Event marketing is a great away to create brand awareness by gathering your target audience in one place and promoting your services in person. There are lots of ways to use events to market your business. Here are just a few different types of event marketing.

 

Host a launch party

 

If you’re a new business, a launch party could be a great way of making a splash in the marketplace and boosting your reputation as a new business. It could be a public event or a private event open to select guests. Either way, you may want to invite certain guests to come along that could be of benefit to you such as local journalists who may be able to give media coverage and fellow business owners that could prove to be useful networking partners. A successful launch party needs to give guests a reason to attend and it needs to persuade these guests to then talk about your event afterwards. Incentives could include food and drink, entertainment, discounts, networking opportunities or perhaps the chance to meet someone famous or influential (you could invite them along as a special guest).

 

Attend a trade fair

 

Trade fairs are events in which multiple businesses are given stalls to promote themselves from. Trade fairs are generally themed around a particular niche – this could be anything from sports to IT to food and drink. Everyone attending these trade fairs is there because they’re interested in that niche. This can make these events a great opportunity to market to your target audience. The disadvantage is that you’re competing against lots of other businesses under the same room, and so your stall has to stand out. Companies like Stand Banner specialise in providing trade fair display stands and equipment. You may also wish to use props or offer freebies – anything that will get people interested in your stall.

 

Get your digital marketing right

 

If you are going to succeed at using event marketing to boost your business, you need to utilise digital marketing as part of your ongoing strategy. While you may think it’s a good idea to deal with this aspect of your business’s success yourself, unless you are a trained professional then it is far better to outsource the task to a team that knows what they’re doing when it comes to digital marketing, from social strategy to PPC and Google Adwords. It’s essential that you take your digital marketing seriously from the get-go.

 

Organise a workshop/seminar

 

Another form of event could be a workshop or seminar. The main purpose of these should be to inform people on a topic – they shouldn’t be heavily promotional. However, you can still slip in some information about you and your business and potentially gather some new customers. If anything, it can boost your credibility as a professional in your field. You may want to offer extra motivations to get people to come along. Catering services such as ABM Catering Solutions could help to provide food and drink as an extra incentive. You could also offer discounts to your business that can’t be obtained elsewhere. It’s even possible to charge your guests money for attending your workshop allowing you to make some profit out of the event.

 

Sponsor a charity event

 

Mixing business and charity can be a grey area morally. When sponsoring a charity event, the charity’s cause should take prominence and you should be honest about your intentions. That said you can still use it as a chance for raising brand awareness. Get the balance, and sponsoring a charity event can be great for your public image. However, if the public think you’re being overly promotional it could have the opposite effect on your reputation.