Organizing an event to bring more visibility and leads to your business? Alternately, are you looking at sponsoring events that are focused on your target customers? Either way, event marketing is turning out to be one of the most effective strategies to build brand visibility and generate leads.
There are essentially two kinds of event marketing models. The sponsorship model is solely a brand building exercise. In this case, the business may choose to sponsor consumer-focused events where they are the title sponsors. For a long time between 2001 and 2016, British financial services company Barclays served as the title sponsor for the English Premier League. Known as the Barclays Premier League during these years, the event marketing strategy helped the company extensively in establishing itself as a brand well-known and respected by people around the world.
Alternately, businesses can choose to organize their own events. In addition to building visibility to the brand, such events are also targeted at gathering leads or developing a new monetization channel for their business. Banks routinely organize classroom discussions around financial topics with the objective of gathering new leads for their products.
Event marketing can be an expensive strategy. However, with the right execution, the payout in the form of brand-building or leads can be immense. Here are a few tips to succeed.
Find your niche
The success of your marketing strategy depends on how well you target your audience through these events. High Lifter, a company that makes after-market accessories for ATV/UTVs, grew up to be leaders in the industry by organizing the ATV Mud Nationals. Attended by over 14,000 people each year, this event not only closely associates the brand name with the industry they belong to, but also helps target this small niche of ATV/UTV customers who follow these events.
Promotion is key
Promotion is key to success in the event marketing model. In the absence of adequate “buzz”, you may fail to get an adequate number of attendees to turn up for your events. Not only does this bring down the ROI for your marketing campaign, but it can also backfire since associating your brand name with a poorly attended event may not exactly be good publicity.
Maximize outreach
The objective of an event marketing campaign is to create brand publicity and maximize reach. For this to happen, your brand promotion must go beyond the confines of the event to reach prospective consumers who may not attend your event. You could, for instance, offer free Wi-Fi at the event location to allow millennial users to easily share photos and videos from the events through their social networks. Another way to do this is by providing downloadables and free accessories that your attendees may use outside of the event. Free T-Shirts, caps and badges help spread your brand and thus maximizes your ROI.
Event marketing can be an expensive strategy and is thus not suited for all kinds of businesses. But having said that, events need not necessarily be large gatherings. Even a classroom event to explain your product or gather leads can be lucrative depending on the money you have invested in. Regardless of the scale of the event, there is no gainsaying the fact that event marketing is a growing trend and is only going to become a priority for businesses in the coming years.