If only organising them were all there was to events.
The fact is that these days even the best event in the world has little hope of being noticed unless it is backed by an adequate marketing strategy. So event organisers increasingly have to grapple with how to promote their events and get them known. And whether that is done by turning to outside agencies and professionals or by keeping everything in-house, the activities are varied and often have to be set going at precise moments in order to create synergies and produce concrete results with the resources available. When it comes to event marketing, in fact, the objectives are usually many and they involve different kinds of audience. To give just a few examples, the main targets and objectives might include:
1) exhibitors, so that they want to take part by buying space and stands
2) the audience, so that they cannot wait to register and act straight away to attend and to contribute to the marketing with their own enthusiastic word of mouth;
3) sponsors, so that they want to invest in the event, seeing it as an excellent showcase for their brand, their products and their services.
So how do you keep on top of it all? And above all, how do you make sure that among the thousand things to be done you do not lose sight of the very one that could make the difference? What you need is an outline to follow, something like this:
1. Define objectives and target audience
Why it matters: setting out the objectives of the event clearly and identifying the target audience is essential for directing marketing activity effectively. Without knowing who you want to reach and what you want to achieve, it becomes hard to create messages and promotional strategies capable of producing concrete results.
Questions to ask:
- Who are the people we are talking to, where are they, what interests them, what problems can we help solve or what goals can we help them reach?
- How do we want to reach each of these audiences (online and offline channels, social media, email marketing and so on)? More channels usually means more energy and more resources, but also the chance to reach wider and more varied audiences. There is no ideal mix set out in advance: it all depends on strategy, objectives and what is available — and it matters that all three are clear and defined.
- How do we want to measure the success of the event (number of attendees, leads generated, ROI and so on)? Which results matter, and which indicators will let us measure how far and how well we reached them?
2. Develop an integrated communication strategy
Why it matters: an integrated communication strategy lets you reach people across several channels and touchpoints, increasing both the synergy and the effectiveness of your marketing. Using multiple online and offline channels in a coordinated way amplifies the event’s message and holds attention over the long run.
Questions to ask:
- Which communication channels are most appropriate for reaching the target audience, given its habits and preferences?
- What editorial plan can we build so that it includes relevant, engaging content that is sustainable and suited to distribution across the different channels — blog posts, videos, email, social media and advertising?
- How can we coordinate communication efforts across the different teams and suppliers involved in organising the event, keeping message and tone consistent in every interaction with the audience?
3. Measure and analyse the results
Why it matters: monitoring and analysing results lets you assess how effective your strategies have been and identify areas to improve in future. Analysing the data also provides valuable information for optimising marketing tactics and maximising the success of future events.
Questions to ask:
- Which key metrics do we need to monitor to assess the performance of our marketing activity?
- Which tools and methods can we use to gather and analyse the data effectively?
- How can we use the findings to improve our marketing strategies and our future events?
Some might say that marketing and promoting an event is no different from marketing and promoting anything else, and that is partly true. The foundations are shared, and after that it is all a question of tailoring — right down to the specifics of an individual event or sometimes even of a single edition of it.
Like any guide, then, this one is only a map, without much definition, and to become genuinely useful it has to be personalised, made detailed enough to be a faithful picture of an actual situation. Working with many event organisers, though, we have realised that sometimes even starting to draw these maps is difficult. Perhaps it is fear of the blank page, perhaps the feeling that there is far too much to do to even write it down.
So let us treat it as a compass for starting to walk and to look more systematically at work made of technique, numbers and actions, to be combined with a little creativity to produce what we are after: a concrete result.
What matters is that it helps us start moving sensibly, be more effective and more efficient, do more while going less mad. Rather like choosing the tools you work with: they have to be reliable and solid, capable of doing what you expect of them, and customisable enough to adapt to the differences.
Only then are they genuinely useful.