3 strategies to solve your event marketing problems

Instead of the seasonal push model, here are 3 strategies you can adopt to solve your event marketing problems:

[Event marketing tip #1] Develop content around your attendees’ lifestyle

Your event is more than just an event; it’s a place where people who share the same beliefs and goals meet and grow together.

Which is to say: your event is part of a lifestyle decision.

Think of something like Burning Man. If you are an attendee, you don’t just go there to listen to music; you go there because you identify with a particular lifestyle.

Conventional marketing largely ignores this aspect of your event. One-off promos and PR pieces can hardly capture the choices and issues your audience truly cares about.

For instance, take a look at INC Magazine’s GrowCo conference updates on Facebook. Nearly every update tries to sell the features of the event – the speaker line-up, the chance to meet and greet new people, learn tactics to grow your business, etc.

None of the updates hit at the true reason why young entrepreneurs want to run businesses in the first place – to chase their passions and reach financial freedom.

In contrast, a lot of messaging on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit page is about “changing the world”.

Exaggerated? Perhaps. But also a message that is likely to resonate with its younger audience and the lifestyle it aspires to. By developing content around topics and issues your attendees are passionate about, you can associate your event with your attendees’ lifestyle decisions.

The result? Higher brand loyalty and lasting relationships.

Introducing: “Lifestyle map” for better content

Forget keywords and content ideas; every competent content marketing campaign starts with a simple question: what do your customers really care about? 

The answer to this question shouldn’t just be superficial; it should go deeper and identify the heart of your audience’s interests and desires.

For instance, if you’re promoting a conference for entrepreneurs, your guests might be passionate about financial freedom or chasing a passion. Entrepreneurship just happens to be the tool to achieve their dreams.

Marketing that focuses on these core interests would likely resonate more than a stream of updates about your event’s schedule and speaker line-up.

The latter is important, but only when it serves the former. That is, don’t tell people that Tony Robbins will speak at your event; tell them how Tony Robbins will help them achieve their goals. Charting out your audience’s interests can help you create much more powerful content.

One way to do this is with a ‘lifestyle map’.

This is simply a list of ideas, interests, and things your audience cares about. Start off by identifying broad topics (such as “beauty or fitness”) and break things down further until you get concrete content ideas.

This will be the foundation of your content marketing campaign. By consistently creating content around these topics, you’ll speak to your audience about topics that truly matter to them.

For instance, FrankBody, an Australian eCommerce startup that sells skincare products, focuses most of its content marketing on its customers’ desires and lifestyle choices.

• This post is a Q&A of social media influencers Natasha Oakley and Devin Brugman. While it ranks for the keyword “natasha oakley workout”, the main purpose of this post is to align FrankBody with its target customers’ wants and desires – a better body and healthier skin.
• This post skips keywords. Instead, it targets an issue its users care about and makes a bold statement – that fake has a PR problem.
• This post, on the other hand, addresses a common user query. It targets a keyword – “face breaking out” – that forms a part of its user journey.

This is a perfect example of a hybrid content strategy that builds your brand while also attracting traffic. Also, notice how FrankBody uses its branded hashtag even inside its blog posts:

Best of all, when you do this regularly, you’ll have traffic coming in all through the year, not just a month before the event.

[Event marketing tip #2] Develop a social media strategy around UGC

One of the biggest challenges event marketers face is creating enough content for a year-long social media campaign. There is one way to work around this by collecting and curating user-generated content (UGC).

Here’s why:

• 59% of shoppers say that their purchase decision is influenced by UGC, as per one study.
• Among millennials, UGC is 50% more trustworthy than traditional media.

UGC works particularly well for events since events, by their very nature, are social (60% of smartphone users use them at events).  By sharing UGC as “event memories”, you will not only have a consistent stream of social media content, but you’ll also ensure that your followers (especially people mentioned in the UGC) will engage with your event brand.

Here’s how you can better integrate this strategy into your event campaign:

A. Brainstorm hashtags 

Your social media marketing will revolve around hashtags. Brainstorm hashtags you’ll use in your updates in advance. Also, make sure to include them in all your marketing collateral.

You should ideally have a unique, event-specific hashtag, like #Coachella.

If it’s a recurring event, add the year to the hashtag to help people identify it, like #Coachella2016.

Finally, identify general-purpose hashtags you can use in your marketing (such as #marketing or #EDMMusic, etc.).

The Montgomery Summit, for instance, uses both branded hashtags (#montysummit) and general purpose hashtags in its updates:

B. Market your hashtags

Your hashtags should be everywhere before, at and after your event.

For example, the Cannes Film Festival made sure the #Cannes hashtag was visible all across its venue:

C. Solicit UGC

Ask users to share content with you throughout the event (and after it) with your hashtag. This does two things:

• It can help your hashtag trend on social media
• Updates shared with the hashtag can be reused later.

You can even use live social media “walls” within the event to solicit more updates. Once you have enough UGC, you can reshare them as “memories” spread throughout the year.

[Event marketing tip #3] Develop a year-long marketing plan

A common mistake event marketers make is creating marketing collateral only for the narrow period immediately before and after the event. Such marketing is reactive, not proactive. It makes your event marketing isolated and cuts it off from your long-term plans.

A much better approach is to anticipate future events and create marketing collateral – landing pages, downloadables, social media graphics – far ahead in advance.

For instance, if you visited Coachella.com in early April this year, you’d see this landing page:

However, if you came back when the festival was running – April 22-24 – you’d be directed to a livestream of the event:

If you visit the site now, you’ll see a landing page selling early tickets.

The website experience changes with the event timeline.

Here are three ways you can develop a future-proof, year-long event marketing plan:

A. Create marketing collateral for future events

One way to future-proof your event marketing plan is to have marketing collateral for anything you might have planned in the future. This includes:

• Landing pages
• Logos
• Planned hashtags
• Downloadables

B. Don’t archive marketing pages

It’s also a good idea to leave your marketing collateral up even after the event is over instead of archiving it.

You can also turn them into lead capture pages for prospective future attendees. Remember: events are social, memorable occasions for your guests. Many of them would want to revisit their memories. Plus, the passive traffic from people searching for similar future events can be substantial as well.

C. Have an integrated marketing plan

Most importantly, your event marketing must be an integrated part of your other marketing activities.

For instance, 77% of B2B marketers use in-person events as part of their content marketing experience; any marketing material you put out must be aligned with your event marketing.

That is, if you’re running a Facebook ad campaign to get more blog readers, you should have a way to plug your event into it somewhere. If you’re offering free eBooks for blog readers, ensure that you mention your event in it as well.