Event marketing: how to achieve a successful digital strategy?
Trade fairs, conferences, breakfasts or evenings: event marketing is an essential good practice for engaging prospects and clients.
What Is Event Marketing?
Event marketing is a strategy that marketers use to promote their brand, product, or service. These events can take place online or in person, and companies can participate as hosts, attendees or sponsors. Marketing executives use both inbound and outbound event marketing strategies for promotional purposes.
How to adapt your marketing strategy when faced with uncertainty?
To help you out, download this free report on the latest marketing trends and the impact of COVID-19.
The use of physical or digital events is a practice that has often proved profitable for companies looking for growth, whether with a view to acquiring new customers or retaining existing ones. These events allow an individual to get closer to a brand, and individual contact with the prospect allows the offer to be humanized.
In addition to the fact that trade shows or conferences are an opportunity to highlight the company's offer, it is also an excellent way to interact with the prospect or the customer in a more informal way. Indeed, physical events make it possible to forge a link with a society to consider engaging with it.
Prospects are increasingly suspicious of advertising messages and business promises, and this face-to-face communication can be important in convincing them. Events are, in this sense, a great way to test business promises. Indeed, it is easy to invite customers or partners as ambassadors and thus give credit to the commitments of a brand.
Overall, the goal of this marketing practice is to be an ode to the brand image. It is about making a lasting mark on the minds of participants. According to a Bizzabo study, 31% of marketing directors consider event marketing to be the most effective practice for acquiring prospects.
If events are at the heart of a company's marketing mission, the organizational and financial scale they represent should not be overlooked.
Costly and time-consuming, they require heavy logistical work, dedicated teams and large budgets for room rental, equipment, organization management and animation.
Limited to a targeted area, they allow only a specific part of the audience to be reached.
These not insignificant elements therefore form an investment which must be anticipated and maximized. What to consider their organization online?
100% digital event marketing
Event marketing is not just about preparing a trade show or seminar for a specific date and location. It is also a question of using marketing means to keep an event alive and animate over the long term, even from a distance.
This is why digital today occupies a prominent place in event communication. Indeed, an online event makes it possible to offer a unique and memorable experience to visitors, while perpetuating the relationships between a company and its audience.
The web offers the possibility of spreading a message around the world, increasing its reach and highlighting its brand image at a lower cost. Digital marketing is therefore a means of increasing the reach of physical events, or even providing an alternative.
Where applicable, these two options became possible. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 86% of marketing managers believe that technology has or can have a positive impact on their events.
The advantages of online events
Adaptability to the number of participants, unlimited capacity, no entry level.
No reception area required, no rental charges.
No geographic limits, the company can invite participants wherever they are located in the world.
Very little logistics and thus very low costs.
Ability to extend engagement via replays and social media.
A few examples of online events
The emergence of tools capable of hosting online events has made it possible to consider setting up increasingly relevant and high added value digital events.
The webinars, or webinars.
Webcasts.
Online lectures.
Virtual trade fairs.
The webinar, which combines the words “web” and “seminar”, provides a platform for one or more speakers to address an audience. Possessing various options, including a chat, survey tools, the ability to create buttons that can demonstrate the commitment of each participant, the webinar has become the preserve of marketing teams who use it for their inbound marketing strategy. According to Webikeo, an average webinar generates 237 registrations.
Webcasts take the form of video content broadcast live. Used in particular by businesses, they allow visual content to be distributed either on an internal network or directly on the web. Above all, webcasting is an excellent way to target a larger audience or to optimize a communication strategy. This method offers organizers the opportunity to deliver content that is interesting, impactful and dynamic for their audience.
If the bond that is woven during online dating is more informal, online conferences offer real advantages. Presented in the form of web applications or software, they make it possible to organize conferences in a virtual way in order to exchange with remote participants. For this, various audio or video communication tools are set up such as the telephone bridge or videoconference. In addition, we should not be afraid that digital will reduce contact with prospects and customers.
In fact, online conferences are often more lively than physical conferences: participants are more inclined to discuss and question the speakers online.
Increasingly on the web, virtual trade shows give Internet users the ability to visit a similar online trade show, just as they would at a physical trade show. Among the advantages of these online fairs should be noted: an unlimited number of exhibitors, remote professional meetings, the possibility of access at any time.
The association of physical and online events
Another alternative is possible: the association of the physical and the digital, which makes it possible to amplify the scope and the audience of physical events.
Indeed, the live retransmission of events allows:
Obtain the various benefits of the physical event;
To add interactivity thanks to the web participants;
Increase the number of participants;
To have access to what was put in place for those who could not have come;
To take advantage of additional digital communication.
The advantage is clear, if the room you have rented has a limited number of participants to optimize the dedicated space and time, the webinar, on the other hand, has no real limits in terms of participation.
You give the event a different scale, but also give it a second life once it's over. Indeed, thanks to the replays of the conferences, you continue to generate contacts and strengthen your notoriety after the end of your event.
The emergence of digital in the event world therefore offers new perspectives. Rather than replacing it, it makes it possible to improve the field of possibilities. Offering digital events thus makes it possible to attract a wider audience or to be part of a strategy of nurturing contacts, while ensuring continuity between physical events and content marketing.
As for the digital which is invited into physical events, it is an excellent way to modernize and develop the return on investment of these latter
How to make a success of your event marketing strategy?
Set your goals
To be successful with your event communication plan, you first need to define concrete objectives. Marketing managers will therefore have to decide on the axes to focus on.
Make yourself known.
Make yourself known.
Acquire a new clientele.
Retain an existing clientele.
Enhance your brand image.
Attract visitors' attention.
Develop your reputation.
Generate an interest in its products
The SMART method can be very useful in formulating simple and precise objectives, but also in evaluating the effectiveness of the event. This technique determines specific, measurable, accessible, realistic and time-bound objectives.
Prepare for an event frequency
Events can be organized regularly depending on their nature: trade fairs, conferences, company breakfasts or evenings. Whether they are weekly, monthly, semi-annually or annually, it all depends on the business goal. The main thing being to arouse interest, to create a feeling of expectation without tiring the guests with recurrences that are too close together.
Moreover, it has become possible to organize dedicated days, based on a succession of conferences and chosen themes, in order to form real overall events in which the targeted audiences will be able to follow multiple topics and topics. '' get involved with the organizers.
Associate with influencers
The use of influencer marketing to organize a trade fair or a conference brings a significant advantage to event communication. Collaborating with influencers gives an organizing company access to many advantages: optimal visibility, a large and loyal community or even creative content.
Whether for the promotion of a product or to promote brand awareness, influencers are excellent partners for event organization. Thanks to their presence on social networks, the company will also have chances of seeing an increase in the impact of its event.
Promote your event
Communicating about an event before it takes place is one of the most crucial steps in attracting as many attendees as possible. The promotion of an event goes through various actions:
the creation of a dedicated web page for the event;
online entries;
sending email invitations;
managing the presence of invited people;
creating and selling tickets.
To effectively capture the public's attention on the event, it is worth promoting it on social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram, depending on the company's industry. Writing a press release, buying advertising space in the written press or radio and television media are also excellent ways to make the event even more visible. Everything will therefore depend on the budget dedicated to communication.
Provide post-event communication
Once the event is over, communication continues and should certainly not be neglected. Digital marketing software will allow you to automate many tasks of tracking your marketing campaigns.
Post-event communication allows companies to bring the event back to life and gain feedback. To do this, different types of communication media can be used: photo albums, videos or once again social networks.
The organizers also have the task of collecting the email addresses of participants. This collection can be done either by means of information sheets filled in on D-day, by request for subscription to a newsletter or with the setting up of a competition whose results will be given on the day of the event. .
The collection of emails will allow the organizers to develop relevant and qualified contact lists.
To optimize the engagement of potential customers and get feedback, companies can also connect with attendees the day after the event by sending a message like:
Acknowledgment: to thank them for their presence and to pass on some additional information to them.
Satisfaction survey: to ask them to answer a few questions and collect their opinion on the event.
Measure results
Finally, the last step to be carried out is to evaluate the results that result from the event. This data is very useful for companies, because it allows to take stock of their event organization and even to rectify certain aspects for the next meetings.
In order to measure the success of the event, it is essential to select the right indicators such as:
the number of visitors in attendance;
the number of absent participants;
the budget planned;
the generated net income;
the collected leads;
the opinions of participants gathered thanks to the satisfaction survey.
To take your marketing strategy further, check out this free report on the latest marketing trends
Topics):
Digital Marketing
%20Enhancing%20Visibility.png)
