It’s been a weird two years of strictly online events. But the time has come for businesses to start thinking about organizing in-person events again. The in-person business event industry in Australia is slowly starting to get back at its feet after the last couple of years.
So, to properly get back into organizing events, let’s find out everything there needs to be known about event marketing.
What’s event marketing?
Event marketing has always been a great marketing and promotional strategy that involves face-to-face contact between customers and their favorite brands.
Event marketing can either be offline or online. In the last two years, we’ve had nothing but online marketing events – webinars, webcasts, virtual conferences and fairs, online trade shows, and so on.
Offline event marketing includes events where you need to assist personally in brick and mortar places, which implies that offline events are anything from conferences to seminars to trade shows, and so on.
Why is event marketing so important for your company?
Simply put, event marketing is important because it provides you the opportunity to build relationships with your customers and clients. And when you organize offline events, you can give your customers a chance to directly engage with your company and feel your brand personality.
Besides that, events can help your company generate revenue, improve brand awareness, and so much more. These are some of the reasons why event marketing is still the most popular marketing strategy.
All the benefits of event marketing
1. Building relationships with customers
The obvious benefit and often the real reason many businesses decide to organize events is to build better relationships with their customers. In-person events are the perfect opportunity to create meaningful connections with your customers and engage them with different experiences.
2. Building brand awareness
Another reason why so many businesses invest so much money in this type of marketing strategy is to build brand awareness. Establishing your brand and identity are crucial because today’s competition can be cutthroat. So, being different and doing different things can help you stand out from the crowd.
3. Generate leads
Events are great for reaching your target audience. Events can help your business interact with those who are already interested in what you do and who you are.
How to create a successful event?
To be able to achieve all the above-mentioned, you’ll need to create a successful event. Here are some tips that can help you plan a great event.
1. Know your goals and budget
Successful events are all about planning. If you can set attainable and measurable goals for your event, you’re good to go. Knowing the exact goal of your event will also help you plan your budget as well.
With a set budget, you’ll know how much you can spend, and if there will be any profit at all.
2. Have a clear theme
This is where hiring an event marketing agency can be very convenient. Every event needs a clear theme – something that will perfectly reflect your brand.
Creating a clear theme, the name of the event, time, brand, and event purpose all these things can also help you with promotion. Experienced event planners from Sydney know their job, so planning and organizing an event of any scale shouldn’t be a problem.
3. Event promotion plan
A good promotion is a half job done. If you want to generate the maximum interest you’ll use many different marketing channels. This is, again, something where the event planning agency you’ve hired can help you out.
Create a multifaceted event promotion plan by mixing social media, paid promotions, public relations, and so on. Another piece of advice would be to start promotion early enough and in that way generate hype about your event. This will help you have a great turnout at your event.
How will you know if your event was successful?
There are different ways to measure the success of your event. It’s a good idea to set key performance indicators that will help you measure the performance of the event. Here are some common ones many companies use.
1. Registrations and check-ins
It’s a fact that not everyone who registered will attend the event. However, this will help you compare the registrations to the actual number of people who attended. The registration data can also help you figure out when were the tickets purchased the most and when the fewest.
2. Revenue
Not every event is about revenue but comparing how much money you’ve invested in organizing this event and how much it returned can help you understand the value of your event and resources.
3. Attendee satisfaction
You can use surveys and questionnaires to ask your attendees about their experience during your event. This sort of feedback can help you better understand whether your event planning was successful or not and how you can improve it.
The last couple of years have been challenging for in-person events. And while many businesses realized the potential of online events, still nothing can beat the in-person, offline events.
The truth is that there are benefits to both of these types of events and everyone should do what they find best for their business.
