Live Event Marketing: Planning Events of a Lifetime

Live event marketing is one of those things that successful businesses seem to do in their sleep. From the outside, good marketing looks natural and seamless. And if you are just starting in your marketing and live events journey, this is massively frustrating. Know that behind this glossy, socialite appeal, there’s a target audience and impressive marketing strategy. So, if you want to attract thousands - or more - potential attendees, you need to nail down a killer marketing strategy. This guide will help you learn how to do this to plan an event of a lifetime.

With such an online societal presence, there are many avenues to consider when it comes to types of event marketing. Remember that event ideas attract customers, so you want to advertise while encouraging potential customer engagement. This means choosing advertising mediums that you know your target audience is using. This may be online event marketing - especially if you run hybrid events. Or this is leafleting or using an existing website, perhaps adding a dedicated event landing page.

You need to consider these little details to succeed in marketing your live event. We’ll cover all the basics of strategizing for live events, and you’ll be a pro in no time.

What Is a Live Event Marketing Strategy?

First things first, what exactly is a live event marketing strategy? This type of marketing strategy is a plan that helps you to run a successful live event. In this plan, you can cover different types of event marketing - like Facebook ads, influencer collabs, leafleting, and billboards. But with a strategy, all of these mini strategies come under one large umbrella; this is your master plan.

When planning a live event, picture a marketing strategy like a chess master at a chessboard. If you want to win, you need an idea about tactics and where to move your pieces. The better you move your pieces, the more it impacts your likelihood of winning - e.g., having a successful live event. Some people even go as far as to say strategy entirely dictates your business success. A particularly impactful quote reads: ‘Strategy determines the direction and scope of an organization over the long term’. We like this quote because it emphasizes the potential long-term impact of short-term success.

Now that we are clear on a marketing strategy, let’s get clear on live events. Live events can be in-person, online, or hybrid. Nowadays, there’s as much of an online target audience as there is an offline target audience. So it is essential to carefully consider what sort of event will best suit your customers. Of course, there are benefits for each type of event. However, online events are cheaper to organize, so consider that when choosing.

A live event can be anything from a pink party to a ticketed online seminar. And with your marketing strategy, you ensure you have as many potential attendees from your target audience as possible.

Why Live Events Are Important in Business

Live event marketing might be what attracts your target audience. But what about the live events themselves? Why are they so important in business? Live events are super important in business because they encourage customer engagement in a fun and light-hearted way. The best way to attract customers that are part of your target audience is through an event they’ll love. Attendees will connect with your brand more easily and feel shared ground and interests. This is really important for building solid customer-business relationships.

Live events are especially effective in places like bars - where you rely on socializing and fun-having for good profit turnover. For example, you could hold a pizza-making event or cocktail-making class with a target audience interested in Italian food. This is also the case for businesses with a target audience interested in a particular academic sphere. For instance, with a target audience passionate about climate change, you could host online events and debates with industry experts. It is essential to consider what events would appeal to and cater to your target audience.

These events might seem like short-term investments, but they can shape how customers perceive your business long-term. You could even incorporate them into a type of loyalty program. And since intermittent reinforcement is stronger than continuous reinforcement, it doesn’t matter if you host events occasionally. You can learn loads about the loyalty of psychology as business owners through live events. When you use them properly, live events can be a super valuable tool for your business.

Why You Should Invest in Live Event Marketing

So, why should you invest in live event marketing? Simply put, you need high numbers of potential attendees to cover profit margins and gain adequate customer engagement. With these potential attendees, you will have the benefits of the event long-term. Without marketing, how will these potential attendees even know your event is running? The premise of marketing is getting the message out so your event runs smoothly and with high attendance. This means you will only get all the benefits we discussed above if you do the marketing side. As a whole, though, there are two main reasons why you should care:

• You don’t want to make a loss.

One primary reason is that if your live event flops, you could actually make a loss. To host a live event, you’ll pay for beverages, venue rental, and music equipment rentals. When running a live event, you spend a lot upfront. If you don’t make enough profit, these expenses become a loss. You need to know your live event venue’s profit margins. Knowing that live events could cost rather than benefit your business should be enough to make you invest in marketing.

• You want to succeed.

Lastly, you want to succeed. You want to attract thousands of potential attendees from your target audience to attract long-term customer engagement. And if you’re going to attract all of these people, you need to invest in types of event marketing. Marketing for live events is cause and effect. You’ll get the scale of benefits you get from the scale of marketing you put in.

6 Ways You Can Carry Out Live Event Marketing

So, what are the best ways to carry out live event marketing? What strategies actually work? This section will give you all you need to know about different types of event marketing to put into practice. Whether you make a website or collaborate with influencers, these strategies will get your event on the map.

1. Build an Event Website for Live Event Marketing

An event website is one of the most official and well-respected types of event marketing. With a website, you have all the information that potential attendees need in one place. And you can have a dedicated event landing page to greet people when they first arrive at your website. Most people can quickly figure out how to build a website on WordPress. You should allow an evening (three to four hours) to create a basic event website yourself as a business owner.

The most challenging part is actually reaching people with a website. A website is immediately an excellent place to direct people. For instance, provide QR codes that they can scan to access more information on your website. But if you want people to learn about your website first, you must invest in an SEO strategy. If you plan to reuse your website for regular events, investing in a long-term SEO strategy is worthwhile. This way, your website will appear on Google when potential attendees search relevant keywords.

2. Contact Influencers

Next up is contacting influencers. Influencers are social media figures with many followers - practically marketing on legs. If you can invite or collaborate with influencers, you can take advantage of their substantial following to reach wider audiences. This is perfect for investing in wider reach and building brand awareness. It also works well for attracting your target audience, as you can choose influencers targeting the audience you want to attract.

Reaching out to influencers is something you perfect over time. It can be daunting initially, so check out these message templates for contacting influencers with invites and collab requests.

3. QR Codes for Live Event Marketing

QR codes are another helpful tool for live event marketing. As mentioned above, QR codes can direct people to a website or sign-up form. QR codes are quick and easy, and you can put them everywhere. If you run a bar or restaurant, put them by the counter or on walls in seating areas or toilets. Anywhere customers go, your QR codes will benefit from being accessible.

QR codes are particularly brilliant because they prompt instant action. Rather than just providing live event details, you can encourage potential attendees to scan a code. By scanning codes, you could get people to sign up for email updates or even a register of interest.

4. Paid Social Media Ads

This type of event marketing is more of an initial investment. You partner with social media platforms like Facebook and pay a small fee for promotion on that platform. The platform then promotes your event through ads to relevant users - using cookies to gauge who is relevant. This is effective if you plan to repeat events and advertise over a long period. It’s one of those things that are worth the initial investment because you will be running similar events for a while.

5. Videos for Live Event Marketing

If you are on top of the marketing trends for 2023 and 2024, you’ll know that videos are here to stay. Every social media platform is using videos - usually with reels. And if you really want to blow your live event marketing out of the park, you need promotional videos. These videos make perfect social media content. If you go viral, you can post videos as reels and rack up thousands of views in seconds, even millions.

Videos are one of the best types of event marketing that you can use. You pair it with social media marketing, and BAM—instant results. There is just such a broad reach that you guarantee yourself fast results.

6. Have a Clear Ticketing Process

This is an important one. You should always have a straightforward ticketing process - you want your marketing to be actionable. Ticketing should be easy for potential attendees to complete. It should be accessible from all different marketing strategies, which is easiest done by pasting links to booking platforms. If you want to go one step further, have an early bird registration program with discounts.

Final Thoughts: Can You Succeed Without Live Event Marketing?

With all your new information about live event marketing, you can answer this question yourself. It is possible to succeed without marketing for your live events. However, you won’t reach anywhere near the success levels that you would by investing in event marketing. You’ll also risk making a loss if you spend a lot on hosting your event and don’t secure profit margins. Investing in marketing is critical to substantial success and is necessary for business success.

Are you ready to invest in live event marketing? One of the best ways to market live events is through technology. So, let’s refocus on technology like WiFi marketing as one of your types of event marketing. This strategy is especially effective for anyone offering in-business WiFi to customers, like restaurants, hotels, and bars. You can utilize WiFi as an advertising tool to drive potential attendees to your events and build long-term customer engagement. We can tell you more if you want to learn more about harnessing your event marketing powers through WiFi.

Beambox provides the most effective WiFi platform so that businesses can do things like market their live events. We utilize multi-strategy approaches to keep profits high and help attract potential attendees who are part of your target audience. Start your Beambox free trial today. We’ll help you to market your live events through one of the most underrated marketing tools - your WiFi.

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