Eventifier Blog

Social media is now indispensable to planners and marketers for disseminating information about events and meetings, interacting with attendees, and creating engagement with a target audience.

With the star of new tools like Snapchat on the rise and the bright future of VR established, here are our thoughts about where social media for events is headed in 2016.

Go the Snapchat Way

With the burgeoning growth of Snapchat, it’s clear that video will constitute the highest consumed content on the internet and most of it will be on your phone - 69% to be precise. 

Quite a number. Now, Snapchat hasn’t released its API yet and it doesn’t seem like they will anytime soon.

But they have taken a step in that direction by reaching out to ad agencies to get a feel for what they would expect from an API, hypothetically of course. 

Well. 

Also, with Facebook and Instagram having had significant success with their APIs, it’s only a matter of time.

What Events and Brands have to realize is - whether it is Facebook live, or live streaming on Twitter (periscope) - their fans dig “behind the scenes” big time. 

Get their celebrity ambassadors to talk openly like they naturally would; spare your viewers the tinsel town rah rah - and you’ve got your viewers engaged.

Case in point, the Live coverage of the Oscars had a global viewership of 36.6 million. Let that sink in for a moment. Pause. Now go “Holy Moly!!!”. 

If that does not establish Snapchat as the number 1 tool for a marketer in 2016 nothing else will.

And because we don’t know how VR is going to influence the video marketing scene that well yet, it’s comically undiscerning to write it off.

Manage your Social Media Feed

But don’t go crazy while doing it. It’s only natural that being a big event management company, you would have multiple social accounts and gazillion interactions to crawl from everywhere.

Let alone the prospect of sifting through them to adjudge a winner of a contest you’re engaging your audience with. 

Eventifier helps you manage all the social media chatter your event attracts on the myriad of platforms, and brings it all in one place in a brilliant looking wall.

One that you can place on display on the large screen at your venue. 

An ever changing dynamic social hub that keeps updating new interactions users make with your event specific hashtag. 

A unique hashtag with which the target audience relates your event.

It could be anything - from a conference, a meetup, an in-stadium fans’ engagements (UGC) during a football match for that matter. 

You can project the social media hub in a grid layout or a custom display using your discretion. It’s brilliant. And indispensable.

Easily shareable content is the best content

The number one rule in in the post iPhone era is - make your user’s life easier. Spoil them. And don’t ever make them work. 

Especially if you want them to share your event/brand related content. Make it as simple as a duck-soup Click To Tweet.

Knowing this, we’ve made Eventifier’s live wall a walk in the park for the brand (or the event marketer), to re-share (retweet) a user generated content through their social media account - from the moderated wall itself. 

A repository of dynamic tweets and facebook posts. Ready to be shared.

So when you spot a great post from one of your fans or attendees, you can repost it from the live wall itself - with just a click. 

You can easily browse through and pick up an intuitive question that one of your audience members want to ask the panel of speakers at the conference.

Fashion photographer, Chris Floyd said, “Part of me takes my hat off to Burberry and says that’s clever, but the photographer side of me says for god’s sake.”

A couple of weeks ago, Burberry announced it was inviting Brooklyn Beckham, David Beckham’s eldest son, to shoot its latest fragrance campaign. This left fashion professionals and Leading Photographers fuming. After all, they had to yield their front row seat to a 16 year old.

Beckham’s appointment is an oddity for the more seasoned, old timers of the trade. But in the world of brand marketing, in 2016, it is anything but. Major brands are leveraging social media celebrities more frequently now, than ever before. And Mr. Beckham, with his cool 6 million followers on instagram, is one.

There is no bucking this trend as far as new age marketing is concerned. The huge following, these social media stars have accrued, accounts for a significant amount of attention - that of millions of users at a time. (Call them stars, celebrities or influential users, as you will.) Brands have begun taking cognizance of this chunk of attention readily available to them through these power users of instagram and twitter among other platforms. And they’re capitalizing on it.

They are riding the coattails of the most popular users, and working out deals that benefit both parties.

There’s a great video by Chatalash where she talks about sponsorship and how she makes money through brand promotions and endorsements. She says it depends a lot on the Ratio - someone with a million subscribers but only a few thousand views will generate less revenues than someone with 400,000 subscribers but a 100,000 views on each video.

Liz Eswein (@NewYorkCity), an NYC based instagrammer, says she charges companies $1 for every like a sponsored photo receives in addition to a separate charge for the photos themselves.

There was a huge furore regarding AI replacing millions of jobs in the market. Well, 5 million jobs, to be precise. Every bit of the industrial complex that we’ve grown to take for granted in now being disrupted. How can marketing and advertising, industries arguably gone stale over time, be spared?

We’ve seen a glimpse of the future. But there’s more in store where that came from. We ought to accept the power of social influencers or just concede that we’re the Luddites and adjust.

2015 was another breakthrough year for us. We got acquired by the market giant Bookmyshow. Joining forces with them helped us scale up even more efficiently over the months. Their vast experience and clout in the market bodes well for any nascent startup in realising its objectives. And though not nascent, we still are functioning the way we always were - like an independent startup.

We had a bunch of stopovers at major events and conferences across the world and had quite a few revealing conversations with our potential clients and market bigshots. It was eye opening to see what we were working for so tirelessly over the years and what kind of a need, in the market, there is out there.

We’ve come a long way ahead from our initial days as recent graduates dallying with an inchoate idea we’d come up with. We have realised that and a whole lot more. Our team has grown bigger and so has our user base. In a few weeks we look forward to releasing our new product that we’ve been working on, religiously.

There are some major highlights from the year that has passed and bringing them back is such an emotional experience. We’ve connected with so many events that we have tweeted about. There must be thousands of events professionals who’ve tweeted to and about us as well. It’s a strange realisation how far we’ve come from our first encounter with startups in a hackathon in Chennai.

We have aggregated 15000 events and 21 million contributions over various social media channels in association with the events. Our user base has grown to about 6000 strong with a majority of them being paid customers. It’s an encouraging launchpad to have behind us for an even better 2016.

We keep tinkering with our product to increase its expediency as we deem fit. We’re always on the lookout to add more exciting features that would make it more efficient and user friendly. We strive to give you an ever stronger and faster product in 2016 - one that you’ve grown to use and love over the years.

We are excited to announce the release of our new product Social Media Jockey. SMJockey - a single platform that enables brands to oversee their Social Media engagements across multiple platforms. We’ve worked on it with renewed enthusiasm over the past few months and would now like you to be a part of our new journey. Here’s to an even more productive 2016 together.

Wishing you all the best.

All social media engagements from TC Disrupt, London 2015 - powered by eventifier

The event of this week is from London, UK. TechCrunch Disrupt is the world’s leading authority in debuting revolutionary startups, introducing game-changing technologies, and discussing what’s top of mind for the tech industry’s key innovators.

Entrepreneurs on the Startup Alley are a part of really exciting startups, each at different stages of development. Some were funded and had customers, others were earlier stage and still looking for both. (TechCrunch Disrupt twitter handle - @TechCrunch, #TCDisrupt)

The winners of this event’s Startup Battlefield was an artificial intelligence music composition technology Jukedeck. It’s a platform that allows its users to create custom, cheap, royalty free music for their videos/podcasts for free.

There isn’t much to differentiate between two events focusing on the same market vertical. So the marketers’ meetup you’re about to organize is, probably, very similar to another event about to be held by your competitor. How do you go about rising above this crowd of look alike events?

Here’s an answer - monitor your event more effectively than the rest.

Select a #Hashtag

The event and your monitoring efforts are dependent on a unique hashtag (check at hastags.org). You should have a hashtag people relate with and would readily include in their tweets. That helps you scrape all relevant tweets, blogs, facebook posts and other content that your fans share about your event.

Curate Content

Include all the blog posts, photos, tweets, videos and infographics to build traffic and engage your audience. The hashtag, we mentioned above, would enable you to curate all relevant content easily. You can get hold of even more interactions through search streams tracking your event’s official hashtag and relevant keywords. Use Eventifier to help you with the curation.

Social Media Monitoring Tools

Use these tools to collect all the user generated content related to your event. You can use aggregation tools like Eventifier or Hootfeed to display interactions in real time. This content pool enables you to effectively reach out to more attendees than you previously could -

You can address as many questions, tweeted out by attendees during the event, as you like.

You can share the best tweets and photos sent by people attending the conference/webinar online.

You can redress any grievances your attendees may have regarding problems with registering for the event or to gain valuable feedback from attendees to improve upon your efforts next time.

Build a Conversation with your audience

Signpost all the necessary details - like the event itinerary, information about food and free drinks, guest speakers worth the wait and other things. Don’t make your users search for information regarding your event - make it readily available.

Live Stream

Make an effort and stream interesting bits of your event. If you aren’t actively live stream, now is the time to begin. Video is not the future - it’s the present - embrace it. Go and stream your videos on your Facebook, Twitter (periscope), Instagram or Vine accounts.

All social media engagements from AU Las Vegas 2015 - powered by eventifier

The event of this week is from Las Vegas, USA. AU (Autodesk University) began as an event bringing together designers, architects and engineers to come together and share practical tips for getting the most from software.

Today, AU is worldwide, with conferences happening from São Paulo to Sydney throughout the year. The addition of AU online has enabled anyone to access great learning content and talks from conference events from around the world. (AU Las Vegas twitter handle - @autodesk, #AU2015)

The fact that they’ve brought industry bigwigs from so many verticals, viz. manufacturing, gaming (VFX), film and 3D Printing under one roof is a testament to the event’s diversity. That makes an AU conference a must visit for just about everyone. In case you can’t make it though, head over to AU online and check it out. As AU themselves put it, let the learning begin.

We have seen glimpses of the future of marketing across all social media platforms. All these shifts prompt social media marketers to be constantly on the lookout. One subtle change in facebook’s ad layouts causes major brands to completely overhaul their outreach tactics. Some of these changes haven’t yet been opened for public use but will be - in 2016.

Video marketing

Facebook has aggressively gone about its native video. The sometimes unfavorably reviewed auto-play feature has led big media houses and brands to create short videos with captions throughout. So even if it’s muted, users can still be engaged into viewing their content (with auto-play switched on).

YouTube, despite being shortchanged by facebook, has been going stronger than ever. Top advertisers have increased spending on their video marketing efforts and YouTube is the prime platform that they are targeting. There is an increasing number of YouTube channels with a million+ subscribers and brands seek to promote their products through them.

Twitter’s ‘moments’ got its first advertising moment with an entry from the movie Creed - a reboot of the Rocky franchise. An ever increasing list of popular brands and celebrities are embracing the moments to reach out to their millions of existing fans.

Others efforts like Snapchat’s ‘Discover’ and Twitter’s dalliance with the limited released ‘Buy Button’ have also given us an idea of things to come.

Engaging with Photos and Gifs

Instagram has a 400 million strong monthly user base. The brands have an opportunity to harness all options provided by the platform. Gifs are becoming more and more famous - aiding bloggers tell more interactive stories and brands portray themselves better to their users.  

Live Video Streaming

Twitter’s fast acquisition of Periscope signaled that this quickly uprising form of mobile video was something to pay attention to, and marketers are working overtime to fit the platform and its competitors like Meerkat into social strategies. Right now, Periscope is pulling far ahead, with Ten Million Accounts With 40 Years Of Watch Time Daily, yet Meerkat still has cornered the market on celebrity influencers.

James Whittaker is a Xoogler, Technical Evangelist at Microsoft and the author of 5 well received tech books. In one of his popular articles on Medium, he bemoans a lack of effective connectivity even on Twitter. The above tweet, he writes, garnered zero replies. Not one Live Music event organizer caught wind of this. And an avid enthusiast was left to scour the internet.

He writes in his Medium blog post, "... hundreds of Twitter accounts self-identify as live music venues located in these same cities (Boston and NYC). My intent to purchase tickets originated in Twitter. The venues that can resolve that intent exist in Twitter. Buyer? Check. Seller? Check. Twitter’s move? They ignore them both. Twitter is one large gathering of buyers and sellers who must go elsewhere to actual do business together! All together now … that’s stupid!”

How can event organizers be better equipped to discover such glaring Points of Sale?

With the help of Content Aggregation and Monitoring.

What is it?

It’s a tool you can use to aggregate all the engagements and buzz around your event over all the social media platforms. For instance, every tweet with your event’s hashtag, specific keywords or mentions will be pulled up from the web and shown to you. And the same with facebook posts and instagram photos.

Why use it in 2016?

Events have traditionally been dependent on user reviews and recommendations throughout history. Whether it’s movies or music festivals people throng to these places based on a strong word of mouth marketing.

Content aggregation gives you a sneak peek into what the users are talking about. It gives you actionable insights into what content is relevant with your target audience and what brings in more engagement.

Event organizers have been guilty of pushing event details in a post across all social media platforms and praying everyone sees it. That works for big events with famous speakers or rock concerts. The others need to put in an extra bit of effort to be discovered.

Event Organizers have to work exactly like content creators in the aspect of catering to their prospective patrons. Their work does not end at posting the details of the event, viz. time, date and venue on their social media accounts - it begins there.

How to use it effectively?

Pre Event - check the buzz your social media activity and content creates. It will be a forecast of the attendance you can expect in your event. More buzz would generally mean greater popularity.

During Event - you can use it during webinars/live TV shows to showcase the engagement your event is generating - prompting more users to tune in; You can use it as an effective tool for Q&A sessions with a guest speaker. Users can ask their questions through their respective twitter accounts and it would show on the live wall along with the retweets and mentions.

                       Big Data Week’s Live Wall - by Eventifier

After Event - measure your content’s popularity - if it worked well with your target user base or not - whether that content is usable for next event. It would give you an idea of what content is effective and what is not. If your content marketing pulled in a huge number of users, it worked.

All social media engagements from Big Data Week - powered by eventifier

The event of this week is from London, UK. If you're not serious about data - you're missing out. When James Bond's arch enemy owns a data centre in the middle of the desert in Morocco, it's time even you start taking Big Data seriously.  

Big Data Week is one of the most unique global platforms of interconnected community events focusing on the social, political and technological impacts of Big Data (twitter - @bigdataweek, #bdw15).

The festival connects a number of global cities through locally hosted meetups, events, networking functions, data visualization demos, debates, discussion and hackathons. Here are the top twitter handles during the event.

                      Big Data Week Leaderboard - by Eventifier.

They're working to connect communities of specialists from various backgrounds – Data Science, Data Technology, Data Visualization and Data Business – across major industry sectors: Media and Entertainment, Health and Science, Financial Sector, Retail and FMCG, Public and Government, and Social and Personal. That's the entire Human Civilization pretty much, don't you think?

Our life is a huge celebration and it’s always better to have more people come to the party. The best organized events are where everyone gets their fill of food and drinks and goes home all contented and happy. To pull off such an event the organizers have to be on their toes, catering to every single person’s needs. In the world that we live in, we have to be in control of our social media activity and the engagements our events generate. We should know what our users say about us online. And you need precision tools for that. Tools like these :-

Bitly - The days of long gibberish URLs are gone. If you’re still embedding those lengthy links into your facebook and twitter posts or your blogs, stop right now. Don’t be a dinosaur here. Use bitly to shorten your links so that they look nice. But that’s not all bitly does for you. It encodes assets with proprietary code that empowers marketers to gather detailed insights on audience reach and engagement ( helps you measure ROI.) Even if you’re not a marketer it’s always good to have more insight.

CoSchedule - In order for your audience to be abreast of your latest events and developments you need to post regular updates on your social media profiles and blogs. For that you need a calendar to define how frequently and at what times you would post. Everything becomes more efficient with a well laid out plan and a schedule.If you’re clueless regarding how to go about building a content calendar on your own, CoSchedule will provide you with guiding templates. So that you can get the hang of it.

Buffer - Combine Bitly’s link shortening and social media analytics, and CoSchedule’s content scheduling - that’s Buffer for you. If you’re not hell bent on having a whole month’s content pre-planned then buffer can schedule all your posts you have in queue. It will give you a great analysis data on shares, likes and comments over all your platforms. And you can connect multiple accounts to remotely share your content from one place (Buffer) - Social (Facebook and Twitter) and professional (Linkedin).

Periscope - If you ever imagine what the near future of content sharing has in store for us - Live Video Streaming is what it probably tastes like. With over 40 mind boggling ‘years’ of video being watched per day, it’s fair to say that Periscope has to be in the back of every content creator’s mind. You could use a live video stream to engage with your audience - football teams get the star players to a Q&A session with fans - that’s huge! Actors, brand ambassadors and famous CEOs engage with followers over hangouts - promoting their new releases. What better conversations can you have with your target audience than over a Live Stream. Video Streaming has finally become too mainstream to avoid - everyone is now a filmmaker. You should become one too.

Social media is somewhat under explored by the ISL teams and ISL itself. A more incisive approach to it and a more regular one as well - is the need of the hour. The event could turn into a major part of the Indian culture. Perhaps a saturday game could become everyone's weekend getaway a few years from now. But an engaging social media is essential to lead us steadily towards that future.

The Indian Super league was 4th on the list of highest attended leagues in the world. They're only behind England, Spain and Germany having surpassed Italy, France and Brazil. Football crazy Brazil too, mind you. Now these are leagues with decades of history and a plethora of megastars to boast. What the ISL lacks in the technical aspects, its fans make up for with their enthusiasm.

Marketing the ISL had always been a priority of the organizers. The core consisted of seasoned campaigners with IPL pedigree. It doesn't hurt, to be under the aegis of Nita Ambani and backed by the likes of Tendulkar and Ganguly, either. Throw a few Bollywood stars and other Indian Cricket Team greats into the mix - you are guaranteed fans. In their millions.

Sure, the stadia erupt after a goal is scored. Fans cry foul when they see one and have shown great appreciation for the opposition. They've, all by themselves, managed to bring this young league to life. But there was a novelty to the league and the game last year because it was the inaugural season. Teams and marketers have to ensure this enthusiasm remains and newer fans get hooked to the game too.

A lot of this verve surrounding the game is due to a change in the psyche of the modern Indian sport lover. They've started looking beyond their obsession for cricket. This hasn't just benefited football and the ISL. Hockey India League, Indian Badminton League and Pro Kabaddi League have all been the beneficiaries. Fans are more receptive of other sports now.

The marketers should now look to engage new viewers and turn fans into the die hard variety. Leveraging Social Media, to achieve that, is a no brainer. The beautiful game is here to stay. So the league would never turn into a drab affair. But the individual teams and the league should ensure they have fervid supporters. They should look to do a few things right and a few others differently.

They should build a fan following on Social Media organically. A lot of teams haven't been active on social media, with their facebook pages dormant for long. The fans are the ones who should miss out on new content. Not the Football Club. The Club should ensure it keeps updating new content regularly.

Share content everywhere and engage with fans one on one. It increases the chances of having your content pushed by fans themselves. Sometimes, Videos showcasing a great skill move or a crazy goal goes viral over media like Reddit. All because of the fans coming together in a ripple effect.

Engage users with Customer Retention Tactics. The Barclays Premier League is the most watched league in the world. It has no pressing concern to engage its users after the game has ended. But it does. It has a given rise to shows like Match Of The Day and Premier League World, which enjoy huge viewerships. One is a weekly highlights show. The other showcases the inner workings on of clubs, players and a heart to heart about the game itself.

They should look to engage users with stories. With just a photograph and a description, Humans Of New York created a New York Times Bestseller - on Facebook. It's a great new model to replicate. Teams should upload photos of their players and have them describe their lives. Where they've been, how they've struggled and gone against all odds to be there. Stories always strike a chord with fans.

Get the fans to go head to head on Social media. Gather all the 'chatter' that you can scrape with the help of hashtags and analyze. Which Football Club's fans are the most engaged and how the graph of engagement has risen over the years. This could be seen as a KPI for both the club and the League as well. Give the fans a Fear of Missing Out. Turn them into ardent supporters and you're guaranteed the football fever.

Target celebrities like visiting Football Legends, Indian Team Players and Fresh new faces. Have them engage with users on social media through Q and A's. Upload their videos of interacting with the club and its supporters and get them to do hangouts with fans.

Show the money! One reason, why fans get bemused or excited about the european leagues and players, is the weekly wages and transfer deals. It did create a buzz when Gareth Bale was sold to Real Madrid for a €100 million. People blab on about Wayne Rooney's £300,000 per week or Cristiano Ronaldo's $80 Million yearly income.

Show the behind the scenes - Fan Meets, Training Sessions, Press Conferences and Charities. Every Big Football Club has regularly updated Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages. And they have assigned a photographer and a social media unit to the team for that end. Skill shows in training, fan interactions and visiting a Children's hospital in christmas engages fans.

Finally, Twitter is a great place for getting live engagement. So, the football clubs and the league alike should focus on that more. Accruing the 'Chatter' - fans warring with hashtags - is pursuant to that. A head to head twitter war is the best type of engagement. What's the world without some ribbing and banter.

The primary goal of content marketing is to use carefully created and thoughtfully published media in a manner that attracts new customers and that retains existing customers. While content marketing can be used effectively in different ways to reach different audiences, many businesses are looking for unique and innovative ways to reach Millennials through their content marketing efforts. By refining your efforts, you may realize better overall results through content marketing.

1. Invest in social listening efforts

Many marketers make the mistake of trying to appeal to Millennials as a group, but in reality, there are a wide range of consumers that are categorised as Millennials, and each has different needs, interests, desires, concerns and nuances. When you invest in social listening, you can learn more about who your specific target audience is and what they are saying. By doing so, you can then develop and refine your own messages so that they appeal more specifically to the segment or segments of the Millennial group that you want to appeal to. Developing a content marketing plan can be daunting, but corporate training companies can be used to help you formulate training programs that educate your employees on a wide-scale on how to develop and implement content marketing plans. Keep in mind that investing in social listening efforts is only the first step in developing an effective plan.

2. Develop personal content

One of the most effective ways to appeal to Millennials through content marketing is by telling personal stories. When you create content, think about stories that will appeal to your audience through your social listening efforts, and appeal to your audience personally through first person narratives. You want to speak to your audience from a personal perspective, and this meansusing the words “you,” “me” and “I.”

3. Develop your brand from a personal perspective

While your content should have a personal edge to it, your brand should have a unique and personal vibe as well. You are not selling your company to Millennials, and instead, you are selling a personal brand. One way to accomplish this is through lifestyle marketing, which relates your brand to a specific lifestyle that appeals to the Millennial segment. This may give your brand more personality, individuality and even authenticity, and these appeal to this group of consumers.

4. Use quality graphics to tell a story

With costs rising much faster than event budgets, it’s natural that savvy event management companies are always looking for ways to use their budgets more effectively. But it’s not always easy finding areas to cut spending – each part of an event is integral for its success, so cutting corners on quality will only ensure an events’ failure.

Of course, that does not mean you can’t find ways to significantly reduce the budget requirements – if done properly, cutting costs can not only help you save money, but can actually help the event become better executed and more efficient.

So here are a few of the main approaches to cutting costs for an event:

Take Time to Look for Best Offers

In the corporate event management world, it’s very easy to form relationships. And while in most cases that is a good thing that can help you make your work more efficient and cost-effective, sometimes it can make you stagnant and reliant on old relationships while you could be getting better offers elsewhere.

That’s why it’s important to always scan the marketplace for new supplier relationships, because you never know if you might find a much better deal that could save you a significant amount over the long run.

Besides, it’s always a good idea to have multiple supplier options and expand your rolodex continuously so that you’re never short on options if the need would arise.

Constantly Audit Your Costs

The initial event planning stage often results in the event plan being stuffed with costs that are not essential; therefore an agency of event management has to ensure the list of costs is in constant review throughout the planning process.

When you start to execute your initial plan,you might discover that the budget could be utilized much more effectively.

Some of the initial costs might turn out to be completely non-essential, while others might turn out to require more spending in order to be executed properly. The important thing is to keep all your costs in check up until the last days before the event to ensure that no money is spent without justification.

Utilize Internships

While there’s no denying that a competent staff is essential for putting together a successful event, it does not mean you can’t utilize all the available additional recourses, including that of volunteers or interns.

Attracting some younger people looking for experience in the events industry can be a great help for an events agency in the organizational process – sometimes all that’s needed to really speed up the process are a few extra sets of hands to help out with the less technical and laborious parts of the event execution process.

Book in Advance

One of the easiest ways to save big on your event spending is booking as early as possible – this allows you to get the best deals on venues, speakers or even suppliers before your competition, and that can mean significant savings that can drastically cut your spending.

So try to start planning your events as early as possible, and as soon as you have a budget, start aggressively looking for early-bird booking options.

You’d be surprised what amazing deals are out there, it’s just that they usually get booked months in advance because of just how good the offers really are. Also, venues, as well as speakers, like to book early because it ensures income further ahead in time, which provides more financial security and better planning options.

Summary:

It’s no surprise that throwing together a quality event can be quite expensive – finding the right venue and suppliers can quickly add up to an amount that exceeds the initial budget. Therefore it’s essential for savvy event management companies to always look for ways to cut costs by searching for better offers, auditing costs, finding free help and starting planning as early as possible.

Author Bio :-

Events offer businesses a unique approach to marketing their products. By dramatically speeding up the buying cycle, events give businesses the chance to take their offering directly to their customers - effectively removing the middleman. The one-on-one time with customers alone is invaluable to any business striving to understand their audience - and is unique to event marketing. While passive marketing tactics can take weeks or even months to deliver, when events are done right - you stand the chance of leaving weighed down with potential leads and maybe even a few sales!

What are the key ingredients to a successful event?

When it comes to the success of an event, engagement is the aim of the game - with businesses spending big money just to get their audience talking, even if it’s just for a minute.

Pulling off a profitable event is about strategically aligning a number of different factors to successfully culminate on the big day. From the planning to the promotion and even your physical presence at the venue, successfully getting all your ducks in a row starts with great event design - followed by strong execution and a clean sweep up.

Designing an experience

Experiential design is all about the customer journey, and it’s essential to keep the customers perspective in mind when designing your event. Whether you’re running product demonstrations or free mini-masterclasses on the day, it’s essential that your brand message is cohesive throughout the whole experience - tied together with branded displays, print materials and digital media throughout.

With this in mind, there’s plenty of planning that needs to go into an event. From planning your social media warm up campaign, to training your staff on how to interact with attendees on the day - no stone should go unturned when it comes to ensuring the best possible event experience.

Capturing attention

Presence is everything at an event and investing in a professionally branded exhibition stand or display is a must if you’re committing to the event marketing route. While it’s true that event marketing can return a higher ROI than its static marketing counterparts - it’s not without investment. First impressions count, especially if you’re competing for audience attention at trade shows and expos - so make sure your stand shines.

There’s also a lot to be said for differentiation, especially at B2B events - which are often plastered with the typical corporate stock imagery. Take a risk on something more daring, whether it’s as simple as choosing a striking colour scheme or running offbeat activities and games to get attendees off their seats and talking - your chances of engaging an audience are significantly higher once you have their attention.

Driving engagement

Events are essentially an ‘experience’, providing the opportunity to engage all of the senses. Events allow attendees to touch, see, hear, smell and even taste your goods and services! While it’s safe to assume that not all of these will apply to your offering, it’s a good chance to take advantage of this unique aspect to event marketing. Ensure that you’ve got attractive product displays set up, allowing customers to freely interact with or trial your products - in a consistently branded environment, with knowledgeable staff on hand to help drive the conversation forward and seal the deal.

It’s this kind of engagement which can infiltrate the customer’s subconscious - turning them from an attendee into a paying customer. Whether they’ve seen you talking on social media in the months prior, received your event invitation email or spoken to you on the big day - it’s all part of the process of getting customers thinking and talking about you - engaging with your brand and converting into a customer. Effective planning and design is the key to ensuring the lead up and execution of your event is both seamless and effective.

Peter Symonds is an event marketing expert at Display Wizard, providing professional banner stands, pop up displays and exhibition stand hire to businesses across the UK.

Sharing positive feedback from previous events is a great way to get your attendees excited about an upcoming event!

The mantra for corporate event titans is, “Think small.” That may seem ironic, until you look beneath the façade. When social media experts got together to discuss theirprojections for 2014, they underlined the climbing trend among consumers for insisting on a highly personalized experience across all marketing platforms.

Seth Godin clarifies, “The problem is this: we've scaled the number of contacts, of Twitter followers, of email correspondents, of backers, of Kickstarter supporters, of... we've scaled it all. And the one thing we can't do is scale our ability to take time.”

Today’s consumers want to be nurtured. Events achieve that by taking the time to get in sync with an audience, and social media achieves it by taking the time to deal with consumers individually. ‘Small’ has become something to be celebrated in the business world. Programs like salon events and Ted Talks are creating intimate new ways to overcome mediocrity. Moving beyond mass marketing lets you shower every individual audience member with their own favorite shade of glitter.

Tiny Talks and Twitter

Seth Godin has become an events maestro, having hosted conferences for giants like Microsoft, Adobe, and Disney. His ‘use’ of social media for events demands none of his time. His social media campaign fuels itself on pure fan buzz and natural hype. If you aren’t Seth Godin, your marketing efforts will entail more work.

Your salon event lets you create an experience that doesn’t feel like marketing to your audience, but it lacks reach and depth. Integrating social media for events puts unlimited virtual chairs in your conference room and adds richness to your message.

1) Pre-event Publicity

Social media for events allows enthusiasts to gather in one space, shifting diluted markets into dynamic ones. Your role is to create a meeting space magnetic enough to attract the right tribe to your event. Every social network has unique advantages for small events, letting you pack more passion into every post:

Twitter lets you charm your wider market through targeted hashtags and direct message links, generating leads that you can funnel towards your event and its Facebook page. Twitter’s power is large-scale appeal.

Facebook carries ‘share’ power, with 90% of consumers trusting friends’ recommendations. It also creates the intimacy demanded of a salon event, letting your captive audience members interact with one another and with you. This gives you the cheapest marketing research platform available to fine-tune your event planning.  

Instagram and Slideshare let you generate pre-event buzz, using the power of images to razzle and dazzle consumers 60 000 times quicker than text can.

2) Video streaming

Other social networks are talented at streaming your event via photographs and messages, letting your audience members interact with friends at the height of their excitement about your brand. Nonetheless, when it comes to attracting an online audience, YouTube is the superpower that will extend your reach, adding 86% to your conversions.

3) Following up

Taking the time to collate your post-event data and see to your individual consumers personally carries genuine return on investment. 71% of consumers who are dealt with quickly on social networks will probably recommend your brand to friends. Heighten that personalization through network chat tools such as Google Hangout and WhatsApp.

The use of social media for events is not a color-by-numbers exercise. The availability of multimedia networks should never be used to clip your creative wings. When you make an inventive splash with your social media campaign, and trade in your profit-focus for relationships, the ironic outcome is likely to be booming profits.

You're convinced that your event marketing efforts should be a year-round initiative, but how should you spend those 12 months leading up to the big day?

We've written out a list of activities to guide your month-by-month marketing efforts in order to promote your next event year-round.

12 - 6 Months Before

Leverage Fresh Event Content:

Your best asset at this point is all the freshly-created content from the previous event. Create a repository of event content and plan how you will share it by developing an editorial calendar that lists when each piece will go out on your blog, email, social media, etc.

Refine Your Marketing Strategy:

This is also the time to strategize your event marketing plan - brand messaging, unique hashtags, and other elements of the campaign that should be present throughout the year. Some of these elements may have been a part of your last campaign, meaning you can use them to prevent conversation drop-off and keeping the momentum of your last event going for months after it's over.

Nurture Your Community:

In coming up with your event's digital marketing strategy, don't forget to think about the people who bought tickets to your last event. Give these people more value by creating a members-only community. Whether it's in a private LinkedIn group or a part of your website, it's beneficial to have somewhere that you can nurture the people most likely to be your next customers.

Update Your Digital Platforms:

Take time to update the information on your website, social media platforms, and branded graphics. You don't want interested parties to come upon an online presence for an event in the past - show them you're the event they want to go to in the future!

5 - 3 Months Before

Connect and Engage with Key People:

Make a list of all the kinds of people your brand wants to connect with on social media. For example: event attendees, potential customers, industry influencers, etc. Follow them through your event’s social networks and make a point of regularly checking your list feeds so you can share interesting content they’ve posted.

Promote Other People's Content:

It's been a few months since your last event and you don't want to get repetitive promoting your next one too much or too far in advance. A great type of content to beef up your editorial calendar at this time is co-created with the people outlined above. Ask an event attendee to answer some interview questions, feature an influencer in a "people to follow in our industry" article, etc.

2 Months Before:

Pick Up Momentum:

This is the time when you need to create urgency in purchasing a ticket. Do this by promoting your event more frequently on all of your marketing channels - social media, email campaigns, ad buys, etc.

Create a Sense of Urgency:

In your marketing messaging, be sure to create a sense of urgency. "Seats are filling up" might work better than "time is running out" - try out different variations of your messaging and see which results in getting the most clicks and tickets, tweaking as necessary.

The Last Month

Get Seats Filled:

Unless you are truly at capacity, chances are you still want to sell more tickets. Tailor your marketing efforts at people who are most likely to convert into customers on short notice: attendees from your last event. As a next step, you can also compile and contact a list of people like attendees of similar events and followers of industry influencers - some of these people might be interested in purchasing last-minute tickets.

Take the Event Worldwide:

By now you will have prepared any on-site elements to handle collecting and sharing photos, videos, and tweets from your event. Engage those that can’t be there by clarifying how they can follow your event live. Share links to an event hub on your website and tell people which hashtags they can follow - show them where the action is taking place! This will make it easier for them to tune in, and more likely for them to want to attend the event next year.