Recently I had a question from one of our Event Planning Blueprint viewers about event marketing strategies or tools.
After years of planning events for clients and managing multiple projects at once, I can truly appreciate the innovation that today’s guest, Jeff Kear from Planning Pod, shares about why they created a product that was long overdue in the event planning industry and how they spoke to their clients before creating their products.
Learn Event Marketing Strategies From An Expert
With 25 years of advertising and marketing experience, Jeff also shares techniques on how to position yourself in a particular event niche; Why your event marketing strategy starts with research and how doing it upfront will make or break your business; and how to create a web presence with a small budget.
If you’re struggling with ways to market your event planning business then you don’t want to miss this episode of EventPlanning BlueprintTV.
7 Event Marketing Strategies To Improve Your Website
- Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website
- Create a good, clean website that sets you apart and highlights your strengths
- Use social proof like quotes, pictures, and videos on your site
- Include a bio and picture of yourself
- Put your contact info on each page of your event planning website
- Buy your own domain and don’t use free website providers
- Don’t use a Gmail or Yahoo account for your business email
7 Event Marketing Strategies To Promote Your Event Planning Business
- Create a short list of keywords people use to Google your business
- Build your own email list with Constant Contact, iContact or AWeber (I use Active Campaign!)
- Once a quarter send an email to your list of clients and ask for a referral
- Offer an incentive for people who do refer you
- Position yourself as a thought leader in the community
- Use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to connect with your clients
- Once a month offer DIY classes
7 Event Marketing Strategies That Set You Apart From the Competition
- Create Facebook ads to target your perfect client
- Use Google Adwords
- Advertise in event publications like The Knot and in local directories
- Attend and/or register for industry and local trade shows and get the list of attendees to plan your strategy before going to the event
- Use your business cards and testimonials or case study fliers to introduce yourself to prospective clients
- Have an open house at your office or with a vendor and invite potential clients
- Always, always follow up!
Now, I’d love to hear from you.
What kind of event marketing strategies have you used that work well?
Tell me about it in the comments below.
As always, thanks for watching and commenting.
The thing I know for certain is that sales leads and referrals are the life blood of every event-related business. And while this holds true for almost every industry, the reality is that marketing any event service is not easy. New event projects launch every day behind the closed doors of board meetings, emails and phone conversations. The problem is, as a service provider, you rarely have access to these happenings. This means you are always reacting to inquiries instead of being part of the discussion.
If there is one thing I learned from this article, it is that no marketer should be complacent about branding. Even the most stable, long-lived brands can become irrelevantand quickly. To remain vital, a brand must have a consistent flow of audience insight, gained through multiple touch points. One of the most effective is still the live event – I’m not talking about a webinar. I’m referring to the good ole fashion networking event.
Guerrilla marketing gurus preach to the skies the importance of client follow-up, if you have even the vaguest notion of succeeding in the event planning business. This may be why event planners lose customers. Poor service? Nope. Poor quality? Nope. It is simply Apathy after the sale. In fact, most businesses lose customers by ignoring them to death. They say more than half of all business lost in America is lost due to apathy after the sale.
Thank you for posting this information I was looking for some new ideas because the events that I have been planning are getting a little stale to say the least. We have a celebration coming up that is going to be big so the better I can drum things up for this one the more people are going to enjoy themselves and talk about it for time to come.
Ask anyone in event management how they promote their events and in 90% cases email marketing is going to be near the top of their list. Despite being one of the most effective and reliable marketing channels for the promotion of events; email marketing is often neglected. Seriously if you don’t have an email capture form up on the home-page of your site, get it sorted. If someone’s managed to come along to your website, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to get more information about your event.
You have some really great ideas and I am glad that I ran across your blog I am going to dig deeper and see if I can find other blogs that you have written in the past that could help me as well. I just took a new job in event planning and the more I can learn the better off I will be. Keep posting you have no idea how this has helped.