The magic of six of event marketing
We can consider an event any kind of social gathering happening nowadays; from christenings and weddings, to seminars and fairs and everything in between, if it is a social occasion that merits some degree of preparation, we have an event.
Event Marketing is the way of making those events mean something. Every event out there has a reason to be, a goal to attain. Which is that goal and how you get to it, that’s event marketing.
The most important word you may read in this small piece is STRATEGY, so keep it in mind. If we are trying to accomplish something, we need to have strategy to help us create a path towards it. And every strategy begins with a very simple exercise: analyzing all the problems we find in our way until we can create a problem map, so we may devise efficient solutions that take care of several challenges in one swell.
After this, the beautiful thing about events it’s that, even if we have the most involved, creative and innovative team in the world, there is a well-known strategy we can follow that will never lead us wrong: the 6 P’s of marketing.
Product: What are we selling? Remember than in these times of experience economy, people are not buying products or brands, but experiences. So we have to think about what does our event mean for costumers/clients.
Price: Be smart when devising a pricing strategy. Aligning it with our goals will take us a very long way. Do we look for profit? To cover costs? Or just for brand awareness?
Place: Place is to events what packaging is to products; it will influence the event performance. It will hold some sway over the mindset of the attendees and their level of engagement.
Promotion. This can very well become our weak link, even so if it is where we find the most tools at our disposal. Promotion basically looks to ensure attendance. Point being, the communication and promotion of the event is the cornerstone in which the success of our event stands.
We have lots of strategies for this: advertising, social networking, direct marketing, viral marketing, website, sales promotion, PR…. It’s up to us to decide which mix is the ideal for our event, always taking in account the budget we were provided with.
Process. The ‘mechanical’ part of the event. How we book it and how we use it. It is making attendance easier, for example, or just facilitating information. It is making the event run as smoothly as possible.
People. Last but not least. Think that each person involved in making the event happen will become a point of contact with attendees, with sponsors, with policy makers. They have to be involved with the project, they have to understand what’s important about the event and what we want to transmit.
If we take all this parts as pieces of a puzzle and we carefully make sure they all fit perfectly with each other, success is granted.
