on everyone commenting and giving appropriate responses so that the campaign does bring in the revenue that you were working for.
Final Word
Influencers have changed the course of marketing by offering new ways for brands to reach wider audiences. Event marketing is easier by getting influencers to promote your event and get more people to sign up. These event influencers present your brand to more people, increasing your exposure and brand awareness. This way you can open doors to new possibilities of growing your business.
Check out this podcast on influencer marketing for virtual events.
