Event Planning and Management (3rd Edition) - Chapter 8: Drawing in the Crowds

08 == Drawing in the crowds -- marketing events ----------------------------------------- -- -- - develop a promotional plan for your event; - identify and appeal to your target audience; - select the right promotional tools for your event; - use social media to build excitement be...

08 == Drawing in the crowds -- marketing events ----------------------------------------- -- -- - develop a promotional plan for your event; - identify and appeal to your target audience; - select the right promotional tools for your event; - use social media to build excitement before, during and even after your event. #### Developing a promotional plan 1. Set the objectives. 2. Establish your budget. 3. Define your target audience and tailor your message. 4. Select the best promotional tools. 5. Measure the results. ##### Setting objectives - **Building awareness.** For example, a new event may be largely unknown to the target audiences, which means initial promotional efforts must focus on telling them who you are and what you have to offer. - **Reinforcing the brand.** For example, a festival organizer might use promotion to help build a strong relationship that can lead to a festival-goer becoming a loyal customer. - **Providing information.** For example, a conference organizer will want delegates to access any important information before the conference starts, such as arrange- ments for travel, registration and check-in. ##### Establishing your budget - **Task method:** Perhaps the simplest way to set the budget is add up the costs of the various promotional tasks planned. One thing to keep in mind is that obtaining accurate costings in advance might be challenging. - **Percentage of sales method:** Here the budget is set at a percentage of the forecasted sales revenue, e.g. allocating 10% of sales revenue to promotion. Clearly this method is only suitable for an event that will generate revenue, e.g. ticket sales. - **Competitor-oriented method:** The budget set is in line with the promotional budget for other similar events. The rationale being: if you want to remain competitive, you have to spend as much as your competitors. Again, obtaining accurate costings might prove difficult. - **Incremental budgeting method:** This approach starts with an assumption that a detailed look at last year's budget offers a starting point for estimates for this year. ##### Defining your target audience and tailoring your message ##### Selecting the best promotional tools ##### Measuring the results - Ticket sales: Tracking the number of tickets sold is one of the simplest ways to deduce that your current promotional strategy is having some sort of positive effect. - Return on investment (ROI): You can calculate an overall measurement, but a more specific breakdown by each promotional activity -- the amount spent on each activity versus the amount of sales each brought in -- will tell you exactly which worked, and which fell short. - Customer feedback: Customer surveys, general customer feedback and social media comments can all reveal what your customers think of your promotional activities and which promotional tools have the greatest impact. - Competitor response: The actions of your competitors can often be very telling when it comes to the success of your promotional plan. If competitors rush to copy what you've done, the plan is working. If your campaigns go largely ignored, there may be an issue. #### Identify and appeal to your target audience ##### Audience - age - gender - occupation/profession - marital status - family life cycle - location - language - education - income - race/ethnicity - ability/disability - Experience something new. - Visit somewhere new. - Meet key business contacts. - Find potential customers. - Spend time with family and friends. - Meet new friends. - Excitement and entertainment. - Rest and relaxation. ##### Message - your company CEO - an industry expert - a successful entrepreneur - a real customer - a company employee - an amateur or professional athlete - a television or media celebrity - a film star - a fictional or cartoon character - a political, religious or community leader - a writer, journalist, or blogger. ##### Speaking your target audience's language - A party or a bash? - A concert or a gig? - A festival or a fete? - A get-together or a gathering? - A meeting or an assembly? - A conference or a convention? - A celebration or a shindig? ##### Using visuals to engage your audience #### Promotional tools #### Social media for event promotion ##### Choosing your social media platforms 1. **Do your potential attendees spend time there?** It may sound obvious, but you need to find out where your target audience 'hang out' when it comes to social media. It's often a case of making some educated guesses. For example, data show that a much higher percentage of women use Pinterest than men. A wealth of fascinating data about who is using social media is available (the majority is freely available on the internet) to help you choose the right social media platform for your target audience. 2. **Does this platform make sense for the content you are producing?** With social media the most important thing is to share content that will grab your audience's attention and generate interest in your event (more about must-have social media content shortly). A natural extension of this is selecting the best platform(s) to share that content. So, for example, if you want to introduce the guest speakers to your audience by sharing a video bio, YouTube is ideal for you. On the other hand, if you want to share behind-the-scenes photographs from your event, 3. **How are other event planners using social media?** Keeping an eye on your competitors' social media presence can provide valuable insight into where you should be focusing your own efforts. As well as seeing which social media platforms they are using, you can see exactly what content they're posting, how often they're posting and when they're posting. While it would be a mistake to simply copy your competitor's social media activity, if certain social media seem to be working for them (i.e. high levels of engagement with their audience), we would recommend thinking seriously about doing the same -- only better! ##### Social media platforms overview ##### Ways to promote your event using social media - If you were to recommend our event to someone, who would it be and why? - How would your best friend compare our event to others they have attended? - How likely is it that they will attend our next event? - **Attendee live posting:** Attendees will be taking and sharing their own photos and video while the event is taking place, with Twitter being a particularly powerful tool for real-time updates. This immediacy is a powerful tool you have at your disposal to engage with your existing audience and to reach out to a wider audience (your audience's audience). A thank-you post is a simple and often overlooked way to show an event attendee how much you appreciate their attending and telling others about your event. - **Real-time event updates:** Organizers should consider hiring a professional photog- rapher to allow higher-quality photos being posted on social media, particularly Instagram. For many high-profile business events, it's important to retain a corpo- rate brand image and posting high-quality images will allow your event to be represented better. Make sure you check the restrictions that GDPR imposes and obtain relevant permissions from those being photographed. - **Display social media posts at the event:** As well as broadcasting what is happening beyond the event itself, consider finding a way of showing and sharing posts between attendees at the event. This can be a particularly effective way of generating questions or discussion at conferences and similar events. - **Behind-the-scenes footage:** Behind-the-scenes footage offers you a chance to share photos and videos of all kinds of important stuff that occurs in the background of a successful event. Whether it's the backstage crew working hard to set up, the hair and make-up artists making performers look beautiful, the chefs hard at work in the kitchen or the transport team moving guests to and from venues, these behind-the-scenes experiences provide opportunities to share the story of the people behind your event. - **Live video feeds:** Live-streaming your event is a great way to engage online audi- ences and draw new viewers to your event. Facebook Live and YouTube Live are both popular choices to stream live video content (e.g. keynote presentations and panel debates) to thousands of followers in real time. Since YouTube is designed as a video platform, users come to YouTube with the intention of consuming video content. By contrast, Facebook offers video as an addition to existing social media activities (updates about what you're doing, sharing interesting photos etc), so users have the option to ignore live video in their news feeds entirely. - **Fun competitions:** A social media competition can be a highly effective form of engaging with your audience. People love it when they can actively get involved with a competition and use their creativity and humour in order to win prizes. Asking competition entrants to share funny (but relevant) photos from the event is one of the simplest competition ideas and proven ways to boost your social media visibility. Make sure you come up with a unique hashtag that reflects your competition and your event and instruct entrants to use this hashtag in their posts to be in with a chance of winning. - **Follow up with pictures and posts:** As soon as your event is over, you should post pictures, share personal highlights and thoughts about how the event went, give shout-outs to everyone who helped make the event happen and so on. This is a great way of capitalizing on the 'freshness' of your event, and it will help to make sure those people who missed out want to be there next time. - **Get feedback:** Social media can be a great way of getting quick and concise feedback about how the event has gone. This can be deliberate (e.g. sending a post-event survey) or just a review of comments and discussions that have occurred. - **Video montage:** As mentioned before, creating video content for social media is easy to do and is well received. After your event ends, collate your best video content as well as videos shared by attendees, and compile these into one video montage designed to showcase the best bits from your event. If your video is any good, your attendees will most likely share it with their social networks, giving your event additional exposure and expanding your network even further. - **Thankyous:** Thank your social media followers and follow them in return if they have participated in creating a buzz around your event (e.g. entering competi- tions), build your audience base and make sure you respond to any social media messages directed your way. ##### Social media content strategy - What makes a piece of content share-worthy in the first place? - How do we make it easy for people to share content? -- -- -- -- ##### Shareability - **Asking for shares:** There's nothing wrong with politely and kindly asking your network (e.g. family, friends, colleagues, associates) to share your social content with their network. But only ask if you're willing to do the same favour for them. - **Tagging users:** Tagging is when you mention someone in a post or comment. When you tag someone in your posts, the person included receives a notification about that post and hopefully will read and share it too. - **Adding share buttons:** You can add social media sharing buttons to every piece of content you create, making sharing even easier. Putting share buttons at the top of the page is ideal because they're visible and obvious. - **Using visuals:** Just like we said earlier, people are drawn to visually appealing content, and as a result, posts with photos and videos receive more shares. Remem- ber to check for permissions! ##### Social media advertising - Your event is new with no established social media community. - There isn't enough time to create valuable (share-worthy) content before the event. - There aren't enough people to create and share valuable content. - Your promotional budget won't stretch to other forms of advertising (social media advertising is relatively inexpensive). #### Traditional media - advertising - sales promotion - personal selling - media publicity - direct marketing. ##### Advertising - national newspapers - local newspapers - local what's on guides - glossy magazines and brochures - trade magazines and publications - television commercial breaks - local radio - national radio - cinema screens - banners on websites - pop-ups on search engines (e.g. Google ads) - pop-ups on online videos (e.g. You Tube) - social media advertising - billboards, posters, and leaflets - buses, taxis, and aeroplanes. ##### Sales promotion - Discounted prices - Money-off vouchers - Buy-one-get-one-free (BOGOF) - Free gifts - Competition entry - Loyalty schemes - VIP packages. ##### Personal selling ##### Media publicity ##### Direct mail - Your event (or company) name must be clearly stated in the domain name, which appears in the 'sender' line of the email. - Don't use the CC or BCC fields. Personalized emails have a much better open and response rate. Emails using CC or BCC often end up in the 'spam/junk' folder. - Give your email a professional look by adding your event or company logo. - Make good use of the top two to four inches of your email, which is the prime reading space. - Don't overload recipients with too many messages. Keep the body of your message short and scrolling to a minimum. - Make both images and text clickable. Clickable links should send recipients through to a purpose-built landing page (e.g. registration page) to convert click-throughs. - Don't send large attachments and images that may clog the recipient's inbox. - Provide recipients with a clear way to contact you for more information. - Provide recipients with clear instructions on how to unsubscribe from future mailings. - Don't forget to test your email campaign before you send it out. ##### Promotional schedule -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- - All events require some sort of promotional activity to generate a buzz ahead of the event. - Before launching a promotional campaign, it is essential to determine the intended target audience and exactly what it is you want to say to them. - Combining psychographic with demographic data will significantly improve your understanding of the target audience, giving you a much clearer picture of the typical attendee and their motives for attending. - One of the most common mistakes that many event promoters make is to create social media content that is too sales oriented. Your goal is to make sure that your content is share-worthy. - Using influencers to spread the word about an upcoming event not only helps increase reach and visibility but can also be more persuasive than messaging straight from the event organizing team themselves. - Social media is increasingly used to promote events, but the more traditional methods (e.g. advertising and direct mail) still have an important role to play. - The level of promotional activity for an event will vary but drawing up a promotional plan in the lead-up to your event is advisable. 1. How can you integrate social media into your event marketing plans? 2. What are the disadvantages of relying on social media for event promotion? 3. How will you research and select the communication channels that fit your event's target market?