With so much of the focus on digital marketing, it could be tempting to think that face-to-face events and promotional marketing has had its day. But this couldn’t be further from the truth, as the reality shows that direct marketing is more important than ever. In an age of fleeting social media images and online messages, customers want to experience authentic engagement with brands that interest them. Nothing offers this kind of authenticity, relevance and immediacy in the same way as a promotional event.
Promo events can be held for a variety of reasons and across all industries and sectors. Typically they are for product launches of some kind or as a reminder event for an engaged audience, perhaps when new features or a fresh brand is added to a product or service suite. Delegates will attend this type of promo event to learn about a new brand, to experience a product or service, to enjoy benefits such as an important speaker slot, to network or to learn about other offerings through attendance.
In this guide, I’m going to go through some essential steps to follow to ensure a successful promo event.
1. Have a plan
Know exactly what the objective of your promo event is and why you are hosting it in the first place. This will help to drive your plan which needs to be detailed. Assign tasks to individual owners and have a detailed budget to keep track of the costs and individual suppliers that you are using.
2. Arrange your venue
A preferred supplier list is a great way to rapidly access the best possible rates available to your business and to secure appropriate venue hire. Look at less obvious options which might intrigue your guests. Is there a great new networking space, a new bar or a historic building that they might like to see? Make your venue enticing and convenient to lure in the delegates! If it comes with car parking then all the better.
3. Invite your attendees
Use your business data list and any commercially available list and invite your guests in the most appropriate way. For example, a social media campaign might be good for a high volume B2C product launch. For a more intimate B2B engagement event, hand-written letters or a phone call could be the best way to provide that personal touch.
4. Create the agenda
Your delegates’ time is precious so respect it with an agenda that offers them interest, value, utility and purpose. If they are a business audience, provide a key speaker, a networking opportunity and a product explainer. Have business advisors on hand to provide support. Make it worth their while. If they are a consumer audience, consider interactive sessions, competitions, gamification, giveaways and so forth. Make it fun and exciting.
5. Consider your giveaways
Promos are vital for a great event so think about what your audience would like. Promos will be used for a long time if they are useful and relevant. For example, branded umbrellas are always useful and branded reusable jute bags satisfy the environmental criteria which is important to many of today’s consumers. Consider reusable coffee cups to tick similar boxes.
6. Check the experience
Do a walkthrough of your plan to ensure that the experience will be exciting and memorable. Add plenty of visuals and have marketing materials on hand. Look at sound and graphics. Consider gamification and other ways of making your event stand out, like VR and AR experiences. Look at voting buttons for audience polls. Ensure that there is comfortable seating and put on appropriate refreshments. Make sure that you will have enough staff on hand for the event to answer questions and help your guests to feel as comfortable as possible. Make sure that everyone leaves with a branded bag filled with some goodies.
7. Evaluate success
Ask for your delegates’ feedback and capture any other hard and soft variables that you can to assess the success of the event against your original objectives. These measures might include attendance, sign-ups on the day, direct purchases, enquiries and so forth. This will help you to evaluate what worked well and where you can improve in the future so that your budget utilisation is better directed to achieve the best possible ROI.
What other tips from experience might you share with a business looking to host its first promo event?
