Event marketing ideas for marketing and recycling your conferences and webinars
I’ve been creating niche events (under 2,000 attendees) for many years now and have picked up some sure-fire event marketing strategies along the way. Here are 5 event marketing ideas to keep your attendees coming back for more:
1. Your event’s website is a year-round marketing tool – use it!
Open registration for your next event as soon as possible and update the content the moment new information is available. Provide real content, such as last year’s session slides, new session descriptions, videos, etc. to give people a reason to keep coming back. Here’s a keynote speaker example from one of our conferences:
2. Most marketing is now e-marketing, but it takes real effort to make it good.
Garbage in, garbage out – if you don’t keep your list updated, segmented, and track interaction, you wind up with a big but useless list. Test out different days, times, personalization and types of efforts to learn what works best. Don’t forget e-newsletters, video, and digital brochures too. Use your subscription forms to gather segmentation information and follow up with an introduction email and invitation to join your social media channels.
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3. Print is not dead. (Really!)
In the era of digital, printed postcards are high-impact without being high-cost. How much print marketing you use depends on your event’s market, but experiment to see what works best for you.
4. Webinars are your secret weapon.
Webinars offer great lead generation. Your speakers provide built-in content – just interview them! Plus, this helps turns the speakers into your marketers. Make sure to provide high quality content with a soft sell.
5. Content marketing is easier than you think!
Start a blog if you don’t already have one and get serious about social media to distribute your quality content. Make sure to maintain a 10:1 content to promotion ratio. I am taking my own advice, airing my very first event marketing podcast in February. Stay tuned!
I have had great success with these five event marketing strategies. In my next post, I’ll share 5 great ideas about creating NEW niche events!
Hey Ed, Mary and Amanda — Thanks for the kind words. Event Marketing is so much fun!
I like the concept of using your webinar presenters as additional social media legs. Great post, Carl!
WOW! What a lot of great info in just a few words. Now there’s no excuse not to be a great event marketer like Carl!
Thank you Carl. Your event marketing certainly stands out in the crowd. I particularly like your suggestion about using the website year round. It’s amazing to me how many annual events have websites that don’t get updated until a few months before the next one. It seems like a real lost opportunity. Thank you for sharing your insights with us.