Event marketing and PR are essential to promoting your brand to customers effectively. For your brand to gain a position in the minds of consumers, PR is inevitable; you have to make an impression on consumers.
It is essential that companies proactively develop an intelligent approach for painting a good picture of their brand, especially towards their target market. Event marketing is a vital means of promoting products, brands, or services to prospective customers and current customers via in-person interactions.
Promoting a brand via event marketing can help stir a customer’s emotions towards your brand. Hosting an event with a customer’s interest in mind can help build their trust, loyalty, and awareness.
Types of Event Marketing
Event marketing is one of the best ways to educate customers and prospective clients on your company offerings.
Although there are different types of event marketing, the end goal is to promote the brand, increase sales, and increase brand awareness. Don’t forget you can hold an event online via webinars and live-streamed workshops.
Trade Shows
These are events that aim to present new products and services to different, yet related brands in a professional manner. Most times, these types of events have themes that connect the other brand’s booths. An essential aspect of a trade show is the booth your company uses. When getting a booth, ensure you choose stand builders that can portray what your company does well.
Conferences
Conferences are significant events that bring together engaging speakers, educational workshops, and networking sessions. Most times, these conferences educate customers on how to make use of products effectively. A conference should be a combination of a professional, energetic, and social environment. After conferences, both customers and stakeholders should leave well informed with a great experience.
Seminars
Seminars are more intimate and focused. Usually, seminars aim to educate participants with in-depth discussions and knowledge of products or services. Most seminars last for a day or a few hours.
Product launches
A product launch is an event used to display new products and solutions to clients and customers. Product launches help your clients stay excited about the new features and functions of the products.
Field Marketing
This form of event marketing is used to create strong emotional bonds between customers and brands. Before this form of event is carried out, there should be a specific audience target. It ensures that the activities are planned accurately with the target audience in mind.
Importance of Event Marketing and PR in your Brand Positioning
Every brand or company understands the importance of event marketing and PR in brand positioning.
Sales Increase
The purpose of event marketing and PR is to sell a product and service. At events, the number of sales can increase as customers get the opportunity to speak to you and your staff. It is essential that when preparing for such events your team has all the information they need to close a deal.
You can go steps further by maximizing the benefits of your event with marketing software. You can easily measure your sales and ROI marketing efforts.
Increasing Leads and Contact
When preparing for an event, you ought to have goals on the number of leads you want to generate. Most times, prospective customers leave their contact information. You can then add them to your database and nurture them through the sales process.
The Exhibit and Event Marketers Association and the CMO Council carried out a study, and they found that 64% of the respondents use marketing events to generate new prospects and business opportunities, while 63% use events for lead sourcing.
Sourcing people’s emails at events is easy. All you have to do is sponsor events, or take down contact information when people visit your tradeshow booth. Once people register for the event or a prize, you can get their email address. From there, you could build relationships that can generate sales. Ensure to follow the regulations of getting people’s consent before adding them to your email list.
Increasing Brand Awareness
Events are an excellent means of increasing brand awareness. Hosting an event is a good way to get customers to know more about your brand. You can provide opportunities for prospects and customers to interact with your brand by hosting educational or fun events.
You could have influential speakers speak at conferences, which can result in free media coverage, giving your brand great publicity at the end of the day.
Ensure you maximize brand awareness before, during, and after events. You can do so by integrating event promotion with social media managing software.
Building Brand Affinity
If a company cares about the same thing you are concerned with, you could build some affinity with the brand. People tend to associate with brands that care about a similar cause. Once you can host an event that beats the imaginations of attendees, they tend to remember your brand for creating and providing a wonderful experience for them.
People tend to be inclined towards brands they trust or can relate with freely. Once customers trust or like your brand, they tend to remain loyal.
This aspect of PR is essential as a link can be developed from customers’ interest in product adverts. The goal of PR is to promote brands. Building affinity can help get your brand across a more extensive customer base.
You can create and maintain brand loyalty with PR by attracting media interest to your product or service. From there, you could create positive expectations in the minds of the public.
Conclusion
The importance of event marketing and PR are notable. Not only will you be able to generate sales, leads, and increase brand awareness, you would also build and grow relationships between customers and brands.
Event marketing and PR provide you with the opportunity to increase your online presence, such as social media and press coverage. Before you can hold an event, you must understand the importance of the event and ensure it tallies with your goals.