While it goes without saying that event marketing is well worth the investment, for this type of marketing to succeed, you must be strategic. Here are seven tips to ensure your next event creates buzz around your brand, engages current customers, and draws in potential leads.

1. Invest in Event Marketing at the Best Time of Year for Your Target Audience

The best time to invest in event marketing is when your target audience is most receptive, typically during your customers’ peak buying season or when they have a special reason for needing your product. For instance, if you’re selling snowboards to young professionals, winter months are ideal. 

Similarly, if you’re selling fitness equipment like treadmills and elliptical machines, then aim for November through January when people want to get back into shape after their Thanksgiving splurges. Remember that events set for Q1 have the potential to underperform, as this time of year is the season when most people are digging out of holiday debt.

2. Market to Your Target Audience with Careful Consumer Planning

Make sure that every dollar you spend on your brand’s event marketing is geared toward the right audience. As you plan, think about your target customers and how they interact with your brand. What do they want from the event? Are they looking for entertainment, education, or networking opportunities? What do they like to do for fun? All of this information will help you reach target customers in a way that is meaningful for them, authentic for you, and aligns with the event’s theme and goals.

Remember that you are marketing your event to both current and potential customers. Current customers are easy to connect with, as they have already indicated an interest in buying your product or service and are already on your email list. 

Conversely, potential customers are slightly harder to reach. They may become interested based on emails or special promotions, but they could also be influenced by social media posts shared by friends and family members excited about the upcoming event.

3. Research to Align Your Event with Strategic Partners and Locations 

The location you choose for your event is critical. After all, you want high-traffic areas that will best attract your target audience. Research can help you align with the partners and locations that will best connect with your audience. 

If you’re a local business, hold your event at a local venue such as a community center or library. If you have a regional presence, consider hosting an event at a convention center or hotel near major highways and airports. National companies can host conferences in major cities, including New York City, Los Angeles, or Chicago.

4. Plan Event Marketing with Clear Objectives and KPIs to Measure Success

Before you implement your event marketing campaign, start with clear goals in mind. Use data from previous events, marketing campaigns, and social media posts to set specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-oriented (SMART) goals.  

For example, if one of your goals is to increase awareness among potential clients, be sure to clearly define what that means. Does increased awareness mean more people know your brand, or does it mean more people have heard about your brand’s products or services? 

In addition, make sure you understand how you will measure your event’s success, what are your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). If your goal is that customers remember your brand in the future, how will you know if that happened? 

Define your objectives and make sure everyone on your team knows what they are. Never waste time and money on an event that won’t meet your brand’s goals.
 

5. Offer Takeaways to Ensure Event Marketing Lives Outside Your Event

When designing event marketing, it’s always a solid idea to provide branded swag that attendees can take home — particularly something they will feel excited to use. Generic pens and coffee mugs get tossed into the trash on the way out the door, but souvenirs relevant to your target audience and the event keep your brand name in customers’ homes, cars, or offices.

One tip is to ensure your branded merchandise can be tracked as part of an Return on Investment (ROI) analysis. If you include unique codes on items, you know which event prompted future contacts and purchases.

6. Plan an Event with Shareable Social Content That Transports Your In-person Event Online

Social media is an essential part of your event marketing strategy. It can build excitement around the event, create buzz around new products or services, offer exclusive content and experiences to attendees, drive registration and attendance numbers, and even provide feedback from attendees afterwards.

Create shareable posts relevant before and during the event to document the experience on your brand’s social channels. In addition, turn event attendees into brand ambassadors by incentivizing them to share.

7. Plan a Journey That Takes Customers from Your Event into Your Funnel

The best way to drive traffic back to your website is by planning a journey that takes customers directly from your event into your funnel, which can be done through the use of social media and email marketing campaigns. It can also be as simple as having clear CTAs at the end of each presentation at the event and making sure attendees know how they can get more information about what they learned during the event.

Event marketing can be a powerful tool, but it’s vital to plan carefully and make sure the event will resonate with your target audience. By following these tips, you’ll be able to create an event that’s memorable, fun, and — ultimately — successful.

The post The Do’s and Don’ts of Event Marketing: Seven Tips from Expert Ray Sheehan appeared first on SiteProNews.

Choose the Perfect Venue

When planning an experiential marketing campaign for Father’s Day, the location of your event plays a crucial role. It is essential to select a location where fathers are likely to regularly visit and actively roam the aisles. Partnering with local stores that dads typically visit can significantly maximize your reach and impact. Compared to larger chains of retailers, these family-owned businesses, such as local hardware stores, often have deep roots in the local community and a trusted reputation with locals. Aligning your brand with a respected local establishment not only attracts more loyal customers, but also allows you to more easily foster trust in them. 

Working with local hardware or convenience stores, which aren’t specific to just one product, provides you with a unique opportunity to meet the needs of all types of dads from all walks of life, as well as their loved ones who are in search of the perfect Father’s Day gift. In fact, 26% of consumers said they’re more likely to purchase a gift that’s convenient to them, but 41% said they want to find a gift that’s unique. The diverse display of products in a hardware or convenience store normally visited by dads presents a unique opportunity to accommodate the combined 67% of people looking for Father’s Day gifts.

Stand Out and Reward Dads

Father’s Day is an excellent opportunity to differentiate your brand and provide a gratifying experience that distinguishes you from your competitors. For instance, collaborating with nearby hardware and convenience stores allows you to take advantage of the lively atmosphere and enthusiastic audience to grab the attention of dads and create unforgettable interactions.  

Hosting contests that don’t require a previous purchase is a highly effective strategy to generate buzz, and by offering sought-after prizes like a new toolbox or Bluetooth speaker, you can spark high engagement levels among dads.

Moreover, ensuring that you set up Father’s Day-specific displays and offer gift cards can help you stand out from the competition. The result is a win-win-win scenario for you, the retailer, and your consumers. 

Crafting a Branding Masterpiece

When executing an experiential marketing campaign for Father’s Day, it is essential to put your brand in the spotlight and ensure its message resonates deeply with fathers. The success of your campaign lies in creating a cohesive brand experience that captures their attention, resonates with their values, and fosters lasting connections.

Simplify Your Pitch, Stand Apart

To effectively reach out to dads, it’s important to keep your brand message clear and concise. Craft a memorable pitch that highlights your unique qualities and connects with their values as fathers by utilizing real-life testimonials to establish credibility and authenticity. 

Developing a recognizable visual identity that aligns with your message can also help set your brand apart in the crowded annual Father’s Day market. By simplifying your pitch and emphasizing your distinctive qualities, you can create a memorable impression and leave a lasting impact.

Complement Experiential Marketing with Digital Marketing

One effective way to leverage digital marketing is through social media platforms. By encouraging dads to share their experiences, photos, and videos on social media using branded hashtags, you can extend the lifespan of your campaign and foster a sense of community among dads. This user-generated content not only generates buzz, but also allows others to discover your brand and join in the conversation. 

Additionally, email marketing can help you nurture relationships with dads beyond the experiential marketing event. Send targeted messages that provide valuable content, exclusive offers, and reminders about upcoming promotions to maintain ongoing communication with dads and drive conversions.

Another way to boost brand awareness and credibility is by collaborating with influencers who have a strong presence among dads and align with your brand values. Influencers can create engaging content, share their experiences with your brand, and encourage their followers to participate in your Father’s Day campaign. 

Lastly, optimizing your website and online presence to align with your experiential marketing efforts can drive traffic to your online platforms and convert engagement into meaningful customer interactions.

By complementing experiential marketing with digital strategies, you can create a holistic brand experience that resonates with dads both in-person and online. This approach not only extends the reach of your Father’s Day campaign, but also deepens engagement with your target audience and drives measurable results.

Create a Clear Call to Action

Providing dads with a clear and compelling call to action in the form of time-sensitive discounts, exclusive promotions, or coupons for future purchases offer a tangible reward for their engagement with your brand. By offering these incentives, you can motivate dads to convert their positive experiences into long-term loyalty.

It’s also important to encourage people to sign up for your newsletters or follow you on social media, as this bolsters engagement and interest as the Father’s Day buzz dies out. Providing them with a clear incentive and an easy way to follow your brand will encourage future purchases. 

As Father’s Day nears, brands have a tremendous opportunity to revolutionize their marketing efforts through experiential strategies. By carefully selecting the right venues, partnering with local businesses, and offering rewarding experiences, brands can make a lasting impact on fathers. 

Incorporating strong branding elements ensures that your message resonates, differentiates your brand, and fosters enduring connections with dads. Make this Father’s Day extraordinary by leaving fathers with indelible memories and a genuine connection to your brand.

The post Engaging with Dads on Father’s Day: Unleash the Power of Experiential Marketing appeared first on SiteProNews.

According to several analysts, 50,000 brick-and-mortar stores are expected to close within the next five years. However, The National Retail Federation predicts that 70 percent of retail sales will come from physical storefronts. 

As we’ve watched company after company close their physical storefronts, hoping to save overhead costs, we’ve found the outcome of this to be vastly different than the intention. Getting out of leases early and losing foot traffic — not to mention the millions of dollars in revenue that were generated from those stores — has forced these companies to close their doors permanently. Toys ‘R’ Us, for example, provides a perfect case study of mismanagement and closing storefronts prematurely, on top of other things. 

Creating Additional Revenue Streams via Short-term Leases and Bulk Gift Card Purchases

While closing down storefronts may seem like the only option during trying financial times, it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing approach. Instead of shutting down physical stores throughout the country, brands can join with major retailers and help keep costs down by sharing overhead. 

For example, Sephora can now be found in JCPenney, Kohl’s, and even Target. And while independent Toys ‘R’ Us storefronts no longer exist, you can still find them in their own pop-up section at Macy’s. Providing short-term leases helps alleviate the storefront retailer — in this example, JCPenney or Macy’s — and the brand they’re working with — Sephora or Toys ‘R’ Us — both gain increased foot traffic and, therefore, increased revenue. 

By partnering with different brands, the main retailer can create a pop-up event in which the brands provide free gift cards for the benefit of everyone involved — the main retailer, the brand, and the customers. Pop-up events help create an experiential atmosphere and a sense of urgency, which helps generate further business through organic, word-of-mouth advertising. And hosting it in the main retailer’s space provides all parties with an opportunity to maximize their revenue at that specific location. 

Learning How to Monetize Their Properties More Efficiently

If Bed, Bath, & Beyond did a better job at partnering with brands and creating an interactive space in their stores, they could have had several million more dollars hitting their bottom line. Monetizing your properties more efficiently involves more than just location and brand deals — it has to do with an omnichannel approach that integrates both online and offline experiences. Offering in-store pickups for online orders, or providing online promotions that can be redeemed in-store, helps foster feelings of trust and loyalty in customers. 

Additionally, store layout optimization has a significant impact on the customer’s experience as they walk into the store. Displaying popular products at the front and leaving room for others behind this space allows room for each brand to provide a relaxed vibe, rather than block everything off with shelves. For example, Anthropologie works with many designers in order to create different atmospheres with decor and lighting, depending on the specific designer. Target has also begun to do this in their stores’ clothing section with their featured designers and clothing brands. 

Using Bed, Bath, & Beyond again as an example, imagine if they had worked to separate their store by different styles, similar to IKEA; traditional, mid-century modern, farmhouse, etc. They may not have had to have significant layoffs or close stores, and their overall earnings would have looked a lot healthier to their shareholders. 

Compensating the Retailers and Rewarding Their Customers

Today’s customer journey isn’t about need — it’s about convenience. Making life easier for the customer should be the objective of any modern retailer. Providing free gift cards to customers, for example, helps boost customer satisfaction and loyalty by creating a positive memorable experience that eliminates some worry about how they might best pay for their purchases. And just as satisfied customers are more likely to become repeat customers, repeat customers of a company are more likely to refer them to their friends, families, and even coworkers. 

Free gift cards are a win-win for everyone — the retailer, partnered brands, and the customer — and the best part is giving your customer gift cards doesn’t cost the retailer any additional money. In fact, it provides upselling and cross-selling opportunities by serving as a traffic-driving tool while also improving the retailer’s bottom line.

By selecting gift cards that resonate with customers and strategically integrating them into the customer journey, retailers can create a beneficial situation that compensates the retailers through increased customer satisfaction. In today’s market and pending recession — or “slowcession” — free money is extremely valuable to anyone whether they’re struggling or not. 

More importantly, offering free gifts helps retailers and brands differentiate themselves from competitors. It demonstrates a commitment to the customer and their needs, and provides an added incentive for customers to choose their store over others. 

To thrive in today’s competitive landscape, retailers must recognize the changing dynamics of the customer journey. By focusing on delivering value and providing immersive experiences, retailers can forge meaningful connections with their customers, foster brand loyalty, and secure their place in the hearts and minds of consumers. 

The path to success lies not only in selling products. It lies in creating remarkable and memorable moments that turn customers into brand advocates and transform retail into a destination.

The post How Major Retailers Can Possibly Avoid Closing Stores appeared first on SiteProNews.

Yet, some businesses fail to leverage these efforts to get the largest return on their investment, usually due to poor planning. To learn how to maximize your brand activations to scale up your business, keep reading.

Take a Proactive Approach

People don’t plan to fail — they fail to plan. Successful activations require a proactive approach, so it is vital that you develop a detailed strategic plan even before executing your first customer engagement.

To be effective, your strategic plan should have several parts. The first should outline your budget in as much detail as possible, including funds for every expense the activation will incur. Make sure to research the real prices of each item to generate reliable numbers. In many cases, going over budget is an unforced error.

The activation’s objectives should be the next section. These goals need to be realistic, as well as appropriate for the budget. For any experiential marketing campaign, it’s important to start small — I always recommend crawling before walking and walking before running — since setting the bar too high can mean setting yourself and your team up for failure. Your goals should also be measurable, as gathering data will help refine future efforts.

Staffing and talent come next. Who on your team will be responsible for what, and when? Which brand ambassadors or models will you mobilize and why? Spend time considering the activation’s leadership in particular. Without effective management, even the best-planned events or campaigns can become a waste of time and money. The activation’s leadership should help build and coach the team, as well as make recommendations for revisions in the future.

Finally, don’t forget to think as concretely as possible and consider every single action that needs to be taken in order to set up and successfully maintain the activation through completion. That’s what the next section of the plan should be: process and systems.

Process and Systems

This part of the plan should explain how your activation will deploy your chosen tactics. For example, my favorite method of drawing people toward activations is for the activating brand to offer gift cards to the partner business where they have set up their presence. If you want to draw homeowners toward your booth at a home-improvement store, then offering gift cards to that home-improvement store is likely to do it.

However, that is not the only example of an effective tactic. Games of all kinds can work well, especially if prizes are given out. You might also consider doing a raffle, giving out free samples, or setting up a special environment that begs to be photographed for social media.

In my experience, aggressive sales tactics should be avoided, as these tend to fail. People hate them and will either end these conversations as soon as possible or avoid them completely. These methods also risk creating negative feelings in consumers, which is the opposite outcome of what the activation should do.

On the other hand, people love education and insights. To go in this direction, ask them questions and listen. Give solutions to the problems they mention. 

In your plan, go into detail about the means the activation will use to attract and engage prospective customers. It’s also a good idea to prepare possible scripts that give your representatives specific language to use with any anticipated questions or concerns. Finally, make sure to include a clear step-by-step process that outlines how the activation will be set up and unfold over its entire existence.

Test and Measure

To leverage an activation, it’s necessary to do more than just run a successful campaign. Businesses should look at every event in retrospect and use it to learn. Toward this end, staff should gather data from each activation.

When evaluating the outcomes of any activation, look at engagement with consumers first. Was your presence able to attract people? How much foot traffic was available, and how many conversations actually took place? How long did these conversations usually last, and were they effective? Did prospective customers walk away with an understanding of your brand’s message? Were you able to communicate your value proposition clearly? Did it resonate with customers?

In addition to the number of sales, consider the number of impressions and leads you were able to acquire. Harvesting cell phone numbers or email addresses from prospective customers presents you with a valuable means of connecting with them again later.

Each activation should be viewed as a test. After each one, the results need to be measured so that leaders can derive key insights for future decision-making. In general, the things that worked well should be repeated, while those that didn’t should be abandoned. Test and measure, test and measure — effective marketing professionals always refine the process to create a better outcome. 

That said, there are times when you might repeat something that didn’t work well initially. Perhaps the sample size was too small to generate valid conclusions, or the population you reached was unrepresentative in some way. Just because something didn’t work one time doesn’t mean it will always be unsuccessful, but if you see a continued pattern, it’s probably best to pivot.

The important thing is to exercise oversight. Without it, businesses can spend enormous amounts of money in the wrong ways.

Invest in your future

To be successful, you need to market your business, and brand activations are one of the most powerful ways to raise awareness and grow your brand. Proactive planning that deploys an effective strategy will ensure your activations are not only successful, but also generate the real-world data leadership needs to make advantageous decisions. In this way, your business can leverage marketing campaigns to scale up without wasting time and money.

The post Scaling Your Business After a Successful Activation appeared first on SiteProNews.

Finding Top-tier Talent: Internal or External?

The first decision a brand must make when determining how to staff a marketing event is whether to staff internally or source talent externally. Both strategies have advantages, so it is up to the brand to choose what best fits its needs. While building a team internally ensures that every member of the team is more intimately familiar with the brand and its unique needs, hiring externally opens the door to a pool of diverse candidates with unique and creative perspectives.

However, it is also important to emphasize recruiting top-tier talent for experiential marketing. One of the biggest mistakes a brand can make is to think that just anyone can represent their brand. Even if the goal is to appeal to an “average” or “everyday” consumer, a successful experiential marketer must have certain qualities to connect with consumers and effectively communicate the brand’s message.

Brands looking to hire top-tier talent for their marketing events should partner with a staffing agency with specific experience and expertise in experiential marketing. These agencies vet employees to ensure they are a good fit personality-wise for the experiential marketing profession. 

Staffing agencies can also find candidates with skill sets in more specific aspects of experiential marketing — such as brand ambassadors, street teams, strike crews, and more. Having these more specialized workers will help make the entire event run more efficiently.

Figuring Out How to Resonate with Your Audience

One strategy that brand event organizers should consider is hiring “brand ambassadors” rather than professional models. While a professional model can help add a pretty face to help represent a brand — which works well in certain sectors like fashion and beauty products — more often than not, most brands are served better by having someone more outgoing and personable representing their brand. The goal is to have event attendees see people like them representing the brand, rather than someone whose image seems unattainable.

Of course, to understand how to have people like attendees representing the brand, you must know who is attending the event. This will come down to several factors, including location, the brand’s image, and who you invite to the event. Although the event’s guest list helps control this, you also don’t want the guest list to be too narrow, as this could prevent you from reaching the people you need most at your event.

Once you have a good idea of the target audience for your event and brand, you can determine which types of people are the best fit to hire as brand ambassadors. After all, the goal of a brand ambassador is to relate and resonate with the target audience, so try to find brand ambassadors closest to that demographic. 

For example, if your event is on a college campus, the best approach would be to hire college students as your brand ambassadors. Using brand ambassadors that closely resemble your target audience will allow the brand to come across as more sincere and approachable.

The Importance of a Well-trained Team

Regardless of who you hire for the role, it is essential to ensure they are equipped with the proper training and tools to accomplish their job effectively. At the same time, it is important to remember that brand events have many moving parts, and there is an element of unpredictability inherent to them given their live and in-person nature. In addition to the outgoing personality needed for success, a brand ambassador should be trained to handle any number of obstacles that may arise with the event, so that everything can proceed smoothly.

Because of the multifaceted and multi-pronged nature of experiential marketing, it is crucial to establish roles, responsibilities, and objectives early in the event planning process. Divvying up duties between employees can ensure that no one is overwhelmed by the brunt of most of the responsibilities. Additionally, this process can open up the door for even greater collaboration, allowing ideas to flow more freely between employees at different levels of planning the event.

Putting on a great brand event can be a challenge, but with the right team, it can be a rewarding experience that benefits the company and helps it reach its marketing goals. Marketers who are putting on brand events should emphasize qualities like a personable and outgoing personality, focusing more on hiring genuine brand ambassadors than professional models. With these strategies, it will be much easier to create, organize, and run more relatable and personalized events to connect your brand with its target audience.

The post Putting Together the Most Effective Team for Your Brand Event appeared first on SiteProNews.

But that’s not the only benefit of creating brand activations with multiple partners. This approach to marketing can be leveraged in many ways.

The Advantages of Multiple Partnerships for Activations

First, remember that there is strength in numbers. Involving more partners creates more energy, and having people from different organizations play off each other is not only fun, but can have a positive impact on team morale.

From the consumers’ point of view, seeing different participants engage each other in a positive, natural way also looks inviting. After all, customers want to join high-energy groups and have fun, too. In this way, adding partners can make your brand activation more attractive or interesting to possible end users.

For some events, splitting costs may be possible, which saves all the partners money, meaning activations can see a much greater return on investment. Anything that makes marketing efforts more cost-effective while boosting their chances of success is worth the time and effort.

Finally, collaborating with other organizations can help you see how other teams work. In my experience, sitting in on your partners’ management and marketing processes can be educational. These interactions can spark new ideas, and you can learn new processes and practices.

The Snowball Effect

Once you get one partner for a brand activation, it becomes easier to attract others. A snowball effect often takes place — now that your initial partner has given you strength in numbers, a sense of “fear of missing out” can start to set in for prospective new partners.

Once you conduct an effective brand activation with a given partner, it also becomes easier to do so again. You can work together even better next time, making revisions on upcoming campaigns based on real data from the first.

These partnerships can become long-term relationships. Over time, you and your collaborators can work together to refine your marketing efforts — testing, measuring, and adapting. In the process, you can attain ever greater levels of success.

Avoiding Common Pitfalls when Leveraging Multiple Partnerships

Like any relationship, willingness to listen to the other and display compassion needs to be combined with active work on these professional partnerships for them to thrive and remain healthy.

Perhaps most importantly, brand activations that leverage multiple partners need to be beneficial for all parties. Once things become a one-way street, relations tend to go sideways.  Constant communication and a collaborative problem-solving approach are extremely important to keep things running smoothly.

It’s also wise to limit the number of brands involved. When too many partners try to collaborate on a single activation, it creates a reverse effect, with participants fighting to shape the message and capture their share of attention. This becomes dysfunctional and can create negative experiences for the consumer. 

Conflict like this is counterproductive. In my experience, once you go over three brands, the message tends to become confused and the potential for divisiveness rises.

How to Choose the Right Partners

To choose the right partners, start by thinking about your target customers’ DNA. What are their likes and interests? Push yourself to go beyond their demographics. Get into their heads to understand them more holistically. 

One way to do this is to create a profile of your target audience that explores their likely psychographics. This approach considers how different types of people tend to think and what they usually believe, as well as their common desires and fears.

Next, consider which products or services this audience needs that you are not providing. What problems do your target audience typically confront that your products or services don’t solve? Then, identify companies that are meeting those other needs. Those are your potential strategic partners.

Still, not every brand is going to align with yours, so it’s now necessary to consider how congruent a potential association would actually be. You should only approach those companies that strike a similar tone to yours and address the same socioeconomic bracket.

Before you reach out to potential partners, however, you should think about your own business’s strengths and weaknesses. Where can you provide the most value? What does your team or products do exceptionally well? How can you help a given prospective partner? How can you create solutions or business opportunities for them?

To be successful, your pitch to potential partners cannot focus on what you want and how your company would benefit. Instead, you need to explain the value you would bring to the partnership. When it comes time to reach out to possible strategic partners, start with those with the most compelling reason to partner with your business due to the value you can bring them.

You are Not Alone

Going it alone is rarely a good idea in business, where strategic partnerships provide vital support. Leveraging multiple partners in a brand activation promises many benefits, most of which you won’t even uncover until you actually execute it. That’s the part I love — the unknown piece, the impossible-to-imagine greater good that comes from creating and executing a successful engagement.

You also don’t have to go it alone when it comes to creating and developing these strategic partnerships. Marketing agencies can research possible partnerships, provide objective advice about them, and serve as a conduit for initiating connections. In addition, bringing such an agency on board can facilitate communication among partners, which becomes especially helpful during challenging times.

Your success as a business owner or leader is paramount, and leveraging multiple partnerships for brand activations can help you achieve it. Whether or not you choose to work with an agency, your efforts in this direction will be amply rewarded.

The post How to Leverage Multiple Partnerships in a Brand Activation appeared first on SiteProNews.

Ultimately, the aim of event marketing is to create a memorable experience. Whether you send customers on a scavenger hunt through your store or host a cooking class with one of your products as the main ingredient, the goal is to create an event that appeals to everyone’s senses and gets people excited about your brand. 

Here are 10 tips that will make your company’s next event a success.
 

Tip #1: Timing is Everything

When planning your event, it’s best to avoid the quarter-one calendar months. Events on the tail of a holiday spending spree can underperform or even tank, which is why many businesses balk at an event marketing project during the first months of the year. 

Additionally, quarter one is notorious for weather challenges. If you decide to go ahead with a winter event, remember that simple things like giveaway hand warmers and heaters go a long way with staff and guests. 

Tip #2: Know Your Target Customer

Like all marketing, for event marketing to be successful, it has to be targeted. While planning your event, know who you are trying to engage, how you can best grab their attention, and where you will find them. 

Every dollar you spend should be geared toward the right audience. Understanding which demographics they encompass — age, gender, and geographic location, for example — is vital, but another kind of information can help you go deeper: psychographics. These are the attitudes and beliefs that define your target audience, and these factors enable you to pinpoint events and conferences that your target audience is likely to attend.

Tip #3: Two Heads are Better than One

One of the best ways to generate more traction for your event is by aligning with strategic partners. Partnerships can help you reach new audiences, squeeze more value out of your event, and save money on marketing costs. Partnering with other organizations brings in new attendees and creates opportunities for cross-promotion between brands. 

When aligning your brand with strategic partners and events, do your research. Steer clear of first-year events unless the event’s promoter or organizer has a strong track record. 

Location is key when it comes to events and retail, as higher-traffic areas like entrances or end caps typically deliver the best ROI. Conversely, the loudest areas, such as those near live music, can make it extremely hard to connect during conversations.

Tip #4: Know Your End Game

Successful event marketing is based on clear objectives. Before you can measure the success of your event, you need to know what that success will look like by determining the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will be used to evaluate your event’s performance.

KPIs are specific metrics that help you measure and determine how well an activity or initiative is performing relative to a goal or standard. For example, if your goal is to increase sales by 8% this year and sales were up 10%, then your KPI was exceeded by 2%.

ROI is an important metric for measuring the success of your event marketing efforts, but it’s not the only one. ROI is an indicator of success — not an end in itself. It can help guide future decisions, but it’s also important to keep ROI from becoming the only thing that matters when evaluating event marketing. Though it’s difficult to calculate the value of things like new connections, word of mouth, online engagement, and buzz, they are often worth more than a sale in the long run. 

Tip #5: Success Requires Planning

Every experiential marketing event needs a well-defined standard operating procedure document. These written instructions should lay out a detailed routine for your event. 

Carefully investing your time in the initial planning of your event will reward you with massive dividends in the end. Be sure to map out the details of the entire event from start to finish, and give your team the tools they need to be successful. 
 

Tip #6: Come Prepared for Set Up

When planning your event, create an event set-up manual for your staff and volunteers. Make sure to include what you expect them to bring and wear to the event, as well as a comprehensive list of everything you need in your booth.

For example, most events will require you to bring a six-foot table, sandbags or weighted buckets to secure the tent, a six-foot table, branded table skirt, marketing materials, and either a branded 10×10 tent if the space is large enough or a smaller cocktail table in case space is tight. Event planning pros make sure to always arrive with zip ties, duct tape, a sharpie, extension cords, and industrial scissors to meet any unforeseen emergencies that arise.  

Tip #7: Send Potential Customers Away with Something in Their Hands 

People love free stuff, so make sure to include some giveaway items at your event. If possible, offer more than one kind of takeaway, so there’s something to suit everyone’s taste.

When guests leave with inexpensive merch or swag, your brand lives outside of the event. A memorable souvenir reminds people about their experience with your brand and may even prompt them to share the memory with friends and family.

Tip #8: Let the Event Live on Through Social Media

Shareable social content enables your experience to live on long after you pack up your booth by turning every attendee into an ambassador for your brand. During the event, hand out favors with the event’s hashtag and incentivize guests to snap pictures and share. 

Make sure you have staff ready to document the event through your own pictures and videos. After the event, publish those photos and clips on your social channels. Sharing pictures, videos, and stories and engaging with comments keeps the experience alive long after it has ended.

The more creative and fun your experience is, the easier it is to collect engaging content and encourage followers to share. There are many ways to stand out from the crowd — you just need to think outside the box. For example, games or activities promoting participant interaction make the event more memorable for everyone involved.

Tip #9: Analyze the Process

After your event, be sure to evaluate the process. Create a record of what worked well and what you will change next time. Can you rinse and repeat the process or scale it up in the future? 

Remember to evaluate how your target audience responds. Before the event, take time to map out the customer journey you envision for this event. How will you draw leads from the event into your funnel, and what will you do to engage with those leads? After the event, determine whether your map was accurate. 

This “post-mortem” is critical to evaluate what worked and what didn’t work. Use this information and insight to improve your next events or campaigns.

Tip #10: Thank All Participants Involved in the Event

Event marketing takes a village, so remember to thank your team for their hard work. During the event, ensure your staff runs at full speed by offering healthy snacks, energy bars, cold water, and soft drinks. 

Afterward, pass around inexpensive gift cards applicable for events at retail locations as thank yous. Remember, your event’s staff, workers, volunteers, management, and organizers are all potential customers, so be sure to thank and engage everyone involved. 

Above all, make sure your event marketing is not just about sales but about creating a lasting impression through memorable interactions and experiences. The most important thing is to have fun! If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, your audience won’t either.

The post 10 Essential Tips for Successful Event Marketing appeared first on SiteProNews.

That’s why a lot of time, energy, and thought need to go into this piece of every business plan. As someone who has spent more than 20 years helping companies craft and cultivate the right branding strategy, I understand how important it is to get this part of your business right.

Below are my tips for navigating the complexities of creating an effective brand.

Branding 101

Even experienced business leaders can be confused about what branding is and how it differs from marketing. Clearly, there are many synergies between the two, but in general, branding strategy should come first. To have effective marketing, you must have defined your brand appropriately. Otherwise, your marketing efforts are unlikely to be as effective as possible. They may even go entirely awry.

Think of branding as your business’s DNA. It’s the makeup of your company’s overall identity and the feel your company should have when appearing before others. When developing a branding strategy, ask questions like: who are we as a company and what type of emotions do we want to exude to potential customers?

Your company’s logo, website, graphics, colors, personality, and voice should all reflect these branding decisions. For instance, if your company wants to communicate an energetic, youthful vibe, your materials should use brighter, more vibrant colors. If your company wants to make people feel peaceful, calmer colors would be indicated. Sepia photographs can evoke nostalgia, and abstract art can suggest innovation.

Once you’ve decided on your branding strategy, you can also choose the right language to communicate your business’s purpose, mission, history, and story. For instance, companies that want to adopt a friendly tone should use short phrases and easy-to-understand words. Those who want to emphasize their refinement or sophistication may choose more upmarket vocabulary.

Marketing takes those branding decisions and communicates them outwards toward relevant audiences via advertising and public-relations campaigns. This is also where social media posts, special promotions, pop-up and other experiential events, as well as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts come in. Marketing is the vehicle that promotes your products or services. With these efforts, you make potential customers more aware of your company and start to create brand affinity.

With branding, you outline your company’s persona. With marketing, you deploy that persona via specific channels using tailored messages.

How Branding Drives Business Growth

When your branding strategy hits the mark, your ideal customers will recognize themselves in your marketing messages and want to align themselves with you. In this way, effective branding allows you to engage with your target consumer. Done right, branding means the people you want to attract find themselves attracted to you.

Defining your brand effectively and investing in top-of-funnel marketing efforts that communicate your brand to relevant audiences is a necessary step for lead generation. Making more people aware of your brand increases the probability of generating additional revenue. Customers who like your branding will consider making a purchase. Without prioritizing brand awareness, new prospects risk drying up.

This is also where customer loyalty begins. A strong brand helps customers remember you, as well as what differentiates your brand from the competition.

If that wasn’t already enough, the stronger your brand, the more valuable your business appears to potential investors, partners, or other associates. Having a strong, attractive brand also helps companies attract better talent. That’s why it’s worth investing not only in branding strategy, but also in marketing campaigns that reinforce your branding over time.

Toward that end, it’s important to consider branding throughout the entire process of creating your business model, from ideation all the way to execution.

Five Steps to Branding Success

The branding strategy process is one of the most important and rewarding pieces of developing a business plan, for the simple reason that it helps you define the company. Your branding is how you distinguish yourself from the competition.

The first step to getting your branding right is to define your objectives. What is your branding trying to accomplish? How will branding impact your products and services? Set up clear goals for your business’s overall identity, values, and growth. This will take some time and research, as well as self-reflection.

Once you have an overall grasp of your brand’s persona, it’s time to refine your ideas. Ask yourself: what will your brand promise to prospective customers? What is your purpose? What is your personality or story? What’s your Point of View (POV)? This is a good time to think about the brands you love. Why do you love them? Where does that connection come from? Is there a way your own company could use that same tactic?

Next, it’s time to consider how your product or service is different from the competition. Your branding should distinguish you in meaningful ways. Ask yourself what your value proposition is and how you are different from rivaling businesses. Why can’t they deliver in the same way you can?

Now it’s time to consider strategies for positioning your new brand to the target audience. What platforms and outlets can help you get in front of the right people? How should you market your products and services to remain mindful of the brand?

Finally, marketing enters the equation. Once the branding strategy has been set, the business can begin outreach via marketing campaigns. Make sure to evaluate the effectiveness of these so that future efforts can become increasingly successful over time.

Branding: Your Pole Star

Branding is one of the most important aspects of your business because it lays the groundwork for educating, engaging, and making potential customers more aware of your products and services. Masterful branding acts as the pole star that helps you shape effective marketing campaigns. These create strong connections with your target audience, as well as develop and maintain customer affinity towards your brand.

Crafting an inspired branding strategy is where good marketing begins. Wise entrepreneurs don’t rush through this stage, but rather pause to bend their best efforts toward that end.

The post Why Branding is Crucial for Business Growth: A Guide to Getting it Right appeared first on SiteProNews.

For many start-ups, brand activation can be a cost concern. Some may not have the capital to throw at large campaigns or the staff needed for a big activation push. Instead, they seek out cost-effective measures of activation. What follows are some ways small businesses can activate their brands and still save money:

Timing

Many businesses experience periods of feast or famine within the calendar year. For example, coming off of the holiday season, consumers are going to be spending less — because they threw everything they had at holiday gifts. It makes sense for businesses to look at each quarter separately and determine when it makes sense to invest in brand activation needs.

Most small businesses will avoid starting new activation projects in Q1. They may still try to reach their target market, but will choose to do so more passively, through free channels such as social media postings and organic engagement. When the slowdown of Q1 passes, businesses can decide to make a heavier investment in activation in quarters 2 & 3, which will be a more financially viable option for the business as a whole.

Consumer Planning

All businesses need to consider their customer base, and consider how every dollar they spend on activation is geared towards the right audience. Businesses must consider who they are trying to engage and which customer is most likely to be interested in their services or products. Timing also matters when considering engagement. Businesses should research when their target consumers are most available for engagement. There are several routes that small businesses can take to engage consumers:

Engagement Marketing – Engaging with consumers involves creating experiences that consumers can participate in along with the brand. These experiences may directly involve the brand or products, or even just a feeling the brand wants to convey. This participation can be in-person or via social media engagement. 

Social content should not only be engaging, but also shareable. Brands will become more well-known the more their name and their services or products are shared among like-minded consumers.

Events and Trade Shows – Many small businesses choose to take advantage of trade shows or other events to engage with potential customers and get their brand name out there. Some small businesses can successfully debut their new brand or new products at these events, where they can give samples of their products and engage with customers face-to-face. 

When on the road to get one’s brand out there, companies should offer takeaways in the form of inexpensive branded swag or merchandise, designed to further disseminate the brand name beyond the event.

Strategic Partners

Small businesses should consider aligning themselves with key partners in key locations. Aligning one’s brand with partners in high-traffic areas will give the best ROI for the lowest budget. 

Strategic partners should share the same vision and values as one’s business. This will allow one’s small business to tap into the customer base of that partner. With strategic partners, small businesses with small budgets can combine resources and leverage a connection with perhaps a more established business to give them a nudge in the right direction with activation.

Clear Objectives

Any small business needs clear objectives and a good idea of their key performance indicators (KPIs). The goal of brand activation is to create a strong connection between your brand and your ideal customers. That strong connection will ensure that consumers will remain loyal to your brand as you grow. When setting out to create a brand activation plan, businesses must have their customer data and budgets available so they have a clear picture of the money being funneled towards brand activation. 

Brand activation can be an exciting time for small businesses — you’re telling the world about the brand you have spent time and energy cultivating. Brand activation does not need to be a costly part of building a small business, though, as long as businesses are aware of their budget, target market, and how they align their brand with other services and partners that elevate their voice.

The post Creating a Cost-Effective Activation for Your Small Business appeared first on SiteProNews.