Turn Up The Heat On Event Marketing With 5 Easy Steps
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Now is a great time to heat up your local event marketing efforts, and heres why: The flat economy of the last three years has paralyzed most small and mid-sized businesses in terms of propelling their marketing efforts forward. Your competitors have spent very little money to position themselves effectively through local marketing.
As a result, the field is wide open for any forum that gets people talking to one another about their lifestyle needs and choices.
Whats more, you can create good synergy in the midst of what has been a couple of seasons of profit doldrums for most industries by partnering with another like-minded alliance–adding depth to your offering and reaching a broader audience. Furthermore, if that isnt enough to convince you not to delay in taking steps, remember that editors–now more than ever–are looking for positive stories to write about, which means there is a good chance you will get the local press to cover your event.
For these reasons, the time has never been better to warm things up by carving out an event or campaign that will give you the prominent reputation that you so richly desire. Start by asking yourself a few simple questions:
1. From what audience am I going to receive the greatest gain in the shortest amount of time–existing clients, new prospects or a combination of both?
2. Based on this groups time constraints and priorities, what subject would most interest this audience? How will I bring value to this group? (For example, if my local network is mostly made up of suburban parents, can I offer an event that is tied to their childrens after-school activities, like sponsoring soccer clinics for would-be coaches that allows for a soft tie-in to my area of expertise?)
3. Once the audience and the event offering have been sketched out, I need to decide with whom will I collaborate to lend credibility to the event and drive more exposure. (In the soccer clinic example above, it might be useful to approach a local donut franchise or restaurant for refreshments.)
4. How will I draw more people to my event and make it easy and interesting for them to participate? (Perhaps Ill approach the local professional soccer franchise and see if I can arrange for a professional player to stop by the clinic, sign a few autographs and take a few photos with the kids.)
