Planning the marketing of your event is just as important as planning the event itself. You need to begin by thinking, who is your target audience and why will they attend your open day/practice event? Ensure you know the types of people who will be attending your event.
Marketing used to rely heavily on other people selling an event that you had spent time and energy creating. That all changed when social media came onto the scene, now you can develop a following who can help market the event for you, using the feedback given online to make the event even more successful. Here are some tips when organising your next practice event…
Identify which social networks:
Identify with social media platforms you wish to use and prioritise these so you focus on where to spend your budget and time. Online forums such as LinkedIn groups and Facebook allow attendees to communicate and collaborate before and after the event.
Schedule communication:
Produce a schedule for when you will post updates about your event. You can even create event pages on Facebook for instance.
The Hashtag:
Choose a hashtag for the event but before you do, make sure you do your research to make sure it isn’t used for anything else. Use the hashtag across your social platforms but don’t use too many hashtags in each post. Using a hashtag means that attendees and people who cant attend the event can still keep up to date with the goings on.
Visual Assets and Platforms:
Develop your visual content and brand key social networks, for example your Facebook page. Collect content around the event including blog posts, pictures, posts and videos. You can then use these to build traffic and engage your audience.
Mobile Marketing:
Make sure that your marketing strategy considers mobile friendly content in particular your website and registration process. Ensure the registration process is easy to understand and use. By integrating social sharing with registration you can encourage people to share their booking with friends.
Email List:
Promoting events on social media is a great way to drive attendance. Build your email lists using opt-ins and free downloads. This allows you to send out pre-event news and useful information.
Check ins:
Encourage people to check-in to your event and share with other networks. Use social media monitoring tools to listen and respond to your audience.
Contests:
If you have the budget you could even run a competition which can be promoted via social media pages. You can easily get hundreds of responses to a post like this on Facebook, which will in turn get people excited about potentially going to event and attract more people through people tagging in their friends.
Live Streaming:
Mobile applications have allowed live video streaming at events easily accessible. This not only increases social participation but all the people online who weren’t able to attend the event can follow the live updates and engage in person.
Testimonials:
Capture videos of patient testimonials from your event and use them later to post on YouTube, social media and blog posts.
Post Event Blogging:
Blog about your event, thank people for coming and for the people that helped organise the event.
Feedback:
While the event is still fresh in peoples memories, produce a short survey asking people for their feedback and ideas to improve for the next event. Events are largely successful over time because of their good reputation, social media therefore represents a huge opportunity to improve your reputation and success.
If you would like any further information then give the Dental Design team a call on: 01202677277.