Planning an event for your business is an effective way to promote and make your business a success. Planning and hosting an event allows your business to reach out, gain brand awareness and become more personal with clients thus creating a strong client base. Planning an event takes time and effort, but it is a lot less intimidating if you create a strong Strategy before you embark on your journey. If you have a set plan before hand, you will ensure a successful and profitable event.  To safeguard the success of your event you need to use the right properties to help guide you during the process. The process will be simplified substantially if you break it down into smaller parts; starting at the beginning, go through each step carefully and be sure not to cut corners, your future event will thank you.

A strong event plan means you are better prepared to handle the event, and this means the less stress for all involved. With an effective strategy, event planning can be a breeze. Part of your strategy should be to utilise an informed and enthusiastic team who are willing to take on specific event promotion tasks. This supportive structure will help with delegating tasks and covering all your bases. The stronger your strategy/plan is, the better prepared you are and this in turn ensures a productive and fruitful event. Now that you know what an event can do for you, we can get into how to market your events in creative ways that will set you apart from your competition.

Don’t focus on a single platform

Being singularly focused is a major mistake many businesses make. You will not be able to effectively generate the outcomes you want for your event by focusing all your efforts on a single platform. Rather take a creative and holistic approach to your event Marketing. Begin with the standard marketing practices by creating email marketing and social media posts and messages. You should also think of creating a steadfast hashtag, which will in turn serve as a shadow through the stages of your planned event – think of Coca Cola’s #ShareACoke. Starting a newsletter gives you the opportunity to create a recipients list of dedicated supporters of your brand or company to share the news of the next event coming up. You should also set up a campaign of event reminders to keep promoting your event.

Another important marketing tool to keep up-to-date and fresh is to make sure your website is constructed well and that the steps to finding more information about your event are simultaneously easy to access and not a bombardment of information. Set up a pop-up message on your website so when a visitor accesses the website a message is the first thing they see – consider utilising a call-to-action to notify that an event is taking place. This pop-up needs to grab the attention of visitors and guide them towards your event. Think of it this way, if you have something valuable to offer visitors, they will take an immediate interest in what the event entails.

The Hashtag and SEO

Use your event hashtag every chance you get, you need to create a creative and eye catching #hashtag for your event and incorporated it into your event page. This can add to the buzz surrounding your event and can add to the virality of the event. It may not seem very important, but a hashtag has the potential to reach people and can be extremely memorable if you do it right. In addition to this, you should keep in mind that many companies and individuals use Google to find specific events taking place around them. So, would it not be great to be on that list or have your event show up in those search results? To get this to happen, you need to take the time to focus on the SEO (search engine optimisation) of your event. Simple SEO techniques can help promote your event and sure that your reach is substantial.

Get a great turnaround on your investments

The success of any event is determined by what your goals are and if your event can generate a worthwhile return on investment. This can be measured by your financial return and the amount of leads that will be captured at the event. The initial preparation stages of your event will include finding possible sponsors and planning the event schedule, for larger companies the scheduling and confirmed plan should take place up to a few months prior to the date of the event.

Event planners have always agreed that after creating the initial plan of an event, the next significant thing to be considered is how to successfully promote the event to your accurate target Audience. By successfully targeting the right audience you can bolster your brand image and make your event a success. It is important to remember that a significant portion of people learn and retain information visually, so it is essential to back your event with physical and aesthetic graphics in order to create event buzz and sharing.

The Location

An important aspect of any event is the location itself. Don’t simply focus on just promoting your event, you also need to dive into promoting its location. People that share an interest in your event are not just focused on hearing about the event specifically, they want to hear about the location of the event taking place. If your audience is going to travel to your event, they want to know that it will be a worthwhile journey. The location of an event can sometimes be one of the major draws for your potential attendees, in any case it would be somewhat difficult to say no to an event if there is something to look forward to and the locations can boost those sales. People are not interested in office spaces for events as this is where they spend most of their time during office hours. So, select a desirable location and promote this in order to bring about a new and further reach for your event. If there is significant hype surrounding your event and it sounds exciting, news will spread by word of mouth and get you the audience you need to make it a successful and beneficial investment.

So how should you market your next event

To ensure that your event is a success you need to create an effective and actionable strategy and stick to it. Planning the event should be an all-encompassing exercise, from the ideation phase to the action plan. This includes organising of the event (from the action plan to its execution), as well as promoting the event, getting out there with the word-of-mouth and generating the sales of tickets. This will then be followed by the actual hosting of the event to your target audience. Your marketing strategy can’t stop here however because there is still work to be done after the event. To make sure your audience remembers what they were doing at the event, why they should follow your call-to-action and why they should choose you over your competitors you need to follow-up. This includes sending Thank You messages and even follow-up emails or calls to get feedback from the audience.

In summary, to market your event in the most effective way be sure to use as many resources as you can. Successful marketing incorporates a variety of mediums and has a strong focus on the planed strategy. If you have a comprehensive plan that covers all aspects of the event from the idea to the execution, you are sure to run a successful event. By generating and putting this plan in place months before the event you can rest assured that your event, whatever it may be, will bring your target audience together and make it an entertaining and profitable event for your business.

Further Reading:

• https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/how-to-market-an-event/
• https://onspotsocial.com/event-promotion-101-15-creative-ways-to-market-your-event/
• https://www.eventbrite.com/blog/creative-event-promotion-ideas-ds00/

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