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We’ve looked over your charts, and your event is in need of an...

Event Marketing Booster Shot

It’s easy to confuse marketing strategy, plans, and tactics. Remember that marketing strategy is the approach to achieve your objectives, the marketing plan is the blueprint for achieving those goals, and marketing tactics are the specific actions you’ll take to achieve a successful event. Marketing gives new attendees a first look at your event before they make the decision to engage.

Summary

Write Down your Objectives →

Calculate your Budget →

Identify your Resources →

Formulate your Strategy →

Create your Marketing Plan →

1. Write Down your Objectives

It’s important to create 

SMART objectives

 (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely). An example of an objective would be: To achieve registrations of at least 1,000 attendees at Cvent CONNECT by June 5th, 2016 through an email invitation to all qualified event and meeting planners. Need some baseline numbers? Refer to past events and how well they performed.

2. Calculate your Budget

Regardless of your budget, it’s important to consider how much financial resources can be allocated to event marketing. This will help dictate your marketing tactics (and some of the best marketing initiatives are incredibly affordable like social media and WOM).

3. Identify your Resources

An important part of a successful marketing plan is staying realistic. This means gauging how many resources you have and how many you’ll need to pull off a successful event, including the size of your team and their experience. It’s important to not spread your team too thin by creating a marketing plan that is conducive to your available resources.

4. Formulate your Strategy

Look at your past and current marketing strategies, and even those of top competitors, and see what has worked well and what hasn’t to create a data-driven plan.

Remember to state your goals and overall approach in achieving them. A goal might be: Increase registrations for Cvent CONNECT by 25% by promoting the event in the Washington, DC area, while marketing strategies might include increasing early bird registrations with a nurture email campaign. Once you’ve finalized your strategies, it will help shape your overall marketing plan.

5. Create your Marketing Plan

A finalized event marketing plan is usually pretty lengthy, while the strategies themselves are only about a sentence each. Successful marketing plans consist of the following components:

  • Competitive analysis – An analysis of similar events’ marketing strategies

  • Budget – Deep dive into allocated resources

  • Timeline – Deadlines and when certain milestones need to be reached

  • Marketing Tactics – Press releases, social media initiatives, and printed collateral

  • SWOT Analysis – Your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats

  • Branding Guidelines – Tone of your messaging and communication guidelines

  • Event and Brand Strategies – Goals and how you’ll reach them

  • Mission Statement – Summary of your intention

Now that your marketing framework is complete, you’re well on your way to solid execution and a successful event.

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