How to Make Your Event Impactful: Reputation and Credibility – Marketing is all about spreading the word to the right people at the right time. There isn’t any exact formula that you can follow for that – it’s about having a sense of timing and understanding your market perfectly. Most of the credibility that event promoters or managers gain is based on their past portfolios, experiences and the grandiosity of their ideas. All of this is easier to demonstrate and show today to prospective clients because of the way the internet has evolved.
Everything has become pretty much an open platform. This also means that junk content from not-so-good professionals will flood the space as well. This makes it even more important for you to be able to stand out amongst the crowd and speak in a way that reaches out to your audiences and clients alike.
I call that inspiring content. Content that makes people think, talk, discuss, comment, react, share, and learn.
Many people worry that social applications (like Facebook) only begin to help in marketing events after a critical mass is already achieved in your following. In my own experience I would agree that greater hype is built when more people are talking about it. However, having said that, the powerful thing about social media is that you can attract more people to your page without knowing them. Initially when you’re just starting out, it doesn’t matter how many people you have on your Facebook network, what matters is how you get through to the people who could potentially be interested in attending your events or buying into your launch campaign.
For example, let’s suppose your target audiences for an event are college students and frequent travellers (25-35 age-groups) in Florida. We already know that the market demographics on Facebook are skewed towards college students and professionals. So the potential of your market size is considerably huge. Theoretically, all you need to do is reach out to these people!
I’ve noticed that when events are built into fun activities, they can turn into great powerhouses for generating hype. You can build a page on the social networking applications with customized navigation to get the people involved in the pre-launch stage. You can get them to plan some elements of the event, or have competitions (e.g. poster design competition for the event). These competitions can be linked to real-life prizes like accommodation discounts, free tickets, free drinks etc. To add an additional incentive, you should also be able to show a list of other people who are attending. There has to be an incentive for people to participate and refer you to their friends.
I believe that once you have found your potential customers, they will market your event further for you. In many ways, it depends on how you are branding your event. So, to sum it up, even if you are a small shop or are planning a local club party, you can create movement and traction online if you play your moves well.
