So, your fledgling company is just getting off the ground and you are trying to get the word out about the products or services you offer.
A great way of doing this is by marketing your brand by participating in organized events. Event marketing is a useful way to encourage engagement with potential buyers and show them just what it is that you have to offer. It allows them to interact with not only your products but the faces behind them.
Get your branding out there
An important part of any company is the branding that they portray to their customers. Your brand should both reflect what it is you do as a company as well as be eye-catching and memorable to engage potential customers. A lackluster or half-hearted attempt at branding will certainly be obvious to everyone and assumptions may be made as to the quality or passion behind your product because of it.
While at an event, it is vital that your branding is at the forefront and center of your display. When potential buyers view your products, they need a brand to associate it with for easy recollection. If possible, put your branding on items that you can give away at the event – such as water bottles or pens – so that visitors have a neat way to remember who you are. If free stuff is out of the question, at least make sure to have plenty of business cards on hand to hand out to visitors instead. Make sure that anyone who leaves your booth leaves with something with your brand plastered on it, whether it be as simple as a business card, or as extravagant as a branded bag or free sample of your product.
Use events to garner easy signups
Events are a great place to obtain signups from potential customers. However, how can you ensure that visitors to your company's booth will take the time to provide you with their contact information?
Instead of having stacks of pens and paper forms that are apt to get lost or misplaced before you even have the chance to enter the information into your system, why not cut out the middleman? By using tablets with online forms that submit the contact's information directly into your company's contact relationship manager, you can be sure that the information is entered correctly and you don't have to rely on being able to decipher some people's dubious handwriting.
Not only will using tablets ensure the correct and efficient input of contacts' information, they will also allow your company to set itself apart from the others by incorporating relatively new technology into your signup process. Visitors will be all too ready to sign up for a consultation with your company, to receive an email newsletter, or for a free gift on their birthday if they know that the signup process will be quick and hassle free.
Use social media to promote yourself and the event
Social media has become a valuable marketing tool for companies and many companies are only just beginning to realize just what an asset it can be when promoting their products and the company as a whole.
Maintaining an active social media presence can allow your company to increase engagement with potential customers and lets you be readily available to answer any questions they may have regarding your products and/or services.
Posting on sites such as Twitter or Facebook and letting your followers know that you will be attending an event near them keeps people in the loop and may even increase the attendance at the event itself.
Publish photos of you and the visitors to your booth during the event and tell your followers to share and tag themselves. You can even create a contest on social media out of this during the event, such as putting the names of followers who tag and share the photo of themselves at your booth into a draw with the winner receiving a prize pack from your company.
Marketing automation can make event marketing easier
With the help of a marketing automation platform, such as the one SimplyCast provides, you can make your event marketing even more efficient by utilizing features such as online form builders and social media scheduling to ease the contact signup and engagement processes.
To see how marketing automation can boost your event marketing success, try a 14-day free trial of the SimplyCast platform!
