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How to Create a Boss Marketing Plan for a Boss Business Event

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Business events generate one trillion dollars for the global economy every year. As more companies become privy to that fact, it seems as though everybody is trying to throw massive B2C (business to consumer) or B2B (business to business) gatherings.

While throwing an event is easy enough, getting people to actually attend an event is another matter entirely.

If you’re in charge of getting an event off the ground for your company, developing a solid event marketing plan is going to be key to not suffering from crippling attendance issues. Below, we step you through how to create a marketing plan that can get you to where you need to go.

1. Know Why You’re Throwing an Event

Your “why” will be at the center of everything that you do for your event. It’ll inform whether your event is free or if you should find out more about monetization tactics, it’ll help you decide on who to invite to speak at your event, who your customers are and more.

To make sure that you’re framing your marketing efforts correctly, discuss with your event team why you’re doing what you’re doing and make sure that you’re all in agreement. Once goals are defined, you can confidently move forward with your marketing efforts.

2. Define Your Budget

The easiest way to market your event is to take out wall to wall advertisements on every major cable channel. Since that strategy would run you millions of dollars, we’re guessing that it’s outside of your reach. So, what is in your reach?

Know from the get-go how much money you’re going to have to spend so you can create an event marketing plan that’s respectful of your financial constraints. There are always affordable ways to get your message out there so don’t let a low budget discourage your efforts. Instead, let it encourage your creativity.

3. Pull Together Your Event’s Key Points

Before you can start creating marketing collateral like fliers and graphics, you need to know what makes your event interesting. Elements like your event’s location, schedule, who’s speaking at your event and what your attendees can expect to learn by going to your event are all things that could pique a consumer’s interest.

Sit down with your marketing team and ask yourselves, who is your event’s target attendee and what interest’s that person most? Once you’ve come up with your answer, make sure that all of your marketing pieces convey your event’s key points in a way that might interest your customer avatar.

4. Discuss Involvement With Your Event’s Influencers

Is your event featuring keynote speakers? If it is, talk to your speakers about your marketing plan and see if they’d be willing to help advertise.

A single tweet from an influencer could market your event to millions of people in an instant.

5. Select Your Digital Marketing Channels

Influencers aren’t the only group that’s going to be trying to attract event attendees online. Your company is going to have to do some lifting on this front as well.

Review the various digital marketing methods that are available to you and decide on which ones are most worth your time and money. Three popular digital marketing channels that event marketers tend to leverage include:

Social Media

If your company has a social media following, come up with a schedule and blast your followers with information leading up to your event. You can also take out paid social media ads that are targeted at your event’s target attendee.

Email

Have a mailing list? Great! Build notifications about your event into your newsletter’s automation schedule.

People that are subscribed to your mailing list have already exhibited a high-interest in your company. Those people are going to be among the easiest to convert into attendees.

Paid Advertising

You may want to consider taking out paid ads on digital channels that are most relevant to your audience. Places like Google and YouTube receive tons of web traffic that you can strategically target with your marketing messages.

6. Consider Personalized Marketing

Today’s event marketing plans are filled with digital marketing ambitions but few have creative, personalized marketing tactics on their to-do list. We suggest that you buck that trend and try to put some time into thinking outside of the box.

For example, if young engineers are likely to be interested in your event, why not get a list of engineering students from your local college and send them personalized postcards inviting them to your event at a reduced student rate?

Marketing efforts like that boast extraordinarily high conversion rates and can be cheaper to carry out than purchasing paid digital ads.

7. Set Your Performance Metrics and Launch

With your marketing plan in place, define what success means for each of your marketing channels (ex: how many conversions per paid advertisement) and start rolling your plan out.

Be sure that your marketing plan is built on a schedule. You should start pushing out teasers for your event up to a year out and as the event gets closer, increase your marketing frequency, specificity and urgency.

Also, if you’re seeing that certain advertising channels are not performing as you had hoped, make adjustments or change courses altogether.

A Great Event Marketing Plan Can Lead to a Great Event

Anybody that throws an event wants it to be a hit. While there’s no sure-fire way to ensure an event’s success, you’ll increase your odds dramatically by investing the time to create an outstanding event marketing plan.

Use our tips above to do exactly that and browse more of the marketing content right here on our blog if you need additional inspiration!

HubSpot