Plus 3 Tips to Better Market Your Brand Events
You might think events for your business are just something fun to do with prospects and customers. There’s generally food, music, and activities that make events fun for everyone who attends.
Or it might not seem like it’s that big of a deal if only a handful of people attend. Sure, smaller events can create a sense of intimacy that allows you to connect with your prospects on a deeper level, but if an event is too small, it’s not going to help get your name out there enough.
Why Holding Brand Events Matters
Events are a critical part of networking, building relationships, and offering value to leads ahead of a sale.
Community building creates trust and a deeper relationship between your brand and leads. People don’t want to feel like a nameless face in a crowd when it comes to interacting with your brand. It is this trust and deep connection that cultivates loyal fans and customers of your brand. Some of the world’s largest brands, such as Starbucks, Nike, and Google, use community building to help market their business.
While events can cost a little more, community building marketing can actually translate to spending less on other forms of marketing. That’s because you’ve already built those deep ties and your customers are already on this journey with you.
Offering value is another big piece of marketing that can lead to a better return on investment (ROI). This is referred to as content-rich marketing. Today’s consumers are savvy and don’t want to just be sold to all the time. They look for relationships with brands that are a two-way street. They invest in your brand and you invest in them beyond the product or service a customer purchased. Giving something of value, whether it’s knowledge or a product or service, shows that you value your customers.
The Challenge
Even though events are a crucial part of building community with your audience, getting prospects and customers to actually attend events is one of the biggest challenges small business owners and sales reps have.
It can seem like a daunting task trying to plan an event plus market it so people actually want to attend. However, this challenge can easily be overcome with an event marketing strategy.
3 Tips to Better Market Your Brand Events
1 | Offer Something Unique
Prospects’ inboxes and feeds are full of requests to attend events, webinars, and conferences. With so many requests, it can be easy to start to tune them out after a while. In order to break through the noise, not only do you need to create an eye-catching graphic, but you need to focus on offering something of value that is unique. Ask yourself what you can offer perspectives and customers that your competitors can’t.
2 | Focus On How You Can Solve a Specific Challenge
Beyond what is unique to your brand, you also need to be able to address a specific challenge your audience has and how you can help them solve it by attending your event. This is the thing of value that you are offering up that is a crucial piece of helping to get people in the door.
3 | Build Opportunities for Connection
Finally, be sure to highlight the opportunities attendees will have to not only connect with your brand, but others who are attending the event. Being able to network with others in the same industry or fellow fans of a brand can deepen the community building around your brand. If you are holding a conference, creating connections can lead to better round-table discussions! This type of engagement is far less transactional.
Key Takeaways
Bringing people together is a highly compelling message, especially when you highlight the opportunities to gain knowledge, connect with others, and have some fun! Remember to focus on offering something that is both unique and valuable to your target audience and craft your messaging around those specifics. This is what will truly help get people in the door to your brand event.