When establishing and growing your event planning business, you can expect to make a few marketing and advertising mistakes. Maybe you chose the wrong platform to promote an event, or you overlooked a typo on a gala invitation. Mistakes in advertising your events and services are just inevitable. However, identifying and correcting them early on can help. Learning from them means avoiding similar mishaps in the future. To help, we’re sharing a few common advertising mistakes that event planners sometimes make with their event marketing and business promotion. Learn from these and see more results.
Ignoring Market Trends
Similar to other industries, event planning industry trends come and go. An event planner who doesn’t stay at the forefront of trends will find themselves falling out of favor with their target market. Advertising services that don’t align with current event trends might make your brand or event look outdated or stale. If your business stays stuck on increasingly older trends, it will become increasingly more difficult to stay relevant with your target market in advertising. Yes, stick with your event niche, but also be adaptable to trending events and services. While you don’t need to chase every trend, knowing what they are and how and when to capitalize on them will create an increased relevancy with your target market.
Lack of Clear Objective
You need to have a clear objective of what you want to accomplish with your event advertising and business. Understanding your primary objective will help you create a roadmap for developing an ad strategy or campaign that works. Goals will guide you in making strategic decisions about where to invest, what market to target, and which messaging to use. You always have a clear objective for each event that you plan. Knowing the purpose and goal of each event keeps your planning team on point. Keep the same approach with your event advertising and marketing.
Speaking to the Wrong Target Audience
Not understanding your target market will result in wasted financial resources. You will spend money on content marketing and paid advertising and miss the mark with your target market. This leads to missed traffic opportunities, high marketing costs, and reduced ROI. Know who you’re looking to attract with your event advertising, and create various personas to guide unique messaging and ad spend.
Not Establishing an Ad Budget
As an event planner, you must be able to manage multiple budgets. You have your operating budget for your entire business. Then, there is your budget for the production of each event. This needs to be managed with the client’s budget. Not managing these budgets can result in overspending in some areas and underspending in others. But don’t overlook allocating a dedicated marketing and advertising budget specifically. Not planning and budgeting for necessary event ads and marketing initiatives results in one of two scenarios. You either overspend, or you cut back on advertising, and both will hurt your events and business.
Overlooking Content Marketing
Today’s digital world requires businesses to have a content marketing plan. This niche type of marketing is a must for developing an online presence that improves search engine optimization (SEO). Ignoring content marketing means your event planning business will have reduced online visibility. This makes it harder for potential new clients to find you or the events you curate. For those who do find your business, a lack of content marketing will hinder your company’s ability to develop trust and authority with them. Moving potential leads through the marketing funnel will cost more, ultimately increasing acquisition costs.
Too Generic with Marketing and Advertising
The purpose of marketing is to establish awareness of your event marketing business, generate new leads, and increase client event bookings. To do all of these, your company’s marketing material should be unique while accurately portraying benefits, core strengths, and unique selling points. Generic marketing will miss these goals because it won’t accurately represent your business. Your target audience won’t be able to differentiate your event planning business from others. This reduces brand recognition. Unique marketing will tell your target market that you can create memorable events for them.
Not Leveraging the Advertising Analytics
The best way to improve your event planning services is to analyze what you did and look for areas of improvement. Ignoring analytics means you do not know what is working and what is not working with your event planning advertising. This leaves you wasting time and resources on areas that could be better spent elsewhere. Not looking at analytics also means you may miss out on identifying key signals that could indicate much larger problems or identify big shifts in event preferences. With regular review of your advertising metrics and event feedback, you will know precisely how to advertise for the next event or initiative.
Setting Unrealistic Expectations
Unrealistic advertising and marketing expectations can lead you to think you’re struggling when, in reality, you aren’t. Failing to meet lofty or too-aggressive goals can negatively impact morale, creativity, and motivation. Instead of having one goal, create a series of goals. Have conservative goals that you can realistically reach and lofty goals that you recognize as your dream scenario. Look for small victories with all your event advertising efforts, and be flexible to grow those into big, long-term wins as you go.
Missing Out on Learning from Event Planning Industry Experts
Networking with other event planning professionals and related industry experts can give you access to an invaluable wealth of advertising and marketing information. The Event Planning Expo 2024 is the premier conference for networking, learning, and growing. From keeping tabs on industry trends to strengthening your brand identity, there is plenty to learn about improving your skills and strategies. Purchase your tickets to The Event Planning Expo 2024 and learn from top professionals in the country!
