Building communities when you run events.
With the relaxation of covid rules and real interest in experiences the events industry has sprung back into life over the last 12 months, however, with a cost of living crisis, volatile markets and some oversaturation in certain areas its never been more competitive to attract those all-important ticket sales.
Many event organisers have had two years of disruption, absorbing costs and being limited in recouping revenue due to having to postpone events and ultimately move ticket purchases back a year, with restrictions lifted expectations of a return to 2019 levels simply have not materialised in many cases.
This means it’s vital your social media and digital marketing does not just stand out, it reaches and penetrates your core audience! We have two simple philosophies for making events marketing work, the first is to build a real community, and the second is to create content for that community.
Far too often, event organisers are guilty of just engaging during the sales process, the marketing is a campaign that is all about broadcasting the sales information. Sorry, you are going to need to work harder and smarter to hit that ticket quota.
You need to work harder to foster relationships digitally and build communities, these communities need to be engaged throughout the year, not just in the build-up.
10 tips for building events communities
Focus on the platform your audience is most likely to be on and build your core community there.
Understand why your audience attends your event (newsflash its not always just for your compelling content)
Create content that shows you understand your delegates
Don’t just engage when you think about marketing your next event, building a community needs to be done all year round.
Use your community to develop content, think about getting them involved with polls and quizzes, and make their opinion feel valued.
Engage with your community as you build, respond to comments and get involved.
Embrace opposing opinions! Many events shy away from difficult industry topics, don’t be afraid to have a discussion online.
Remember community content is about them, not you! Don’t just sell to them, try and give them back some value (interview with speakers or artists on the programme)
Drop exclusives to the community first before you promote them to a wider audience.
Be consistent, invest in producing content after your event
When you have a community that supports your events your digital marketing will go further, you will be able to grow your event audience, and your internal databases. This will help you stand out in the market and enable you to grow that revenue line year on year.
If you want to chat to us about building your events community drop us a line, we have been successfully doing this for clients and our own events post-pandemic, we are happy to share what we have learned and see if we can support you.
Drop us a line here