Effective strategies for promoting offline events: practical experience
Hello!
My name is Ruslana, I’m a content marketer at Solve Marketing. Today I was talking to our team to find out how to promote offline events.
— What is the purpose of promoting offline events?
Violetta, the Head of PM:
The goal of promoting offline events is to gather not just an interested audience, but people who are really ready to attend the event.
— What are the specifics of promoting offline events?
Andrii, Marketer, Traffic Manager:
The specifics of promoting offline events depend on factors such as:
- venue of the event;
- time of the event;
- ticket price;
- the massiveness of the event.
Therefore, conference marketing should be planned in advance so that as many people as possible learn about and make a decision about the event. For example, if a large-scale conference is about to start in a month, it’s too late to promote it.
Serhii, the Head of Marketing:
Another important factor that affects the specifics of promotion is the theme of the event. There are different types of events:
- entertainment;
- professional;
- sports events;
- cultural
…and others.
To promote an entertainment event, you first need to identify the audience that will be interested in it. To do this, we recommend answering the following questions:
- Who is our target audience?
- Why should they visit this particular venue?
- What makes this place better than others?
- What are the factors that will make the target audience choose the venue for the celebration?
The specifics of promoting professional events will depend on the industry and the fame of the speakers.
For example, if it’s an internet marketing conference, the key factors will be the speakers, the topics of the conference, and the target audience that is interested in it. If Elon Musk agrees to speak on the topic of marketing chips in his projects, this is already a win-win, it will be enough to inform the audience 🙂
— How is online marketing used to promote offline events?
Violetta, the Head of PM:
It is important to understand that you should prepare for the promotion of offline events in advance. We have experience in promoting such an event — it was a congress of anesthesiologists that was to be held when the quarantine restrictions due to the pandemic were just lifted.
The organizers did not know until the last moment whether it would be possible to hold the event, so we started promoting it only two months before the conference. There were two other factors that did not make the situation any easier:
- It was an international congress where people from all over the world were to gather.
- The event was held in the summer, when people had already planned their time for work, vacations, etc.
But despite all the obstacles, we managed to attract the required number of attendees to this offline conference. Read how we did it in our case study.
Here we can conclude that the desire to achieve results and the motivation of the marketing team also plays a significant role 🙂
So, what points are important to consider when promoting offline conferences?
Serhii, the Head of Marketing:
1. If possible, attract the audience from the existing database. If the event has already been held several times, you can reanimate some of the visitors of previous events.
2. Use all possible online marketing tools and channels. Build a lead generation chain from the first touch to further contact with the audience through email marketing and constantly remind them of the event.
In the case of promoting a medical congress through advertising, people were directed to the landing page, where they learned about the terms and values of the event. There, they were immediately included in remarketing lists. And those who left their data were included in email newsletters.
This way, people were constantly in contact with the offer until they decided to attend the event.
3. We recommend that you think about additional incentives that will positively influence a person’s decision.
In our case, we designed a promotion that raffled off gift certificates from the event organizer, the Medvoice.net platform.
There were quite a few certificates, so about 10% of the total number of visitors received them. By the way, this had a very positive impact on the promotion of this platform.
4. When promoting a particular professional event, you need to clearly define its positioning, namely:
- how it differs from other events;
- why it is worth visiting this particular offline event;
- what benefits the visitor will receive;
- and find answers to other questions.
When all the advantages are found and formulated in short theses, it remains to disseminate information among the target audience.
Don’t forget to take care of the places where people will make decisions. It can be a website or a landing page for registration.
Also, the success of offline events depends heavily on the organizers, namely on how well they can create the right atmosphere. Visitors should be comfortable and interested.
If the organizer succeeds in this, it will be much easier to promote each subsequent event. Otherwise, you’ll have to deal with negative feedback on social media.
What is the conclusion?
The promotion of offline events is influenced by many factors: from the type and topic of the event, speakers, ticket price, to the time and place of the event. We recommend planning marketing for offline events in advance.
As professional event managers joke: you need to plan a new conference right after the previous one starts.
Want to get a strategy for promoting your offline event?
