Events can be a significant revenue stream for niche publishers. An event is an opportunity to expand your brand, create new lucrative partnerships, even discover new untapped vertical niches. But launching and marketing an event is not for sissies!
It’s all about pre-planning and setting the right tone from the start. Here are 7 tips for successful event marketing:
- Market your event all year long. Open early bird, discount registration for your next event as soon as you can and update content as soon as new information is available. How soon? At least 9-12 months out if possible.
- Clean your database and keep it current. Garage in, garbage out! If you don’t keep your list updated, segmented, and track interaction, you wind up with a big useless list.
- Invite, invite, invite. Use your subscription forms to gather segmentation information and follow up with an introduction email and invitation to join your social media channels and event updates.
- Provide real content. There is nothing worse than a “Stay Tuned” message on your event website. Give them visuals! You can run last year’s session slides, new session descriptions, etc. to keep people intrigued and give them a reason to keep coming back.
- Use a variety of marketing strategies. It’s almost too easy to just re-create last year’s marketing plan. Don’t forget your blog, e-newsletters, live video, new social media platforms and digital brochures.
- Don’t forget webinars for lead gen. Your speakers provide built-in content, so interview them. Plus this turns your speakers into your brand ambassadors. Provide quality content with a soft sell.
- Make print your secret weapon. Stylized, printed postcards are high-impact without being high-cost. How much print marketing you use depends on your event’s niche, but experiment to see what works best for you.
Finally, a bonus tip from Jennifer Schwartz, Senior Vice President at Access Intelligence: “Utilize web analytics and surveys to determine which topics are resonating with your audience, i.e. most read articles, most commented on stories, etc. Those are also good indicators for an event’s future launch.”
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About this blogger: Diana Landau is the Content Wrangler for Niche Media. A former sales director and corporate marketing hack, she has now found nirvana in writing and wrangling quality content. Diana is a food, wine, art and SF Giants enthusiast…who sometimes gets carried away.
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Niche Media has the best events, education, and training in media! Our super niched-out events & content give target-audience publishers in the B2C, hobbyist, B2B, city & regional, and association markets the tools they need to build revenue, audience, and more.
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