Did you know that the advertising and marketing markets in the United States are estimated at more than $223 billion? As markets grow worldwide, many people are interested in jumping into event marketing. But how can you excel as an event planner in such a popular market?
If you’re curious about joining the event industry, we’re happy to help guide you. We’ve put together everything you need to know for your leap into becoming an event planner. Read on to learn about the industry, the best strategies and solutions to adopt, and more.
What Is Event Marketing?
To begin, what does event marketing entail? Anyone can safely assume that event marketing is a self-explanatory title. But there’s more to the industry than posting an advertisement for an event and dusting your hands off.
Event marketing is the process of developing an exhibit, presentation, or display. These exhibits are most commonly formed to promote a product, cause, organization, or service.
Event marketing is useful in all industries. A non-profit charity may use event marketing to hold an exposition to raise awareness for their cause. Similarly, a for-profit business may hold an event to attract new clientele.
Events occur both online and offline. They often leverage in-person engagement to connect with new people.
Why Bother?
Hosting an event is often an expensive, time-consuming endeavor. Is it worth your time to have a professional event planner?
Event marketing can help your organization stand out from the crowd. You’ll find new channels to connect with your customers and clients. Additionally, you can attract new talent to join your team or advance your networking.
Event marketing is also a good strategy for long-term tasks. You’ll collect data and personalization from the crowd that you attract. If an event fails, you can move forward with knowledge of what to avoid.
Whether you’re hosting a small online presentation or a multi-nation trade show, event marketing is critical. A skilled event planner can make these events a core part of your business.
Benefits of Event Marketing
We understand some of the upsides, but what are the true benefits? Event marketing is a great boon to your company.
You’ll be able to build brand presence throughout the event’s lifetime. Your company will be present before, during, and after the event.
People that don’t go to the event will still hear about it, helping your advertisement. Those that attend the event will have a more thorough understanding of your company. As your event remains in their mind, your company’s awareness is increased from start to end.
You’ll also generate more leads for your business. These new opportunities can help you grow your business exponentially. Capitalizing on these opportunities can help make your next event more successful.
Many events are put in place to promote a specific product. Launch parties for a new product are a common example of this. Turning your advertisement into an event helps you connect your product to your audience.
The Best Event Marketing Strategies
Now that we understand the benefits of event marketing, we can look at some of the best event marketing strategies.
Event planning has similar characteristics regardless of the industry. A wedding planner will use many of the same techniques someone would use to plan an executive retreat. Working with a thorough understanding of the event industry will help you apply your knowledge.
Here are five of the most effective event marketing strategies.
Find a Niche
When event planning, most people look for experts in their field. Would you hire an airplane mechanic to fix your car? Similarly, many people would hesitate to hire a corporate event planner for their wedding planning.
As such, you’ll want to find a niche and grow your audience there. Consider what’s a useful and helpful niche for you to be in.
For example, think of where you live. Do you live in an area that has a great deal of corporate offices? There’s a high chance you could make a living by leaning into this industry.
Not everywhere will fit this niche, but you can adjust it depending on your surroundings. To use wedding planning for another example, this is a great field if you live somewhere people use as a destination wedding.
What about if you live somewhere without either option? Think of what’s a popular industry where you live and situate yourself in that niche.
A Las Vegas event marketer may focus on promoting local businesses or throwing parties. These events are as valid as any other and hold many of the same characteristics.
You can see how versatile and flexible the skillset of an event planner is. Conduct research on the area you live in or intend to operate in. By doing so, you can make a more informed choice on what niche to join.
Are you unsure of what niche to join or hesitant to “shoehorn” yourself into an industry? Don’t feel like you need to make this choice at the start of your career.
As you plan, you’ll work with more individuals and experience new industries. You can use these learning experiences to adjust your career in the direction you prefer. While a niche is a great place to start, there’s no problem in growing your company to more industries.
Network Thoroughly
Speaking of working with more individuals, networking is arguably the most important factor in event marketing. Most industries will focus heavily on networking. But what does the term refer to?
Networking takes place when you interact with others in your industry. These may be customers, potential clients, competitors, or coworkers.
During such an interaction, you often exchange information or services. As your network grows, you’ll have a group of people you can contact when necessary.
As a result, these people will also have you in mind when they need an event planner. You can grow your audience in the event industry by marketing yourself through networking.
If you’ve found a niche, networking is critical compared to a broad industry. Should you have a network that spans several industries, you’ll often enjoy a steady supply of work.
But in a niche, there are often fewer people that may want your services. Primarily, this is because a niche is often a smaller, more exact group of people. It isn’t that you’ve chosen the wrong niche; simply that there are fewer people to be customers.
Networking can help you grow out of that niche. Meanwhile, having a thorough network throughout your niche will help you become a more notable face in the industry.
In short, never underestimate the importance of networking as an event planner. You’ll need to grow your audience and professional connections if you hope to expand your presence.
Ever-Present Marketing
A critical part of expanding your presence is through marketing. But how does an event market itself?
It sounds redundant, but you’re an industry professional. You’ll need to grow awareness of yourself and your services so that your customers know to seek you out.
Your network will aid you in this. Word of mouth is one of the most effective marketing tools, and your customers are certain to talk. People that attend your events are also likely to seek you out, impressed by your excellent work.
Past this, there are several steps you should take to market yourself. Consider creating a professional portfolio that you can use to represent your business.
You also should practice outreach programs. Reaching out to potential customers is a good way to put yourself front and center.
Another good choice is to create a style that people can identify with easily. Having a solid, identifiable “point of view” is a good way to have clients pick you out from the industry.
In some cases, this could be as simple as what sort of welcome gifts or parting packages you give. Breakout sessions, interaction, tone, and even color schemes are all good ways to show off your style. It’s up to you to pick how you’d like to represent yourself.
Having such a style can make clients and customers pick you out without you so much as attending the event. Such marketing is always present and can grow your brand awareness passively.
Help Manage the User Journey
There’s a constant discussion around awareness, networking, and the search for new clients. Visibility is critical, but it’s not the only factor you’ll need to focus on.
Customers have a “journey” through their process of picking an event planner. What their journey consists of depends on each customer.
For example, a corporate business may have a list of event planners that they rely on. It’s often difficult to break onto this list, as a large business will often have several backups. Smaller companies may have a stricter budget that makes hiring an event marketing professional more daunting.
The journey typically involves some form of the following steps:
- Imagining the event
- Researching and visualizing the event
- Searching for event planners that fit the pictured designs
- Cutting down based on budget, niche, expertise, location, and time
- Contacting event planners they approve of
- Enjoying a wonderful event
- Considering the event planner chosen for future events
How can you help during this journey? Being present at such a time will help you become one of the event planners that the individual seeks out. By helping to guide them through the journey, you become a more reputable and reliable voice.
One way is to make your presence one that can help them with the earlier steps. They’ll have an easier time imagining their event if your clear style sits in their mind.
Providing a range of flexible services can help with other steps. If they’re concerned about their budget and funds, your flexible pricing can help ease their worries. The same is true if you’re able to operate in a wider location and reach them farther away.
Finally, make yourself easy to reach. Clearly label your business email, phone number, and more on your portfolio. If the client has an easy time reaching you, they’ll feel relief at not needing to jump through hoops.
Think of what services you can provide and how you can help the client on their journey. By staying present and helpful during their journey, you can cement yourself in their mind as a trustworthy voice. Should they hire a different event planner, you’ll be in their mind as a strong alternative in the future.
Develop Your Online Community
Networking, presence, visibility, outreach where will you conduct all of these vital tasks from? The best place you can operate is with an online community.
If your only presence is in an office building downtown, you’re dramatically harming your business. People are less likely to seek you out if they have to physically come to you during their busy days.
With an online community, you can reach out and build your brand. You’ll also have somewhere that clients can easily access to reach you.
Developing a website is the best way to accomplish this. With your niche and demographic in mind, you can develop a website that fits your audience. If you have an online presence, such as a website or social media accounts, navigate to the page and consider the following:
- What is the first thing your website displays?
- Can you see the name of the business without having to scroll or search?
- How easy is it to contact someone on the page?
- Is the website a chunky wall of text that turns away readers?
- How many images or interactable media are on the page?
- How clear is the navigation for the website?
- Does the website help direct customers to other areas or social media channels?
- Is the event planner’s voice coming through?
With this list, you can see why a standalone website is better than a social media page. You’re often at the mercy of the platform when it comes to designing a social media page. A Facebook group or Instagram collection will look like any other aesthetically, for example.
A website is much more customizable. However, you shouldn’t rest with only one option or the other.
Instead, consider having both a social media presence and a website. Use your social media following to direct your clientele toward your website. Similarly, ensure your website has links to your social media pages.
There are plenty of ways to improve your online visibility. Think of what can most benefit your business and develop your strategies from there.
Tips to Excel at Event Marketing
With the best strategies and solutions now known, it’s important to know how you’ll execute them. Here are a few tips on how you can accomplish the necessary strategies for becoming an event planner.
Find the Right Software
In today’s information-driven age, there are tools that can help with any task. There’s no reason to make things more difficult for yourself by not using the best tools.
There are plenty of software options that can help you stay organized. Think of what tools you most need and what would be most helpful. If you’re using a website, some of these tools may already be featured on the site.
For example, use software that’s effective for staying organized with multiple events. You’ll also want an organizational system for the tasks relating to each event. Timetables, ease of communication, and ready-to-use contact information are all critical.
As you work, you’ll find new spaces in your career where you need a better tool. It’s a good idea to communicate with your network and peers to see what software and tools they use. Doing so can help you discover new software and programs that will help you execute your event marketing strategies.
Seek Your Demographic
Many people will begin their event services career under the impression that customers will appear over time. The old adage of “if you build it, they will come” does not apply to the event industry.
Your competition is fierce and your demographic already has several options. How will you set yourself apart from the competition?
One way is to seek out your demographic and interact with them. A friendly face is a trustworthy and reliable one when it comes to a professional contact.
Your social media presence will help with this. Interact with others in a hospitable space so that they associate you with the industry.
Continued Education and Training
Starting your career doesn’t mean you’re done learning. Once you enter the event industry, you should continue training courses and adding to your toolkit.
One skill set that many event planners lack when they start their careers is marketing. Some event marketing professionals are more caught up in planning events and forget about marketing themselves and their events.
To cover this weakness, make sure you’re familiar with marketing techniques and strategies. Consider taking a class or workshop on marketing so that you can add the skillset to your arsenal. While this feels like a minor bonus, understanding how marketing works will dramatically improve your performance.
Expand Your Reach
How will you reach your demographic? The best way is to expand your reach beyond the demographic.
If you intend to grow larger than a single niche, you should begin reaching out as soon as you can realistically do so. Consider reaching outside of your demographic and drawing in clients that you can support that don’t fit the niche.
As your brand awareness grows, you’ll also grow in your demographic. However, instead of being a face solely in that demographic, you’ll also be a face in the larger community.
An important step is to gauge what you can realistically handle. If you grow your reach too large too soon, you’ll find yourself overwhelmed with work.
Should this result in your event planning not being as effective, you’ll likely lose customers. In severe cases, people may not trust you with their events. Even worse, these people will likely warn others about their poor experience.
Grow, but only so far as you can do so. Be careful not to stretch yourself too thin.
Direct Involvement
Another way to make yourself a more reputable figure is to show a face at your events. Many event planners will take the role of a director or organizer. By staying behind the scenes, you’re free to help direct things in the manner you organized them.
But in doing so, you fail to personally meet the attendees of the event. As such, many of them will enjoy your event without knowing much about you.
By interacting with them directly, you help them put a face to the event they’re enjoying. If they’re potential customers, they’ll have a better idea of who you are when they consider hiring you. Doing so helps you become a recognizable and trustworthy face instead of a name on a packet.
Study Competitors
Finally, you should study what your competitors and peers are doing. You’ll never be the only event planner in a city, but that doesn’t mean you should resent your competition.
Competitors and peers are often great networking resources. They can help you find new tools, techniques, and also what you should avoid during operation.
Don’t hesitate to attend a competitor’s event when possible. See how they carry out their tasks and find which solutions and strategies you can adopt.
Mastering the Event Industry
Event marketing is a robust and bustling industry that you may struggle to find a voice in. As an event planner, work to increase brand awareness and reputation in the event industry. Don’t hesitate to collaborate with peers and competitors and create adaptable event marketing strategies that you can rely on.
For more information on event services and succeeding in the industry, be sure to contact us. We look forward to seeing you at The Event Planner Expo with keynote speaker, Gary Vaynerchuk, get tickets for you and your team!
