5 Pre-Event Marketing & Promotion Strategies Using Event Technology
Engaging with your audience 365 days a year–not just onsite at your event–is the ultimate goal of many forward-thinking corporate planners and marketers.
What are you doing right now to capture the attention of your audience to build anticipation and drive tickets sales before your event starts? How are you making sure that conversations and relationships are continued long after the event is over?
You may know that event technology adds incredible value to the on-site experience but it can also help to achieve set goals pre-event, on-site, post-event and beyond! We’ll be writing about all 3 topics in upcoming blogs, but will focus this post on how event technology can help you accomplish your pre-event to-do list.
As a Customer Success Manager with EventMobi, there are several goals that have come up in conversation with my clients that you might also be looking to achieve:
- Increase event registrations & boost ticket sales
- Highlight keynote speakers to drive excitement
- Share the right content at the right time
- Give partners an opportunity to reach a broader audience
- Facilitate networking beyond the four-walls of the venue
Increase event registrations & boost ticket sales:
If your goal is to drive registration and/or ticket sales, using a event tech platform that integrates registration with your event app really simplifies your job.
Advantages of managing your own event app and digital signage through a content management system include:
- Make changes on the fly
- Easily customize the registration site to your event needs
- Get your registration site up and running at your convenience
Here are a few ways drive traffic to your registration page:
- Releasing early bird promo codes early on
- Tier your registration release dates to target certain groups of attendees
- Look into your email analytics or marketing automation system to understand which days/times your audience is more likely to open emails from you. Send your event invites on these days.
The advantage of choosing an event app that is integrated with registration, is that you can use your registration page as an opportunity to start driving traffic to your app. Even if your sessions are still being confirmed, you can upload the bare bones–your logo and some teaser content—so that when attendees register and click through, you can start pushing attendees to use and download the app.
Highlight keynote speakers to drive excitement:
So you’ve booked that awesome speaker – now what? It’s no secret that a great keynote can drive attendance for an event.
Here are some ways to highlight speakers on your registration page and in your event app to drive anticipation.
- Highlight them on the main screen of your app
- Bump their bio to the top of your speaker list
- Send out targeted in-app alerts before the event with teaser content for their presentation
- Use a private social network (like Group Discussions) as a pre-event Q & A channel to source hot questions for the keynote to tackle during their presentation.
You may even create a sense of FOMO “fear-of-missing-out”, when registered attendees start bragging to their colleagues and friends about who is speaking at your event!
Share the right content at the right time:
You know that awesome “know before you go” that you email out to attendees? Instead of having attendees madly digging through their inbox looking for those details, why not include it into your app?
Creating an in-app infobooth of centralized knowledge helps drive traffic to your app and provide continuous value to the attendees.
You can include things like:
- Travel information
- Things to do in the area
- Contact information for any questions.
In terms of marketing your event, providing continuous teaser content periodically will keep interest high! Have pre-event reading materials to include? No problem! See next goal for more info.
Give partners an opportunity to reach a broader audience:
Want to give your partners more visibility, but not sure how to reach this goal with event tech?
- Promote a partner on the main page of your registration
- Give them real estate in your event app in banner ads, profiles, or a homescreen widget on the main screen
- Upload partner brochures and info into your app before the event. Pre-scheduled alerts can go out to attendees with bio information or links to their work, and you could even target these alerts to groups of attendees.
- Create a branded discussion channel to allow your partners to share information at any time pre-event with the attendees!
Facilitate networking beyond the four-walls of the venue:
When searching for an event technology platform, make sure your platform allows attendees to connect at any time throughout the event experience. Focusing on engagement only on-site neglects the option for 365 engagement, so use such tools as attendee profiles, links to LinkedIn, and private social networks (like Group Discussions) to start chatter before the event.
Remember that pre-event engagement with your attendees is vital to ensure the success of your event and that you do not need to wait until all your attendees are onsite to start driving excitement, facilitating networking and adding value for partners.
What’s Next?
- Download our Ultimate Guide to Event App Marketing – click here.
- 5 Things You Don’t Want to Forget Before Unveiling Your Event App – click here.