If you’re looking for a way to drive more traffic to your business, event marketing is one of the fastest ways to create awareness of your brand and increase sales at the same time. It stirs the emotions, create a sense of urgency, and because of its time-based nature, is a great strategy to use when you want to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Because event marketing is so effective, it’s worthwhile to consider your advertising options. After all, creating awareness of your event, obviously, is a key component. Also, because event marketing is time-based by nature, creating awareness means being in the right place, at the right time, and making sure you’re reaching your target audience where they’re at, in a timely manner. This is where developing a campaign strategy becomes an invaluable asset that gets results.
As with any goal, it’s imperative to begin with the end in mind in order to discern which steps you’ll need to take to get there. Since most of the developed world hangs out online, there’s no better way to drive awareness to an event than through highways and bi-ways of the virtual world.
The Virtual World is Your Event Marketing Oyster
We’re suckers for driving engagement “organically.” That’s because we know that when done right, we can drive traffic to our website via proper SEO strategy, social media and email marketing pretty dang effectively. Knowing this, here is a checklist we use when driving results for our clients along with a timeline for execution.
- Commit to writing a number of blog posts surrounding the topic of your event, and begin posting (ideally) at least 1-2 months in advance. This will enable you to generate interest as well as providing a basis from which you’ll drive traffic to your website when you share your posts via social media.
- Create an enticing CTA (call-to-action), along with a landing page (with a form)-at least 1.5 months in advance-that will allow your readers to RSVP to your event. Place your cta in various places on your website like sidebars and at the end of your blog posts so your readers have an opportunity to convert no matter where they are on your website.
- Create 2-3 special newsletters (event triggered emails), –1.5 months in advance-to send out to your current contacts inviting them to the event (provide a link to your registration page as well as links to your blog posts (which, remember, should have a CTA to the registration page).
- Write a lead nurturing campaign-1 month in advance-i.e. a number of emails your registrants will receive about topics of interest to keep them engaged, as well as provide directions, logistics, etc. as the event draws near.
- Join relevant ‘groups’ on LinkedIn, actively engage and grow your following on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest, and then share your press release, registration page and blog posts about your event to Social Media-up to a month in advance-and at regular intervals leading up to the day of your event.
- Share your Press Release–at least 3 weeks in advance– with your local TV stations, newspapers, and publications.
*Be sure to reach out to influential attendees by personal phone calls and don’t be afraid to ask and encourage businesses to share news about your company’s event on social media networks. You’ll want to make it easy by providing plenty of compelling content to share. Also, remember to highlight important guest speakers on your website, blogs, social media networks, emails and mailed invitations.
By employing these strategies with intention, you’ll not only drive more engagement and visitors to your website, you’ll gain clarity about how to use web marketing to attract more visitors to your events.
photo courtesy of: freedigitalphotos.net
