Event Marketing: The Ultimate Guide (2023)

Chapter 1: Event Marketing Fundamentals

What is Event Marketing?

Event marketing is a form of advertising in which your company promotes itself by participating in or hosting an event. Your brand’s products or services can be the focus of an event in which you serve as the organizer, participant, or sponsor. It doesn’t matter if these are in-person, online, or hybrid events.

Your brand can host a wide range of events. There are many marketing conferences, trade shows, co-sponsored or stand-alone events, as well as celebrations and product launch galas. If you’re in the marketing technology business, you can host a virtual, hybrid, or physical event, depending on your niche and requirements. 

Now the question arises; how much knowledge do you hope to impart to your audience? Do you want to incentivize attendees to buy products from your company? Or do you prefer to tell your brand’s story more creatively? If done correctly, marketing events can inspire, inform, provide support, reassure, and inspire a host of other feelings in your customers.

There are various ways to market an event, and you can tailor each one to meet the marketer’s specific needs. It is possible to use event marketing to build stronger relationships with customers and prospects. If you’re an exhibitor at a trade show, you may be able to educate potential customers about your company’s products. You can even use digital events like webinars or live-streamed workshops in event marketing. Live experiences help to achieve business objectives in all of the examples above.

Importance of Event Marketing

It is important to remember that event marketing is all about creating a connection between attendees and brands. Although digital marketing dominates today’s landscape, event marketing is still a major trend within it. 

By providing a more personal touch than digital media, events provide marketers with an important opportunity to build relationships and trust with prospective customers. They offer a chance for customers to interact with businesses in a more personal way and get a sense of their unique brand personality.

The Future of Event Marketing

Even though the past year has taught us that forecasting the future of events is nearly impossible, all signs point to a rise and dominance of the hybrid event model. As the business world adjusts to the new normal, the convergence of event marketing will become even more apparent.

Virtual Events

Since the beginning of webinars, virtual events have also come a long way. Now, brands are stepping up their game by giving customers unique, engaging virtual experiences that are truly one of a kind.

People have signed up for marketing technology newsletters and received an overflow of webinars and blog posts that say virtual events are here to stay. They are giving tips on how to make a virtual event more interesting. There is a lot of this kind of content, which is a good sign that people like it and that virtual events aren’t going away any time soon. 

Hybrid Events

With Omicron and IHU once again casting doubt on the outcome of physical events, many unanswered concerns arise. While this may not be true for everything, one thing is. To put it another way: next year will be the year of the hybrid event.

In these uncertain times, both event organizers and attendees can benefit from hybrid events. They will likely become the standard procedure at future get-togethers. The year 2023 will be a continuation of their promising performance. 

According to a survey conducted by Event Manager Blog, 62% of event organizers report that they will maintain virtual audience support even after real events resume. The popularity of asynchronous hybrid events might increase significantly in 2023.

In-person Events

Both event organizers and attendees are eagerly anticipating the return of live, in-person gatherings in some shape or form. When we think back to a time before the pandemic, most people will agree that the value of face-to-face contact was ignored during that time. Planners of events are increasingly moving their attention to hybrid experiences, which combine in-person and online components into a single event.

Event Marketing Benefits

Generate Revenue

Exhibiting, hosting, or sponsoring events is a great way to meet new people and build a pipeline of qualified leads. A company’s offering is more likely to attract new customers if the event advertisement is done the right way. In addition, events provide excellent opportunities for business development teams to invite current prospects and maintain their interest throughout the sales cycle.

Organizations can attract, nurture, and convert prospects into long-term customers by utilizing all-in-one event platforms with solutions for registration, live engagement, and networking, along with post-event reporting and analytics.

Direct Engagement & Relationship Building

When compared to other types of marketing strategies, events barely have an equal when it comes to engaging attendees. The best events immerse their attendees in an experience that they will talk about with others for a long time, rather than a series of brief interactions.

They help to humanize brands and create genuine connections between them and their target audience because of the personalized interactions that occur at events. Attendees feel like they’re part of something more than a transaction when they participate in an event.

Brand Awareness

For organizations to build up their brand awareness or strengthen their position if their brand is already established, participating in events is an excellent strategy. Many event participants remember the organizer’s name and spread the word via social media or one-on-one interactions with other attendees.

When a company is just starting, event marketing is a powerful way to convey its identity, vision, and unique selling proposition to an engaged audience. In the case of well-established brands, event marketing is an excellent way to keep customers aware of your company and build brand loyalty.

Chapter 2: Event Marketing KPIs

Registrations & Check-Ins

Using this metric, you can see how many people attended the event. This is helpful as it is critical to compare the number of people who checked in to the event with the total number of people who registered.

Revenue & Cost to Revenue Ratio

You can’t use gross revenue as a useful metric unless you compare it to the total cost of the event. To better prepare for future events, you can use this ratio to see how much profit (or loss) your event has generated and how you can continue to improve it. Sponsors and investors would be interested in seeing this KPI.

Attendee Satisfaction

Attendee satisfaction is a key determinant of whether an event is a success or a failure. Attendees who are happy with their experience will have a more positive view of your company and will pick up a few useful tips. This can help your company’s image and possibly lead to more positive word-of-mouth publicity.

You can tell if a meeting or event was worthwhile by using polls and other methods of gathering feedback from attendees. Check out the social media buzz surrounding the event. Use web-based software to monitor and analyze the comments. You should also pay attention to what other people are saying about the company. Compare the pre-and post-event images.

Chapter 3: Event Marketing Plan 

Events naturally have a lot of moving parts that require multiple collaborators to execute. That’s why it’s important to create a plan that includes all of your taskwork, who is in charge of the task, its due date and any other notes and roadblocks.

Let’s look at some of the things an event marketing plan covers and how you can make one for your next event.

1. Define Your Event Goals

Before you start planning the event, you should know why you’re planning it in the first place. Clear event goals are the first step to making an event successful because they help hosts:

• Get the event message to the right people.
• Plan activities that will move them down the right conversion funnel.
• Raise awareness of your brand.

Along with this, you’ll need to figure out things like the name of the event, when it will take place, and who it is for.

2. Identify Your Audience

Be clear about who you’re targeting and why.

To start building an effective marketing plan, you need to first understand your audience. The better you can lock down the target persona you plan to serve, the better your virtual event marketing campaign will perform.

What do you need to know about them?

• their demographics (age, location, profession, etc.)
• where they spend time online
• their motivations and goals

For example, if you’re hosting a virtual trade show, then visualize what an ideal buyer would be like and why they would buy from you. You likely already have some idea about who your buyers are. Use your CRM tool to understand things like their job titles, what products and services of yours they’re most interested in, and what source brought them to you in the first place. Did they click on a paid ad? Did they find you organically?

Take this one step further by reviewing tools like Google Analytics and Search Console. This will help you get a good understanding of search terms people are using to look for you in the first place. Once you have an idea about what your audience talks about, their roles, etc. use a tool like Sparktoro to understand what channels those exact people are using, what hashtags they engage with, and more!

This information is critical as it will inform both the channels you need to target and the messaging you need to adopt.

Once you know whom you are targeting, you have to then figure out the desired outcome you require from them. Create an objective you want your audience to hit, such as filling out a registration form. This will help you measure what success looks like and then ensure your marketing messaging encourages your target audience toward your end goal.

3. Plan the Event’s Budget

When you don’t start with a budget for your event, costs go up pretty quickly. You won’t even know what hit you when it’s all over. A starting budget helps you stay realistic from the start and is an important part of an event checklist. It keeps you from getting too deep into budgeting problems.

4. Finalize Event Partners

Next up, get your event collaborators in order. A good event planner should keep track of all the speakers, sponsors, exhibitors, and representatives. You probably won’t see them before the event, so making plans ahead of time is essential. The ideal way is to connect with them and confirm their availability at least 7 weeks before the event.

5. Set an Agenda

With the help of your partners, start making plans for the event. Do this before setting up your virtual event so you’ll know exactly what activities you’ll be hosting.

For each line on your event agenda, you need to list the activities that will happen. This includes the list of the activity, the name and credentials (if any) of the speaker, and the date and time the session will start.

6. Set Up the Event Platform

Now that you have made most of the plans for the event, it’s time to set up the event itself. Setting up an event takes a lot of work. You have to make the graphics, set up webinars, brand the platform, and do a lot of other things. This is why you should use an event checklist to keep track of as many tasks as you need and cross them off as you finish them.

7. Create a Landing Page

After you’ve identified your audience and the goals you wish to achieve, you need to work on the focal point of your marketing campaign – your landing page.

The landing page of the event serves two purposes:

1. It helps you freely communicate why people should care about this virtual event (think of it as an elevator pitch)
2. It encourages people to click through to your registration page, and sign up for your event

Ideally, your virtual event provider should help you implement the page and spruce it up with an interesting design. However, you need to partner with them and ensure you own the message and guide them on the content points that need to be included. It’s your event at the end of the day, and nobody understands your business better than you. Make sure your voice is reflected on the page.

Apart from “wearing” your brand, the virtual event’s landing page should ideally have the following components:

1. A compelling headline
2. Date & time of the event
3. Event agenda (e.g. schedule of webinars, etc.)
4. A brief overview of the virtual event so audiences know what to expect
5. Who is exhibiting at the event and who the sponsors are
6. Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
7. Content & imagery that supports your message
8. An engaging promo video to attract and convert traffic to registrations

8. Promote Your Event

Once the landing page is set up, it’s time to tell people about it! Events are only as successful as their marketing plans, so in your virtual event planner, you need to keep track of every channel and what it delivers.

Start by choosing how you will spread the word about your event. Then, give each deliverable an owner, set a deadline, and keep track of it. Here’s an event marketing template to get you started on your event’s marketing plan.

9. Market at the Right Time

Not too early, not too late.

Okay, now you’re all set and excited to announce your virtual event. You’re ready to start driving traffic to the landing page and build registration numbers – but let’s hold that thought for a minute.

Timing your marketing is essential. If you do it too early, you risk losing the audience’s attention, especially with the number of distractions that surround your remote audience presently. If you do it late, you might not be able to generate enough reach with your campaign.

As a rule of thumb, we recommend setting up your event’s landing page 2-3 weeks before the date it goes live to secure a safe space on your potential participants’ radars.

Remember, even if the virtual environment of your event isn’t set up, it doesn’t matter because all you care about is signing them up using your optimized landing page. That’s why the landing page plays a key role in building excitement, expectations, and hype to eventually generate a sign-up.

There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. If you’re targeting a very small niche that requires time and effort to nurture and convert, you might have to start a bit earlier. For example, a virtual networking event for C-level executives in the trucking industry will require time and more laser-focused marketing compared to an open-for-all virtual career fair for a well-recognized company.

10. Leverage Your Existing Audience

Promote on Your Site

Publish on your website to get the word out.

Using your website to market your upcoming virtual event is an effective way to engage visitors. We recommend adding a prominent section on the homepage of your website that links directly to your virtual event’s landing page.

You could also opt for fancier implementations like interstitials, banner ad placements, and message panels that stick to the bottom or top of the page. Of course, you don’t want to become too intrusive such that your site visitors get annoyed though.

More importantly, however, the copy that you write in your advertisement plays a great role. Use a catchy headline that explains what’s in it for participants and try to create urgency in order to compel them to act right away.

For example, instead of saying, “Come sign up for our virtual career fair next weekend,” go with something like “Meet recruiters & staff  who are ready to hire!”

Moreover, if you already support live chat on your existing website, then you can use the pop-up message there to promote your event as well as field questions in case there are any.

Lastly, featuring a short video on the homepage promoting your event can go a long way to dial-up registrations.

Use Email Marketing

Send a sequence of emails to your existing subscribers.

Email marketing is a core component of any event marketing strategy. In fact, one study shows businesses make $44 on every dollar spent on email marketing.  If you have a subscription base, lead list in a CRM, or any database of potential participants, then you already have a low-hanging fruit to focus on.

However, you still need to craft your email campaign carefully. Think about:

• Target recipients
• Number of emails to send and delays between each
• A compelling subject line
• The body text
• The call-to-action

Ideally, you should focus your campaign on recipients that you are interested in inviting to the event, so if you have extra data points on your list per subscriber, filter your lists down for better targeting. Plan out 2-3 emails prior to the event to invite, inform and remind your audiences (make sure you don’t overdo it).

Your subject line needs to be carefully thought out. While tools like vFairs offer a native email tool, an email marketing tool like Mailchimp could work too.

Encourage Sharing

Influence registered visitors to share their participation with others.

Once you have a visitor convinced and signed up for your event, you need to see how you can motivate them to spread the word for you. This approach has two benefits:

1. People resonate far better to recommendations posted by their social contacts as opposed to commercial entities
2. There is little to no cost that is incurred on this kind of promotion

The best time to make that ask is right when the visitor has signed up. For example, after they sign up on your landing page, display a thank you page with social buttons that they can click to announce their participation at your virtual event.

Alternatively, you can issue an email to confirm their submission and embed a call-to-action to share the event with their contacts.

Apart from that, designing visually appealing posts or short video previews with a call-to-action asking audiences to share the message far and wide also helps garner likes, comments and more reach.

Leverage Your Sponsors

Ask your sponsors to help spread the word.

If you managed to get sponsors on board, then you should explore how you can collaborate with them to accelerate your marketing efforts. After all, it’s also in their best interest that the virtual event attracts relevant audiences so that their sponsorship goals are met.

• Encourage your sponsors to promote the virtual event on their website, social media channels, and any other web content that they are contributing to
• Send emails to their subscriber list or write a guest post on their blog provided they grant permission

Again, you need to make sure that you work closely with them to get the messaging right. The better the copy of the marketing material that they promote, the greater the results will be.

Involve your Speakers

Use speakers at your virtual event as event ambassadors.

The secret to successful marketing is getting your virtual event mentioned every chance you get regardless of it being online, through word of mouth, or any print media channels.

This is why integrating your special guest speakers into your event plan is helpful. Ambassadors and spokespersons are sometimes the core attractions of your virtual event that audiences would love to hear, connect with, and learn from. Thus, it makes absolute sense for them to add to the dialogue being built around your virtual event.

11. Reach Net New Audiences

Content Marketing

Write articles and guest blogs but remember to “educate first” and “ask later”.

“Content is king” – we’ve all heard this and have witnessed the influence of content serving as a promotional powerhouse. Known to be one of the core pillars of a strong inbound marketing strategy, attracting visitors to your virtual event’s landing page can be done by making use of guest posts on reputable and authoritative blogs.

Begin by scouting blogs in your industry that resonate well with your target audience and also pull in healthy traffic. Next, check out their guest posting guidelines and write an article that provides genuine value to their audience base. Work out a win-win deal with the web editor of the blog where you share a valuable content piece in exchange for a line or two about your upcoming event.

Using the right keywords in your article and linking back to it from your own website and partner properties, you could quickly start ranking for certain keywords and generate organic traffic for the piece. This proves to be a cost-effective mechanism to generate conversion on your landing page.

If guest blogging isn’t your thing, then at the very least, ensure that you add a post to your company’s own blog to create awareness around it. This will help spread the word among audiences that are already tuned in with your content.

Create a Series of Teaser Videos

Video content works really well to engage prospects. Build up anticipation with teaser videos about the event. These can be short videos that hint towards a big reveal at the very beginning of your marketing campaign. Then, gradually release more details, announce your event, and keep building anticipation with short videos for each stage.

You can also interview speakers, asking them about the content of their sessions and offering insider information that reels in your viewers. Show snippets of the venue and videos of past events if any to help give new followers a feel of what to expect.

Use Pop-ups Across Your Site

It’s also important to market to prospects that are landing on other pages on your website. Use pop-ups to make sure that new and returning visitors to your site learn about the event. You can also use a sticky bar at the top of your page with a CTA that takes users to the event landing page.

You can also sign up your prospects directly from the sticky bar if you add a form field to it. This helps speed up the process and makes it easier for people to sign up in seconds.

Issue a Press Release

Reach the masses through a PR campaign.

For virtual events that are primarily B2B in nature, a timely press release can be an effective way to get the word out quickly.

When composing your press release, remember to work on effective messaging. Depict the value proposition of the event, cite who the intended audience is, mention the date & time of the event, and highlight any sponsors/speakers worth mentioning. Of course, don’t forget to link the write-up directly to your landing page so that you can drive referral traffic.

Beyond massive coverage, online press releases are also shared by readers and journalists on social media channels, allowing you to reap the benefits of that exposure as well.

Own a Twitter Hashtag

Use a unique hashtag & build momentum on Twitter.

Businesses have been using Twitter to highlight their events, products, campaigns, and much more for years. This is why virtual event hosts need to become a part of the hashtag revolution to get noticed.

Hashtags are keywords or memorable short phrases used by hosts to build (and monitor) conversations around their events.

Once people see a tweet with your hashtag, that’s when the magic of extended promotional reach begins. Ensure to loop sponsors and speakers to join the party.

Don’t just fire bland tweets asking people to sign-up, though. Rather, share some nuggets of value and educate your audience motivating them to attend the virtual event to learn more. By creating buzz around your hashtag and often linking back to your landing page, you’re setting yourself up for a bump in conversions.

Use Social Media

Social promotion is essential. Use organic or paid promotion and combine it with re-marketing.

The obvious way of using LinkedIn and Facebook to your advantage is to keep posting updates about your upcoming virtual event to your follower base.

If you want to go one notch up with your presence on social media, consider paid promotion. Furthermore, you can use these two channels to re-market to your existing audience. This allows you to trigger a promotion of your event to users who have visited your website before or are on your email marketing list, making a second attempt at influencing them to convert.

LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram re-marketing use web technology to track people that visited your event’s page but left without taking any steps to register. They work to display ads to these same people using insight tags that are placed on your website or your virtual event’s landing page, in addition to helping you only invest in a targeted user segment that is of value to your business.

Opt for Paid Search

Leverage Google Ads to quickly promote your event against valuable keywords.

If you’re really in a rush to see fast improvements in your virtual event registration volume, then paid ads to get more traffic is a fundamental step to take to attract your identified audiences online.

Creating targeted campaigns reaching out to the right audience, desired geographical locations, and demographics will help build awareness and event visibility.

Making actionable ads that stand out from competitors helps not only attract traffic and registrations but also easily measure in order to assess their effectiveness at securing the intended clicks and conversions.

Moreover, analytics offer insights on ad performances based on various key metrics so you can keep improving your marketing strategy to only invest money into websites and ad formats that route the highest traffic to your event’s registration page.

12. Analyze the Event

Tracking how well an event did helps reach four goals:

• Understand exactly who you want to reach and what they like.
• Depict where you can improve.
• Check the return on investment and how well the event went.
• Improve future events.

Because of this, it’s important to keep an eye on how engaged the audience is during and after the event. For your event planner, keep track of all the relevant metrics along with your intended outcome and the actual result. This will help you figure out what worked and what didn’t, which will make planning for the future easier.

You can use this event planner to plan your next event seamlessly!

Chapter 4: Event Marketing Features

The ‘fun’ and ‘games’ features of events are only the tip of the iceberg. In addition to making events more entertaining and enhancing the attendance experience, you can also utilize them as tools to help you achieve your event marketing goals. Let’s explore how your organization can accomplish this objective with vFairs.

When you plan your virtual event, you must ensure the virtual space is interesting enough to attract as many people as possible. This can also help you increase your brand visibility and helps you conduct better marketing. You can do this if you have a lively environment and designs that grab people’s attention.

Virtual Environment

A virtual setting also makes it easier for people to join the event and get more out of it. This makes people more interested and gets more people to sign up. People who don’t know much about technology can use the virtual environment features to figure out how to get around your event and where to go for help. Some of these features are:

• 3D designs with animation
• Customized venues
• Immersive rooms
• Branded booths
• Animated avatars
• A live desk for help and information

vFairs is a game-changer in the industry because it makes the whole event experience much more immersive and real.

Webinars

vFairs offers the following webinar features to help you enhance your event marketing!

• Realistic 3D designs for viewing
• Variable presentation choices
• Sessions in multiple languages for a global audience
• Customized webinar schedules for attendees
• Q&A sessions for visitor queries
• Polls, trivia, & quizzes for gamification

Exhibit Halls

A simple exhibit hall and set-up process will also attract more potential exhibitors, which will help event hosts make more money from their events. These custom-made exhibition halls have:

• Branded exhibit booths for marketing
• The ability to store an unlimited number of files and resources
• Self-select avatars for an engaging experience
• Live chat options for two-way communication
• Schedulers and booking systems for future meetings and interviews

Downloadable Resources

Downloadable documents, videos and other resources are also a big benefit for event marketing. You can dedicate some resources to promoting your event as it’s happening. Attendees can also learn something new about what’s offered, and those who didn’t register will wish to know about what they’re missing.

Event Sponsorships

Most of the time, you’ll need to get sponsors to join your event. In exchange, these sponsors will get as much attention as possible, fill their pipeline, and get leads. You can meet these needs by adding features like:

• Customizable designs for exhibit booths
• Visibility of the brand on the landing page and all over the venue
• Gamification, especially for paid games
• Special webinars paid for by sponsors to show off sponsors
• Live statistics for the sponsors to look at and full reports after the event.

For the best results, you can use these features as a pitch to possible sponsors. This will help you get the sponsors you want, and you can even offer tiered packages that give different levels of exposure to sponsors depending on which package they choose. This will help your event bring in more money.

Chapter 5: Event Marketing Roles

Event Coordinator

Promotions, collateral materials, and media are examples of activities that fall within the scope of a marketing and events coordinator. They are also responsible for organizing, creating, and managing its implementation. An event coordinator is also expected to produce media and public relations materials to convey the company’s message. 

They will also oversee and coordinate conferences, seminars, and meetings. They will plan the communications calendar to ensure that the program completes on time and participate in managing and developing the program’s budget and resources.

Content Marketing Specialist

Digital marketing campaigns rely heavily on the work of content marketing specialists. They do so by ensuring that the campaign’s objectives are being met. They may also be a part of a broader plan for content marketing.

Any marketing team would be lost without them. So, finding a content marketing specialist with a knack for writing stellar blog posts, articles, and social media pieces is critical because not everyone is cut out for or likes writing content.

Social Media Manager

Social media management may appear simple, but the reality is quite different. Managing multiple social media accounts while successfully implementing the brand’s strategy is a task that only a professional can perform. A social media manager facilitates ongoing communication with existing customers and finds new ways to attract new ones through targeted customer-relations initiatives.

Social media managers use social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter to expand a business’s online presence and interaction. They can also use targeted content to engage audiences through social media. Finally, they also keep an eye on and measure responses to better understand which parts of the strategy work and which don’t.

Chapter 6: Event Promotions Fundamentals

What are Event Promotions?

Event promotion is the process of using various marketing methods and channels to increase awareness about an event and, ultimately, the number of people that sign up to attend that event. This can include print methods and digital channels (like email or social media) (such as flyers or direct mail).

Event Promotions vs. Event Marketing

Event promotion is the process of using different marketing channels to get more people to know about an event. A well-publicized event makes more people aware of the organization. This is one of the most important reasons why special events matter. Getting to a certain number of people is not only good for the ambiance of the event, but it is often a key factor in how much money the event makes.

Event marketing involves giving the event, product, or service a brand name and coming up with well-thought-out ways to spread the word about the brand and the event. Event marketing also includes the activities to do during the event to promote the company, product, or service. Event marketing uses both inbound and outbound marketing techniques to bring in leads, get people to come to the event, and turn prospects into new customers.

Benefits of Event Promotions

Promoting an event is important for several reasons. The main goal of promotion is to get people to come to an event as participants, spectators, or both. For example, a football game without a crowd is always disappointing. 

Promotion is important to the organization for more than just getting people to come to the event. A well-publicized event makes more people aware of the organization. If there is a sponsor, promotion is important to them as well. The goal of the sponsor is to get as much attention as possible for their name, logo, and other things. So, sponsors are very interested in promoting the event before it happens and promoting it on the day of the event by putting up signs and product displays that everyone can see.

Chapter 7: Event Promotion Channels

Content Marketing

Marketing through content is an excellent way to get your message out there. Using this strategy, you’ll be able to connect with the people you’re attempting to reach in a meaningful way. It also varies from traditional advertising in that it intends to be informative and relevant.

The best place to start with event content marketing is to inform potential attendees about the pertinent aspects of the event. You’ll want to tell them the basics: what, when, and where. You’ll also want to tell them who will be speaking and exhibiting, how much tickets will cost, what the schedule will be, and, most importantly, why they should come. You might also use your content to assist people to maximize their day.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the things you can write about at an event:

• Pre-event blog postings
• Videos, audio recordings, and podcasts documenting the event
• Promotional interviews and guest posts
• Real-time tweets and other social media updates throughout the event
• Promotion before the event and social media posts by participants to generate interest 
• Speakers’ interviews and video clips
• Streaming videos and live webinars

Any event gives you a new chance to get people interested in and excited about your brand. It might help to renew an outdated content strategy. Moreover, you can use AI tools such as ChatGPT for creating marketing collateral within minutes and avoiding monotonous tasks. Here are some ways how event planners are using AI tools for marketing. 

vFairs’ AI-powered marketing tools can shorten the event setup and marketing time span for you by creating marketing collateral such as content for landing pages, email copy, social media posts, press releases, and so much more.  

Social Media

Making a strategy for social media event promotion is critical. Before an event, organizers can spend a lot of money and time marketing it, but they may not give much thought to what happens after the event is over. Social media event promotion doesn’t end when your guests leave the venue.

Connecting with your audience before, during, and after an event is an important part of a successful social media event strategy. Using these social media tips, you can create an unforgettable digital experience for your guests from beginning to end.

Before the Event:

Take Advantage of Instagram Stories by Posting a Countdown.

It’s possible to set an end date and time for an Instagram Story using the countdown sticker. You can change the clock’s name and color as well. Subscribers will receive a notification when the clock expires, or they can add the countdown to their own stories and share it with their friends.

Create a Facebook Event Page

Create a Facebook event with all of the pertinent information for your guests. Please be sure to include the official pages of any speakers or guests you’ve invited. In the event discussion area, you can make announcements or respond to questions. Presale codes or show times for a concert could be useful information to spread around the area.

Add Necessary Details to Teaser Posts.

In the run-up to the event, provide relevant information. Teasers are a great way to get your audience excited about your event while also providing them with useful information. Give your guests a taste of what they can expect at the event by revealing tidbits well in advance. In addition, they’re a great way to showcase your guests of honor. During the weeks leading up to a large conference, you could also introduce your guest speakers one by one.

Make Use of a Hashtag

You and your attendees will appreciate the ease with which you can find all of the content associated with your event using a custom hashtag you create for the occasion. If you don’t want to bury under mountains of irrelevant content, create a hashtag that is new and unique.

Add Videos

Using videos can be a fantastic way to boost your event marketing efforts and take them up a notch. Your social media content strategy can be incomplete without incorporating videos because they are much more immersive and engaging for all audiences. Start here to find some exciting ways to leverage videos for event marketing.

Organize a Contest 

You can increase the number of event attendees and increase the visibility of your brand by holding a social media giveaway contest. Request that people use the hashtag when they share a post from your account about a contest they are entering. You’ll have the attention of their followers as well once they’ve shared your content. For the price of a few free tickets or products, you can reach a much larger audience.

After the Event

Share User-generated Content from the Event

This is why it is important to have a short, easy-to-remember hashtag for your audience and presenters. Your attendees will feel more at ease if you engage with and share the material they’ve created. To celebrate your accomplishments, you’ll also be able to show off your event from a variety of viewpoints.

Follow up with Customers.

Keep in touch with your audience after the show is over and before they head back to their regular routines. Make sure everything is in its proper place. Follow up with people who had unresolved complaints or concerns to ensure that the issues were resolved.

Add Event Highlights to your Collection of Saved Items.

Using Stories allows you to post more content with less concern for its quality since they don’t take up any real estate on your profile. However, if you’ve been covering an event well, you don’t want to lose all of your work in just a day. It’s possible to save content from Instagram and Facebook Stories to your Highlights so that it can be accessible again and again in the future.

Prepare Summaries for Those Who Couldn’t Attend in Person.

People who couldn’t make it to the event in person can still participate virtually. Share content that gives people a taste of what they may have missed out on. Post photos and videos that make you feel as if you were there.

Analyze your Data in-depth. 

Analyze your team’s performance and how well you managed to implement your strategy. You can use the information gleaned from this campaign to improve your social media strategy in the future.

SEO

Several businesses organize various local events. When it comes to planning an event, whether it’s for a business conference or an informal get-together, you want the right people to see it. Here are our top tips you can use to get the most out of SEO:

Segment Your Target Market

Segmenting your target audience is essential before you begin promoting your event. It will be much easier for you to devise an effective event marketing strategy once you have decided who you want to attend the event.

Achieve Specific Objectives by Using the Proper Metrics

Setting SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based) objectives is critical in event marketing. These goals will help you stay on track and remind you of the results you want to achieve during your campaign. 

Keep a Check on Your Progress Choosing the Correct Instruments

You should document your KPIs ahead of time so that you can monitor the progress of your event as it moves through its various stages. Because of this, you need to have the proper equipment. If you use tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs, you can easily audit your content and check backlinks, shares, rankings, and traffic. You’ll never miss a mention of your brand or important keywords again thanks to Google Alerts.

Create an Optimized Event Page

Google uses your event information to determine your usefulness. Relevant events have recently been rearranged in the SERPs. A callout box at the top of search results now includes these events. This fantastic option increases your visibility. The callout box is the most important way for a searcher to learn about your event’s type, location, date, or time.

Email Marketing

Email promotion is essential for success, whether you’re throwing an annual party or planning your company’s first conference. Email marketing is still one of the most efficient ways to market, so it makes sense to use it to promote an event. The right event email marketing strategy can help you get the right messaging out that is also personalized to a particular audience segment.

Use a Launch Campaign to Get People Interested in Your Event

Event launches may start with emails that tell people what’s coming and when to expect more information, just like product launches. In a simple campaign, you might send out a few emails to get people interested and invite them to the event. A stronger campaign might use media and promotional content to get people excited.

Invite People to Your Event by Giving Them Special Deals

If your pre-launch went well and you want to make the most of your email list, use special deals to get people to sign up for your event. You can give something small, like free promotional items, or you can give your subscribers a discount code with an expiration date to make them feel like they need to act quickly.

Include Interesting Content to Get People to Share Your Event.

Most people don’t think about referrals when they think about events, but the truth is that many events are spread through word of mouth or social media. You can get more people to know about your event through emails that encourage your subscribers to invite their friends and family.

As the Event Date Approaches, Tell People What They Need to Know

You can send two types of emails about details. The first is an email sent to people who purchased event tickets and require additional information. The second email is sent to individuals who have not yet purchased tickets but are curious to know details such as cost and registration. In a successful campaign, multiple of these may be sent.

Don’t Let Important Dates Pass Without Reminding People About Your Event

As the event date gets closer, you want as many people as possible to sign up. That means you need to send reminder emails with a sense of urgency and a call to action that tells people to sign up. This could mean sending a dozen emails the week before a big event. 

After an event goes well, you should thank the people who came and the people who helped make the event possible. You can use this time to talk about statistics from the event, or you can just say thanks and say you’ll see people again. People can also give feedback in a “thank you” email.

PPC

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a paid form of marketing that enables you to generate high-quality leads for your business. These advertisements appear at the top of search results, above organic results. You can set numerous objectives for a PPC campaign. The most prevalent objective is to achieve a specific number of conversions or conversion rates. Since PPC ads attract more likely-to-convert leads, many businesses set conversions as their primary objective.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is one of the best ways to promote a brand or production because it can reach a large number of people. Most of the time, people follow influencers who they can relate to and trust. Because of this, the followers tend to have a lot of respect for the brands and products that the influencer supports. Therefore, influencers are good at getting people to buy the brands they promote or learn more about them.

Sponsored posts on social media appear to be the norm, but businesses are beginning to recognize the value of collaborating with influencers to promote events. You can use the following tips to efficiently use influencer marketing to promote your event:

• Target relevant influencers for your brand
• Develop an influencer strategy
• Encourage them to promote event-pre-hype
• Get them to promote in real-time throughout the event
• Have them publish content after the event

Chapter 8: Event Promotions Plan

Elevator Pitch

An elevator pitch is a brief, compelling speech used to generate interest in what your organization does at an event. Every business or business concept should have an elevator pitch. This is an excellent marketing exercise for businesses seeking to clarify their values and objectives. This 30-second to 60-second speech unveils a company or a project persuasively and clearly.

The primary purpose of a pitch is to garner interest in a project or concept. Developing an elevator pitch for your event will assist you in conveying your company’s core values and organizing your marketing efforts accordingly.

Personas

Attendee Personas are fictional representations of your event’s target audience. Marketers use it to comprehend their target audiences. They are called “personas” because they represent individuals within a larger group. By creating Attendee Personas to represent the various types of individuals who would gain from attending your event, you can discuss your event marketing content so that your readers feel as though you are communicating to them.

Attendees Journey

The attendee journey is a timeline that outlines every facet of the experience your attendees will encounter before, during, and after your event.

Awareness Stage

Always emphasize the problem that your event will solve for attendees when promoting it. For example, if you’re hosting an event for freelancers, you can say in your event marketing campaign that your company and the speakers will show the attendees how to get more work and close more deals.

In other words, you will express your attendees’ pain, validate it, and reassure them that attending the event will provide them with the answers they seek.

Consideration Stage

At this stage, you have to make sure your client moves forward toward the decision stage. Your buyer personas are the individuals who are willing to purchase the solution that meets their needs. Therefore, a robust brand experience at the event is essential.

These brand experiences can include stimulating your attendees’ senses through experiential marketing and providing an immersive environment through mixed reality, compelling storytelling, etc.

Decision Stage

At this stage, the customer wants to make a purchase. Offer your guests the exclusive opportunity to create powerful business connections at your events to strengthen your standing as an industry connector.

Competitor Research

Conducting competitive research entails locating and identifying your business’s rivals, as well as analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of both the companies themselves and the goods and services they offer. Using competition analysis in the event planning process, you can discover new event opportunities while also considering the inherent risks. Before planning and executing an event, event organizers examine the market and their competitors. 

Competitive analysis is necessary before deciding on the best strategy for your event. The subject of such research could be the market segment’s environment or the local environment, etc. Event organizers and entrepreneurs analyze event competition through competitive industry analysis to develop a strategy.

Process Mapping

A process map is a management and planning tool that graphically depicts the workflow. It illustrates who and what is involved in a process, applies to any business or organization, and can reveal improvement opportunities. It is a diagram that details the various phases that make up a process, including who is responsible for each task and how long it can take. They are especially useful for conveying processes to stakeholders and highlighting areas for improvement.

The purpose of process mapping is to improve the effectiveness of organizations and businesses. Process maps provide insight into a process, assist teams in generating ideas for process improvement, enhance communication, and document the process. The mapping of a process will also reveal bottlenecks, repetition, and delays.

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 their 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.

Chapter 9: Event Promotions with vFairs Virtual Event Platform

vFairs is the best virtual event platform because it allows you to create a landing page and send out email campaigns to get people excited about attending your virtual event before it even starts.

vFairs Virtual Event Marketing Features

Custom Domain

Having a custom domain is like having your very own section of the internet all to yourself. A custom domain is not a must for visibility in search engine results, but it does help. Most search engines give preference to linking to the root domain rather than a subdomain. Therefore, without a domain name, it’s quite unlikely that any of your content will ever appear in search engine results. 

vFairs gives you the ability to host your virtual event on a custom vanity URL, which makes it more memorable and gives it a more customized feel.

Branded Landing Page

If you have a landing page for your event, you can tap into more “word of mouth” advertising. This is where your attendees are more likely to spread the word about your event to their friends and followers on social media. With vFairs, you can make a landing page for your event promotion that is uniquely yours. You can also upload promotional films and speaker bios to increase attendance and excitement.

Multilingual Content

There was a time when English was the only language used on the internet. About 80% of the information on the web was only available in English until the late 1990s. Those times are completely out of date. As more people across the globe have access to the internet, languages other than English are beginning to gain popularity. Offering landing pages and information in several languages is one of the ways vFairs helps you reach a wider audience, as well as encourages accessibility and diversity.

Email Marketing

Using email marketing to promote an event is a great method to reach out to a certain demographic with relevant information and encourage them to sign up for and attend the event. Because of vFairs and its handy visual editor, you can send out emails that are completely yours. You can also use one of vFairs’ pre-made, action-optimized email templates or the simple template builder to create your own.

Email Pre-scheduling

Planning is crucial in event marketing. Once the groundwork is complete, however, using pre-event email templates makes automating the tough tasks and reaching the correct people a breeze.

When using vFairs, you may set up a schedule for sending emails, complete with triggers and deadlines. As a result, you can streamline the procedure for big campaigns.

Event Discovery Sites

Make sure that your event features platforms that allow people to discover events. People visit different sites on purpose to look for activities that are taking place in their area. Whether it be a convention, expo, educational gathering, or commercial event. You have the option of posting your event on vFairs Discover. It is a terrific approach to attract participants to your virtual event if you showcase your events on such platforms.

Chapter 10: Advanced Event Promotion Strategies

Cross Promotion w/ Stakeholders

Cross-promotion is the process of forming strategic partnerships with other businesses to increase brand awareness and sales while lowering advertising costs.

This strategy allows you to cross-promote your products and services with those of other businesses. By forming strategic alliances with other brands, you can significantly reduce marketing expenses and enhance your value chain strategy. Before beginning the process, you must conduct industry research and compile a list of all potential partners. Then, consider inventive means by which you can assist them.

Cold Email Outreach

According to a HubSpot study, 33% of cold emails receive a neutral or rather positive response from consumers. The most recent form of outbound marketing, cold email outreach, entails compiling a list of potential clients and then sending a template email to a vast market. It is the large net used to capture B2B customers. When you send a large number of cold outreach emails, you expect a small percentage of recipients to respond. Your sales team is the force that converts these cold outreach campaign responses into paying customers.

Pre-Event Video Shoutouts

Videos have a distinctive ability to reach and engage prospects and customers by appealing to their emotions and adhering to the famous saying “Show, don’t tell.” If your audience connects with your event promotion videos, the popularity of videos can go a long way toward boosting your ticket sales.

If your target audience begins to feel connected to one another, your brand, and the speakers on an even more personal level, registrations are an excellent outcome. Can you think of a more effective content format for fostering such a relationship at scale? A well-thought-out video marketing strategy will not only help you to increase ticket sales, but will also help to ensure a high standard of community excitement before, during, and after your event.

Pre-Event Promotion Kit

If you want decent attendance at your event, you must invest time and money in pre-event promotion.

As soon as you determine that you will be hosting an event, you must begin releasing information to your audience to generate excitement. You will need to allocate an official budget for promotion, spend time researching the best place to target your audience and consider which channels would be most effective for doing so.

Website Promotion

If your company, business, or organization has a website, this is an excellent place to begin event promotion before the event. If you want to invest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to encourage attendees to locate your event through Google and other search engines, you must begin optimizing well in advance of your event. This is an excellent way to attract more online attention to your event.

Social Media

Regardless of the nature of your event, social media will be an indispensable tool for spreading your message to the masses. Your audience is probably on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or one of numerous other social media sites. Creating a social media strategy will assist you in promoting your event in a highly receptive environment.

Email

The most effective marketing channel for promoting an event is email. For email to be effective, you must have your database of recipients. These are your “warm leads,” and you should send each one a personalized email (e.g. including their name in the email).

Traditional Marketing Techniques

There are a variety of conventional marketing strategies that you could employ to better reach your audience. Depending on the target audience, print advertising or sponsored content in magazines and newspapers can be very effective. However, it can be more difficult to measure the success of this type of advertising compared to online advertising, but it is essential to capture your audience’s attention from all aspects.

Collaborations

Likely, you will not be organizing your event by yourself. There may be guest speakers or entertainment at your event. You may hire equipment from external companies or collaborate with other organizations on the event’s content. This provides you with an excellent promotional opportunity if you simply ask them to help promote your event.

Key Takeaways

We hope this guide helps you learn all you need to know about event marketing. The main challenge is to use event marketing to tell your attendees about an experience that will change their lives. Modern event marketing brings speed and energy to your event. It gets people excited to be a part of an experience that will change them.

With every interaction, you either build loyalty or lose it. Event marketing gives your business a chance to show its best side, connect with customers, and make them more loyal to your brand. You can also benefit from virtual event platforms like vFairs to boost your event marketing strategies. 

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