Event Advertising in 2022
Event Advertising in 2022
Although events and event advertising have been around for a long time, with significant impact, there are some notable changes to be aware of to optimize your marketing in 2022. First and foremost is the rise of hybrid (virtual and in-person) events. These help you expand your event’s reach and effectiveness, as 51% of respondents plan to use a hybrid format in their 2022 events.
Event advertising remains an effective means of marketing, as 95% of business leaders believe in-person events are essential to achieving business goals. Furthermore, 97% of companies reached a wider audience with their events, and 86% reported a positive ROI within seven months of their event.
Promoting events is essential to your success because it gets people to show up. Here’s what you need to know before planning your event.
Benefits of Event Hosting
Event hosting is challenging but is certainly worth it. Not only can events allow you to interact with your brand and have more face-to-face time with customers, but it also helps you:
• Build meaningful relationships
• Generate leads
• Grow sales
• Grow social media followers
• Build brand awareness
• Differentiate your brand from the competition
More importantly, you get back more than you put in, as your effort into the event usually translates to increased performance later. Events allow customers to meet your brand representatives directly, giving a positive impression and showing people what you offer. The volume of people introduced to your brand will likely result in building customers, many of whom will remain long-lasting customers. Hosting events will also help you develop better relationships with your existing customers, helping them experience your brand differently and reaffirming why they buy from you.
Improve ROI
ROI is one of the most significant benefits of event hosting. Businesses make a substantial profit when event advertising, earning as much as five times more than they put into it. According to one report, 48% of brands expect a return 3 to 5 times bigger than their investment. Meanwhile, 44% of brands earn at least three times back on their investment.
The same report also noted that 74% of the consumers who attended an event said they had a more favorable opinion of the company, 65% believed they better understood the product/service at the event, and 70% said they became regular customers after the event.
Event Promotion Tips
Not every event will be successful, just like not every brand will be able to profit. With the right amount of hard work and expert guidance, event advertising can be a game-changer for brands looking to expand their reach in the industry and grow their influence.
While you can’t substitute hard work, you can use these helpful tips to get you started! Here are our top tips in the industry to help you deliver a successful event promotion.
Understand Your Target Audience
Revisiting your target audience helps you track how it has changed and grown. People change over time, so your understanding of them should as well. Considering 71% of consumers say they expect personalized interactions from brands at every touchpoint, there should be no time wasted in ensuring you’re speaking to the right audience with the right message.
That will include where they get information and how their behaviors changed during the pandemic. For instance, are they a part of the growing audience interested in virtual or hybrid formats? You’ll need to find out and do so while weighing the costs like reaching more people in a virtual form or reaching fewer people in person but developing deeper connections.
Create a Core Strategy
Beginning with setting goals for your event, you should craft a core strategy for your event promotion. Note that you can make this goal specific to the amount of attendees or mentions on social media. Either way, it should be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely) since that makes you 376% more likely to report success!
Remember that this core strategy is your promotional strategy to build awareness, so you’ll want to base it around getting people to attend or increasing awareness of the event. You can do this by developing your strategy around advertising channels such as:
• Radio/audio
• Social media, and
• Digital advertising (display ads and email specifically will help you gain traction)
Develop a Central Theme
Creating a central theme for your event helps with your advertising and awareness efforts because it makes your event more memorable and gives you material to use in your campaigns. LinkedIn reports that this will allow your brand to “embody the creative passion” of your business and convey the objectives of your event.
Note that this theme should pertain to the event and highlight its cause or why people should be interested in it. Make sure you outline your theme on the event’s website to give interested parties a reliable information source they can easily find or guide them to it through your marketing materials.
Turn Attendees into Advocates
Despite what you may think, event advertising doesn’t stop after the event. You want to make the event a noteworthy occasion that develops a reputation on its own. You can offer merchandise around the event or mention it in off-seasons to help grow awareness and encourage growing attendance. People love a great event, so if you can make it something truly memorable, they’ll:
• Enjoy their experience with the event
• Advocate the event to friends, family, social media, etc.
• Be more inclined to attend your future events
Fifty-six percent of respondents say they are loyal to brands that “get them.” Use this opportunity to show how much you ‘get’ your target audience and reap its benefits later. You can also use your events to get to know your audience and learn who they are so your brand will be more likely to “get them.”
Optimize Your Event Marketing Strategy with a Trusted Media Partner
Hosting an event can take a tremendous amount of time, money, and effort to execute successfully — and there are still many who will fall short. Sometimes even successful events will have detractors, as 26% of respondents didn’t think the events they attended were fun. Fortunately, you can work with experts like Hubbard Chicago to ensure you don’t make the same mistakes.
By partnering with a media partner to develop your event marketing strategy, you can skip over the typical trials and tribulations associated with event advertising as a beginner and jump straight into benefitting. In the meantime, check out our Hubbard Chicago blog to learn more about event advertising and what it can do for you.
Share This
Subscribe
Stay on top of industry news and trends.