When it comes to hosting an in-person event, whether it is a conference, a lunch and learn, a sponsorship, or whatever makes the most sense for your business, leveraging your digital marketing is a powerful way to generate interest in your event, drive attendance, and even create awareness and connection during the event.
Here are five simple ways to support your in-person event with your digital marketing channels:
Create a Relevant Call-to-Action
The first step for raising awareness and supporting an in-person event through your digital marketing is to decide what exact action you want people to take when they learn about the event.
Do you want them to register to attend? Do you want them to call you to learn more? Whatever the case may be, making that decision first is essential to effectively creating a digital campaign around an in-person event.
Once you’ve decided what action you want them to take, create a compelling CTA that you can use throughout your digital marketing efforts to persuade them towards taking that action.
Feature It On Your Homepage
Your homepage is probably generating the largest amount of visitors to your website. This is an ideal spot to feature your upcoming in-person event. It may mean designing an eye catching CTA graphic that is featured, or including a highly visible link to the event landing page.
It may also be worth your while to identify other high traffic pages to include a visible CTA.
Leverage Your Blog
Depending on the type of event you are having, you may be touching on a wide range of topics you’ve blogged about in the past or you may want to write posts that tease the information those who attend your event will receive.
Not only should you write blogs around these relevant topics, but include a CTA on your blog posts to encourage visitors to take your desired action. And if you’re serious about generating traffic to these blogs, be sure to do your keyword research.
Email Your List
Who would be more interested in your in-person event than those who have opted in specifically to receive information about your business? Your email list is a powerful tool to generate awareness and attendees to your event.
Remember that timing is very important when it comes to email. You want to be sure to provide your list with enough time to make a decision about whether or not they are able to attend, but you also don’t want to invite them so far in advance they completely forget about your event.
Send an email a few weeks in advance inviting them. Then be sure to send a follow-up invite a little closer to the date.
For those who have registered to attend, send them a remind the day before with all of the details they need to know. This simply reminder can improve your attendance.
Promote on Social Media
Social media is a great way to reach your current audience, and have them share the event with their network. Promote your upcoming event on your different social media channels and be sure to direct your following to register or learn more on your website about the event.
During the event, encourage attendees to tweet about what is happening and take photos to share on social media by providing a hashtag. Getting people to talk about your event on social media brings you brand awareness, and provides a way for you to learn about what your attendees thought of the event and what stuck out to them the most.
While digital marketing and in-person events may not seem to naturally go together, they really do work well as a team. Using these methods to create an entire campaign surrounding your upcoming event can be a powerful method for generating results.