No matter the size of your business, successful marketing practices are a major part of achieving success. However, many people don’t fully understand the intricacies of marketing their small businesses.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how to market events for small businesses, why it’s important, and some strategies that can help take your event marketing to new and greater heights.
What is event marketing?
Event marketing is a twofold term that may refer to one of two things. It may refer to the type of marketing that utilises the creation and hosting events as a means to promote a brand, product, or service.
It may also be used to refer to the marketing of an event, rather than using events as a marketing avenue. We will be focusing on that definition in this article, though many of the things we’re about to share are suitable for either definition.
Events marketing can be a highly efficient tool in the belt of any marketer, helping to generate leads, increase sales, build brand awareness, and even strengthen relationships with existing customers, partners, and affiliates.
Bear in mind that, though event marketing is a good way to reach your target audience and fulfil KPIs, tracking your progress and analytics is essential if you want to achieve success.
Examples of event types
We thought it would be wise to share a few event types that you can use for marketing purposes. There are many different options here, including the following:
Conferences and trade shows are events that typically draw together different people within a specific network or industry, allowing them to learn about the latest trends, get a snapshot of the state of the industry, discover current products and services, and expand their network,
Seminars and workshops are similar to trade shows in that they bring together people with the same core interests. However, unlike the networking and sales-based approach of trade fairs and conferences, the main goal of these events is to provide education and training about a particular topic.
Product launches are a one-of-a-kind event focused specifically on introducing new products or services to the market. They’re a great way to establish new leads, engage an existing audience, and even connect with sister brands in the same industry.
Customer appreciation events are events held and hosted specifically for the benefit of existing clients. They’re a useful way to ensure that your customers feel valued and appreciated. This, in turn, gives you room for better engagement and may even help to turn loyal customers into brand ambassadors.
Networking events have only one purpose: allowing professionals and brands within the same industry to connect and strengthen their business networks. They’re less useful for engaging with potential customers, but they make it easier for brands and professionals to build on their existing strengths and create valuable alliances that benefit all the involved parties.
Is event marketing important for small businesses?
Absolutely, event marketing is important for all businesses, no matter how big or small they may be. There are actually a range of different advantages to using this kind of marketing, including the following:
It allows for direct engagement with customers
It gives you the opportunity to interact directly with customers. Thanks to the face-to-face nature of most kinds of events, they provide splendid opportunities to have in-person customer engagement. This, in turn, allows businesses to build stronger relationships with their customers.
The other side of the direct interaction is that it enables brands and businesses to garner feedback and valuable insights directly from customers. Whether that’s in terms of pain points or things the customers love about the brand, all information is useful.
It allows the brand to build brand awareness
Since events are such highly visible occurrences, they’re one of the best ways for a brand to build visibility. Especially in the case of large, or sponsored, events, events marketing can be an excellent way to create positive brand associations.
Meeting leads in person also allows brands to generate memorable content and interactions that help to improve overall brand recognition.
It’s an excellent way to generate leads and sales
Lead generation is often one of the biggest pain points for small companies. One of the great things about events is that they offer an excellent platform for lead capture.
By using different event marketing techniques, brands can gather overall attendee information and specific information about people who show interest in their products and services.
This approach may lead to improved relationships with the brand’s target audiences and may even prompt an increase in conversions later on. However, events are also a fantastic platform for making direct sales, especially when you showcase products and services at the event.
It can help to build customer loyalty and retention
Many different types of events offer a spectacular avenue of engagement that can help you to improve customer retention and build loyalty to your brand. One excellent way of facilitating this is through the use of unique and memorable experiences at the event. They can help you to build a rapport with the customers, and encourage repeat business.
Another way that events can be helpful in this regard is that they can help you to demonstrate how much you appreciate your customers. This show of interest and appreciation can go a long way towards retaining customers and inspiring loyalty.
It creates new and exciting networking opportunities
Events are sometimes an excellent way to facilitate networking within industries or industry-specific communities. Whether you’re communicating with professionals, partners, or potential customers, this type of marketing can inspire true connections.
But it doesn’t end there. The relationships you build at these events and gatherings can later turn into awe-inspiring partnerships, affiliations, and sometimes even sales agreements.
It helps to achieve measurable results
Whenever you use any type of marketing, it’s a good idea to set KPIs for your event or other marketing formats. With events specifically, it’s fairly simple to monitor your established goals and KPIs using metrics like event attendance, number of leads generated, number of sales made, and even social media engagement scores.
By gathering, and analysing, all these individual metrics you can get a verifiable indication of what your ROI (Return on Investment) is like.
It can help to set you apart from competitors
If you use your event as an opportunity to create a unique experience for attendees, then events can be a great way to set yourself apart from competitors. Not only will it help to make your brand more memorable, but it will give you a competitive edge in a crowded marketplace.
The important thing here is to remain true to your brand identity and persona so that people associate the event with your overall brand image.
All in all, event marketing is a powerful tool that you can use to engage your audience, build connections, and build brand awareness. A careful approach to planning and executing events will ensure that all these benefits become yours.
Event marketing strategies for your small business
Now that we’ve taken a closer look at what event marketing is, let’s discuss some of the strategies that you can use to effectively incorporate this type of marketing into your small business.
Strategy 1: Establishing a unique event focus
The first thing that small and micro-businesses need to focus on is to establish a unique focus for the event. Doing so helps to make the event distinctive and memorable, resulting in an event that helps your brand stand out from the crowd.
Your focus should be in alignment with your business’s USP (Unique Sales Proposition) or UVP (Unique Value Proposition).
Key considerations
When you’re trying to establish a unique focus for your event, there are a few things that you need to bear in mind. For one thing, the events Focus should always be consistent with your brand persona and identity, and be in full alignment with your values, while remaining appealing to your target audience.
Secondly, the event should offer value to all attendees. This means that you need to provide an attractive reason for people to attend. Depending on the type of event, this may vary from offering educational content or networking opportunities to providing exclusive offers for attendees.
Your event’s focus should also help to set you apart from your competitors. Try to avoid arranging and hosting events that are similar to all the other events in your industry.
Examples for small businesses
Let's discuss a few examples of focused events that could be held by small businesses:
- A local bakery could Host a "Bread and Beyond" event showcasing various bread-making techniques and pairing them with local cheeses and wines.
- A boutique clothing store: Organise a "Fashion Showcase" featuring local designers and models, offering exclusive discounts and styling tips.
- A technology startup: Conduct a "Tech Talk" series with industry experts discussing emerging trends and providing practical advice for small businesses.
By establishing a unique focus, smaller businesses can create a more unique and engaging event that is likely to have better results.
Strategy 2: Tracking the success of your event’s marketing
No matter how large your business is, it’s essential to measure the success of your event marketing efforts as effectively as possible. This means setting clear, and measurable KPIs that you can use as metrics to establish success.
The first thing you need to do is to define your event’s primary objectives. Try to make your objectives as clear and concise as possible. Avoid setting generalistic goals, aiming instead for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals to help you track progress and evaluate your event’s success.
Common goals for event marketing
When you’re planning out your event’s objectives, there are a few common goals that you may want to consider. These include the following:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Generating new leads
- Acquiring sales
- Greater customer engagement
- Creating networking opportunities
Tracking and measuring metrics
Once you’ve established firm objectives, you need to determine which metrics will help you determine how successful you were. Some of the most common metrics used are listed below:
- Attendance: Monitor the number of attendees, both in-person and virtual, to gauge overall interest and reach.
- Engagement: Track attendee participation in activities, such as workshops, presentations, or networking sessions.
- Lead generation: Collect attendee information and measure the number of qualified leads generated.
- Sales: Monitor sales made at the event or through subsequent follow-up efforts.
- Social media engagement: Track social media metrics like mentions, shares, and likes to gauge online impact.
- Customer satisfaction: Conduct surveys or gather feedback to assess attendee satisfaction and identify areas for improvement.
By using these kinds of tools to help you, you can easily keep track of the metrics and key KPIs to help you determine how successful your event was. They’re also a critical part of your post-event marketing strategies
Strategy 3: Creating a sales plan for the marketing of your event
When you’re trying to use events to market your small or micro business, planning is essential. One of the best strategies that you can adopt when taking this approach is to develop a well-structured sales plan.
Not only is this step crucial to help you maximise the ROI of your event marketing efforts, but it also helps to ensure that your event marketing budget stays intact. Creating a sales plan involves outlining specific steps to drive sales and conversions. These steps are as follows:
- Step one: Identify your target audience
- Step two: Develop a sales pitch
- Step three: Create sales materials
- Step four: Train your team
- Step five: Set your sales targets
There’s a range of reasons why this pre-event planning is so essential. Some of these include the fact that it helps to maximise efficiency , ensuring a smooth sales process and minimising potential bottlenecks.
It also helps to optimise resource allocation and to enhance the overall experience of attendees, by ensuring that funds are spent as wisely as possible to create the best possible effect.
Strategy 4: Ticket sales for the event
Whenever you are arranging an event for your small or micro business ticket sales is one of the best ways that you can build revenue through the event. This valuable strategy can offer a wide range of benefits.
First and foremost, it is an excellent means of generating revenue. Ticket sales can help you to generate a significant amount of income that can help to cover the outset costs that you need to pay to organise the event.
Furthermore, selling tickets is a great way of measuring interest in the event. When you use both ticket sales and attendance as metrics you can easily gauge both interest and follow-through. The more people buy tickets the more people are interested. The higher the attendance is, the more people think that your event is valuable enough to actually attend.
If you find that there is a loss difference between the number of tickets bought and the number of people in attendance it may be a reason to believe that people don't consider your event a high-value use of their time.
Finally, selling tickets is a useful way of controlling the size of the crowd. Especially in the case of smaller events like seminars and conferences, having this control is essential to ensure that there are enough resources available for all attendees.
There are many different ways that you can use to successfully sell tickets to your event. Whether you choose to use a pre-built ticket sale platform, or simply to integrate the ticket sales into your website, this is an easily accomplished task no matter what the size of your business.
If you are going to be selling tickets to your event, however, it is absolutely essential that you invest the time and energy it takes to build anticipation and engage your audience before the event.
By investing in engaging with your target audience, as well as taking the time to build anticipation and excitement around the event, you'll find that it's much easier to drive ticket sales and encourage people who are already interested in your brand to purchase their tickets.
Strategy 5: Practice engagement with the registered attendees
Whether or not you decide to go the ticket sales route, it is critical that you engage with all attendees who have already registered for the event.
Some ways of doing this include sending out personalised communications, such as welcome emails, that specifically address attendees by name, and refer to their individual needs and interests (which you have hopefully already gleaned from surveys and registration forms).
It's also a brilliant idea to try and add additional value in your pre-event communications. For example, you could offer exclusive content, behind-the-scenes glimpses, or special discounts to incentivise attendance.
Another essential element for many modern audiences is that you need to try and build a sense of community, engagement, and interaction directly around the event. Most modern event attendees would like to feel like they are part of something bigger than simply attending an event. They want to feel like they matter and like they are part of an overall community with an interest in the topic around which the event revolves.
Automated, yet personalised, email campaigns, social media engagement, and live streams or Q&A sessions are excellent ways to engage with and involve your audience in preparation for the event.
Building excitement and anticipation
Many people want to invest in building anticipation and excitement, but they're not quite sure how to start. Here are some tools you can utilise to help build excitement around an upcoming event:
- Countdown timers - counting down the time to the event
- Teasers and sneak peeks - behind-the-scenes teasers that showcase some of what people might miss if they didn’t attend.
- Testimonials and success stories - In the case of recurring events, showcasing some testimonials and success stories of attendees from previous events is a useful way to build excitement for future events.
Final thoughts
When you have a small or micro-business, event marketing can be a powerful tool. The key is to use it correctly so you get all the possible benefits, ranging from increased reach and engagement to enlarging your network and improving customer loyalty.
Here at Boost, we have a wealth of experience with marketing events for businesses of all sides. If you’d like to take your marketing efforts to the next level, check out our digital events marketing services and see how we can help you.
