With the proliferation of online marketing, traditional ways of promoting your event have seemed to be fading away into history. Regardless of this trend, one of the most successful ways of marketing your event is to ensure that it is fully integrated into the activity of interacting with the audience outside in the real (not just digital) world. You have an endless array of methods open to you which will engage the ticket buying public and extend far beyond the limitations of online marketing. Implement this list of the top five tips that you can use when organizing such an event and connect with (gasp) real people… not just electrons.
1. Online in the offline event. You don’t have to turn your event into a Luddite-fest that is completely offline. Plunk a touchscreen enabled computer or tablet in the public areas of your event and let people log on to Facebook or Twitter and follow your company there. Make the process as easy and entertaining as possible and you will actually be surprised how busy that terminal will be and how many more you’ll place in your next event. To make this entire process even more rewarding and attract more likes you could reward participants with some discount vouchers from sponsoring retailers, giveaway or draw prizes or just about anything that would attract more likes to your event’s social media presences.
2. Be a step ahead of competing events. Do some research and find out what has been already done before by your competing event producers and how successful those campaigns were. Bring up some interesting combinations of things that have never been brought together before. Go to the outer ragged wild edges of your creativity and you can rest assured that you campaign will reach a lot more than the attendees that were directly at the event venue. Fascinate people with the way you would combine something old and traditional with new technology or modern trends.
3. Have smaller events within a big event. Provide an all new and personalized experience to every attendee and your event will really stand out in their minds. Try to reach to your potential customers one-on-one, informing them to the maximum extent about every aspect of your event and answering any question they might have. Provide them with a video to watch, a poll to answer, or just about anything that would increase the quality of the interaction and make your event memorable. If they receive a personalized experience at your event they are most likely to remember fondly and possibly even share it with their friends who will become your attendees the next time around.
4. Tweet just about everything. Twitter has to be the world’s favorite site for posting quick updates on a regular basis which makes it the perfect spot for you to let everyone know how is your campaign unfolding over at your venue. Even though you are utilizing a digital means to reach people, they are being driven to an experience which is completely real at your event and therefore can engage their entire attention with their physical presence. This online/reality synthesis reaches its zenith when you combine the real world with Twitter with scavenger hunts or photo contests which are indelibly tied into your physical event.
5. Engage technology within reality. Technology provides the definitive tools for any event producer with a creative marketing-oriented imagination. Providing a 3D projection together with free glasses or any form of augmented reality for your event might have sounded crazy several years ago, but is quickly becoming mainstream these days. Making clever use of elements such as QR code scanning and other tech which triggers an action in the online world based on what your attendee is actually doing in your event venue will ensure both engagement and fascination.
It’s sometimes difficult to determine where the real world ends and the digital world begins, but if you are adept at having your event marketing straddle the border between the two you will be rewarding your attendees with a richer experience.
