How to Market an In-person Event

Whether it’s via sponsoring or exhibiting at an event, event marketing is a great way to get your name out there and increase sales for your upcoming in-person event. There are many events for this purpose, including conferences, trade shows, co-sponsored or independent events, parties, and galas for launching new products.

The question is, how do you intend to go about these events? For example, have you considered offering attendees discounts or freebies to encourage them to make purchases? Alternatively, do you favor a more imaginative approach to describing your company’s history? Marketing events, if executed well, can elicit a wide range of responses from your target audience, including excitement, curiosity, gratitude, and joy.

This article will discuss all you need to know about how to market an event. We will dig deeper into different marketing tools and strategies to help you successfully market your next in-person event. So, let’s dig in!

In-Person Event Marketing Strategies

Many event planners see in-person events as a vital part of their entire marketing strategy, and as a result, many more are planning to host them soon. People now think it’s less important to have a big splash with a show-stopping headliner than to give attendees a sense of community and business value. 

As with any other marketing, having a strategy allows you to define your approach and take the necessary actions to reach your objectives—before, during, and after the event. Here are a few in-person event marketing strategies to keep in mind. 

Manage Your Budget

If you don’t know where your money is going, you’re probably spending more than you should. Tracking your finances is essential for increasing the ROI of your event and managing your total cost.

The initial step is to clarify your event budget strategy. Before budgeting, take a step back and think critically about what you’ll be investing in. Next, you must include all the line items to track in your budgeting template. These will include information such as rental costs and A/V equipment.

You also need to use tools like analyzing event ROI and building an emergency fund if needed. It’s best to create an event budget template that is relevant to your event and will assist you now and in the future. Here’s an all-in-one event budgeting template for all event types that we have created for your ease. 

Finalize a Venue 

Even before COVID hit the world, the events industry took precautions to ensure that attendees were safe. However, these days venues are doing more to maintain their spaces clean and safe for their guests. For your in-person event, look for a location that prioritizes the attendees’ wellness. Many venues are devising innovative ways to prioritize health and safety, from touchless check-in kiosks and hand sanitizer stations to prepared meals and no-line food service.

Event organizers are increasingly looking to one-of-a-kind venues to host events that stand out from the crowd. Since atypical places offer fewer events than standard spaces, ensure that the space you like can meet your event’s practical requirements, such as capacity or safety measures. Moreover, one of the most significant factors to consider is the venue’s size. Finally, you must estimate how many individuals will attend so that you can choose the venue size accordingly.

Confirm Speakers

If you’re organizing a large-scale event, you’ll almost likely want to recruit the assistance of others to offset costs and showcase a diverse range of industry viewpoints. Selling space to speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors is a popular method to add value to your event while balancing costs. You’ll need to locate speakers for each session if your event has several sessions.

Your ability to discover and secure event speakers is critical to the success of your event. A solid sourcing and outreach plan can better use your time and resources while ensuring that your agenda reaches the proper individuals. If you are selling these spots, you need a solid sales pitch about why they should spend money to participate in your event. All these groups will be looking for attendance rates, demographics, buying power, etc., to inform their decision.

Another crucial step is to outline your event speaker needs. You can list your speaker must-haves while considering essential variables such as relevancy, influence, and purpose.

Before offering speaking opportunities, assess the speakers on your list and select your top contenders. Remember to evaluate your needs, build the narrative, find a rising star, and seek out varied speakers.

Find Sponsors

Potential sponsors are difficult to identify and even more difficult for many event organizers to convert. Remember that as long as you are contacting firms related to your event, you have something they want: the attention of their target audience.

Consider your attendees’ needs and compile a list of companies that can provide those needs. You’ll find a diverse group of possible sponsors. Those whose audiences are similar to the events and whose businesses would immediately benefit from their involvement are the most likely and best-fitting sponsors. 

Now, determine what you can give the sponsors. If your audiences are similar, you may provide them with a complete data report, analytics, and survey findings. Most of your sponsors perceive your event as a chance to promote their own company. They want to see figures indicating that the event will be a success. Your offer may contain a spreadsheet with information about the audience’s age, gender, social media activity, etc. You can offer several tier alternatives. In tiered sponsor packages, there is a list of the possibilities and what you will give at each level.

Create Event Branding

By developing a strong brand across all your communication platforms, you deliver a consistent message about your main components – who you are, what your event is about, and the value your audience will get by joining.

Your event’s branding sets the tone for the entire experience, from the name and theme to how it looks and feels on-site. You want your event to have a distinct personality that makes it stand out. A strong event brand also provides your event with a purpose and assists you in determining where it should go. Next, consider how consumers will perceive your brand in person. Finally, determine how you will incorporate your event’s brand into all aspects and areas.

Map Out Attendee Journey

Mapping out the attendees’ journey is another excellent way to market an event. This means you need to think about your event regarding attendee touchpoints. For example, when and how will they engage with your event and, by extension, your brand?

Knowing where participants interact with the event before, during, and after it can introduce marketing opportunities you didn’t even know existed. You can think about how an attendee might contact your brand to get started. Where do they begin their journey, and how do they get there? Take note of all steps, from marketing and pre-registration to the post-event survey. vFairs lets you map this journey and gives you all the detailed statistics you need. 

Develop a Landing Page

More people will spread the word about your event if you have an attractive event landing page. This is where your guests are most likely to tell their friends and followers on social media about your event. 

The primary purpose of a landing page is to inform people about your event and invite them to take action by registering. This is the hub of the event marketing plan since it’s where all your promotional campaigns, like emails and social media promotions, etc, will likely lead people to. Therefore, the landing page needs a lot of special attention. You can create a unique landing page for your event marketing. You can also upload promotional videos and speaker bios to get more people to come and get excited.

Launch a Campaign

Just like introducing a new product, the launch of a new event may begin with an email informing attendees of what is to come and when to expect further details. You could send a few emails for a primary campaign to generate buzz and invite people to the event. Exciting the public could be the key to a successful campaign, and media and promotional content are two ways you can accomplish this. 

You can also consider paid advertising if you need to increase your reach quickly. You can ask participants to promote the event on their socials. An ideal way is to excite the participants by sending a premade GIF or image they can post and tag your account. You can also announce their participation to make things easier for them. They can easily reshare the posts to increase the reach!

Keep Registrants Interested Through Social Media Marketing

Just because someone has registered doesn’t confirm them to be an attendee. You have to promote the event to keep registrants interested. An ideal way is to use social media. To build excitement, you can offer innovative reveals of lineups or special guests, as well as teaser films and photographs. You can, for example, submit your own countdowns to the event. Behind-the-scenes photos are also helpful in seeing what happens behind the scenes. Attendees also prefer a photo booth area focusing on small elements that would make wonderful Instagram or Snapchat shots.

Analyze the Event 

You’ve spent time and money on an event that’s been in the works for months. Internal stakeholders will want to know if the fruits of their labor were worth it. How did you sell the tickets? How many did you sell? How much did each person pay to attend? How many good prospects did you get? How many orders have been made ahead of time? These are a few of the variables you can check after the event.

You can also track the traffic and activity on your landing page to compare how many visitors you got and from where they came. This will help you understand the entire dynamic of page traffic vs. registrants vs. attendees. Not everyone who visits your page registers, and not everyone who registers attends the event. You can understand how well the landing page helped convert visitors become attendees. 

Concluding Thoughts

In 2022, if you want to improve your event marketing strategy, you’ll need to go back to the basics and learn about the latest trends and technologies. People will rush to your in-person events if you understand and take advantage of these new opportunities.

Your event marketing strategy will benefit significantly from an event management platform. vFairs is a leading in-person, virtual and hybrid event platform that lets you create a landing page and send out email campaigns to get people excited about your event before it even starts. Check out vFairs and see how it can help you to market an event.