Events thrive on brands that spend to participate and people who spend to attend. The only way to actually reach out to these is through a strong publicity campaign.
I have been to a few events where the event had some fairly large names associated with it and even some smaller passionate brands presenting their offerings. When asked they said their biggest grouse is the lack of visibility of the event and their brand at these events.
This boils down to the marketing and publicity planning that goes in to the planning and the actual execution of these plans.
- Online, Social and Website – Creating a platform online to build the home base for all information is important. Making it available across all medium is just as important, and creating a SEO campaign for this is must, you can start building your PBN links to give much more credibility to your website. The message and format of the event needs to be as open as possible to allow for greater interaction between the brands and its full ecosystem. Eliminating any aspect of this ecosystem could hamper the event. Regular communication and timely updates via emails, social media and online ads, will ensure a high level of reaction and thereby building potential visitor interest.
- Public Relations – this plays an important role in the outreach program. Getting sponsors visibility and being associated with the event itself in the newspapers as well as the trade magazines will give the event the push it needs as well as the energy for a longer relationship. A media plan is recommended for before, during AND after the event to talk about the experiences from the organizer as well as the sponsors’ and participants’ perspectives.
- Media Buying – Ensuring there is enough visual representation in the locations where PR will be done is necessary reinforcement. Building the right kind of graphics, positions, size and frequency of the advertisements all builds interest for brands to be associated with this event as well as for current sponsors to get the visibility they will appreciate.
The one single pre-requisite is the message. Once the message of the event is clear, then communicating it through the tools available is necessary.
