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We caught up with Kyle Gawley, CEO of Get Invited (an event registration service), to hear his advice on how startups can guarantee the success of their events with five simple steps
With the UK events industry now generating over £40 billion annually, more UK businesses are organising their own events to increase brand awareness, grow their network and generate profit.
However, running a successful event is no easy task, and the biggest obstacle is getting people to attend. I’ve compiled a list of my top five tips to help you market your event online and build a community of highly engaged attendees to ensure your event is a memorable one.
1. Research your audience
The most important aspect of organising any event is gaining an understanding of your audience. This will inform everything from your marketing strategy to the choice of food you serve.
Fortunately, this is easy to do. If you’re running a marketing conference for example, then you should research and engage with marketing professionals on social media sites, blogs and forums.
What do you need to know?
2. Create an event plan?
Getting people to register for your event is only part of the problem. You need to drive consistent engagement up until, during and after your event.
According to Doorkeeper, only 52% of registered attendees for paid events show up on the day.
So, what’s the best way to promote your event and keep your attendees engaged? Content.
With a clear picture of your audience and their interests, you can devise a plan for delivering relevant content to engage them. This doesn’t mean you bombard people with updates about your event. You should deliver content they find valuable.
What type of content should you share?
Build a mailing list for your audience using a tool like Mailchimp and send regular content via email in addition to sharing it on your social media profiles.
Your ultimate goal here is to create content that people will share, enabling you to reach a wider audience and ultimately sell more tickets.
3. Engage with Your Attendees on Social Media
With 93% of event professionals now using social media for at least one of their events, it’s evident this is a powerful tool for content delivery and engagement.
What can you use social media for at your event?
What tactics can you use to engage your attendees?
Some tips:
4. Build Relationships with Key Influencers
One of the most powerful ways to market your event is to leverage influencers in your industry and market to their network.
This requires that you build these relationships in advance. You shouldn’t be reaching out to people you don’t know and asking them to share a link to your event.
Instead, provide value to them and make yourself visible. Respond to their tweets, post comments on their blog and share their content.
Build the relationship, then let them know about your event and you’ll have a much higher chance of them helping you. Don’t forget to ask your speakers and sponsors for help too.
“Don’t leave promoting your event until after its launch, instead get the story started in advance. Building a relationship with key influencers – by sharing sneak previews – is not only a great way to gather useful feedback, but helps to raise awareness and build buzz.”
– Christopher Murphy (Organiser, Break Conference)
5. Create a Hashtag for Your Event
A hashtag is a versatile tool to curate all of your content and feedback, and to create a consistent touchpoint for attendees to engage with you and each other.
Use your hashtag in all your updates, so when people engage, the conversation will generate buzz about your event.
How to create the perfect event hashtag:
If you follow these 5 steps you’ll be on your way to running a successful event with an audience of happy, engaged attendees who will also help to market your event for you.
Kyle Gawley is the CEO of Get Invited, an event registration service that has served customers across the globe, including the world’s largest startup conference, LAUNCH Festival in San Francisco.