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Events and exhibits, trade shows, and conferences are all effective ways to draw attention to your company and brand. Booking your flight and hoping for magical leads to appear is not the only option, though. Participating in and exhibiting at an event requires planning that begins months or even years in advance. How do you get ready for your upcoming in-person event? Here are the 5 steps to ensure you are ready for success.
Steps to host your in-person event
Define your goals
It’s crucial to describe your company’s objectives. Are you trying to generate leads, sell a product, promote your business, or hold an online networking event? Whatever the objective, be careful to define SMART objectives. You may use this information to arrange the remainder of your activities properly and keep the entire company on track.
For example, growing Facebook likes and customer survey replies by 20% at the end of the quarter, would be your SMART aim. How you plan the event will depend on that objective. Large signs and a unified branding package that people can relate to are likely things you’ll want for your company. To accomplish your goal of getting people to Facebook, your social media channels should be very prominent.
On the other hand, you might want to generate leads for sales. The number of leads in your sales pipeline can be a good example of a SMART objective in this situation. It will be different from just building brand awareness to approaching the event. You should speak with each person separately, explain what the product can do for them, and then acquire their contact details to add them to the funnel. Both of these objectives—among many others—can be assisted by an event. The key is to approach the event strategically in both your planning and preparation.
Promote your event
Your social media marketing doesn’t end on that particular day. In fact, this is the ideal time to spread the word about your ongoing event. Encourage attendees to use your event’s hashtag while discussing it on social media or posting images and videos from the occasion. Asking people to tweet questions to the speaker in question with a hashtag attached will help you quickly identify and sort through them.
Having a photo booth or other designated photo place with your event name and hashtag clearly visible is another in-person event idea. Selfies taken and shared online by attendees will instantly alert their followers to your event. Additionally, you may use this to crowdsource fantastic visual content for advertising upcoming events.
Organize your team
The decision regarding the event’s staff comes next. No of the size of your business, sending team members away from the office for a few days to work on an event can have a significant impact. It is crucial that you carefully plan who will work the event and when the result.
Obviously, your objectives will dictate who you take. Members of your sales team are a great choice if you want to leverage sales. It can be most strategically advantageous to bring members of the PR team if you want to increase brand awareness. Make sure everyone who will be present at the event and working there is aware of their duties.
To comprehend the plan and objectives of the event, they should all participate in the pre-event preparation. Although working on an event can be enjoyable, personnel must work hard to produce outcomes.
Create memorable experience
It’s one thing to get customers to your stand. Another is to encourage them to stick around, engage with your company, and eventually buy from you.. Make plans for the unforgettable experiences you can provide event participants before you arrive.
- Videos and visual content: At events, visual content is king. Look for methods to include images and videos in your encounters. A compelling video can demonstrate the core values of your company. People can see your product in action by watching a case study or testimonial video. An inside look at the production process might reveal the company’s objectives and how the product is manufactured. To be imaginative with video, use your imagination.
- Product demonstrations. People desire to observe your good or service in use. Try a fashion show if you have an exceptional wearable product. Show them how the service works if it has the potential to increase their company’s productivity. Allow customers to test the goods out for themselves. If consumers actually get to try things out, they’re a lot more likely to feel connected and desire to make a buy.
- Engaging staff. Engaging employees at an event booth is more crucial than showy technology. Your team must interact with everyone, form relationships, and have fun. Animated employees can attract customers to the booth without coming off as aggressive. Both a memorable staff interaction and a memorable film will stick in the minds of attendees.
- Interactive touchpoints. Bring technology to your booth. Showcase the capabilities of your product with AR and VR. Allow customers to engage with the brand. To educate people about your company, you can use an interactive iPad service tour or VR goggles that transport them to a different environment.
Follow up with post-event marketing
You need to start preparing for how you will sell yourself after the event even before it begins. Will you set up meetings with potential clients to go through your findings? Will a whitepaper be written about the occasion? How are you going to follow up with any leads you generate? It’s crucial that you have this strategy in place so that you can get started right away when you return, while the incident is still newsworthy.
Even if an event is useful in the here and now, some of the largest benefits come from carrying on the conversation and developing connections after you return home. Think about the following suggestions for after the event:
- Utilize the In-person event platform to send a follow-up email to each person you spoke with.
- Send handwritten notes to everyone you had a unique connection with, including VIPs and event organizers.
- Post a blog or social media recap of the event. On the flight home, draught it, and have it prepared straight away.
- Follow up on any possible business partners or sales prospects.
- Set up calls and meetings to continue discussing the concepts that were covered during the event.
- Make a strategy to carry your momentum over to upcoming events.
Benefits of hosting an in-person event
Organic networking
Nothing compares to the feeling of attending an event where you’re surrounded by individuals who share your interests and hobbies while also making new friends. It has been demonstrated that networking meetings held in person have a better possibility of resulting in deals than those held virtually. The experience at any event is around networking. Those in attendance who network and mingle will have more chances to make new friends, locate clients or business partners, and form bonds with other people who share their interests and hobbies.
Better focus
It might be challenging to keep visitors’ attention during virtual gatherings. The nearly limitless entertainment options available on the internet lead to a lack of interest in the discussion taking place on stage. You can at least solve this issue in person by drawing attendees’ focus away from their screens and onto the stage.
Reconnecting with Clients and Partners
Nothing quite compares to meeting in person when it comes to forging a relationship with people, despite the fact that video chats, emails, phone conversations, and other virtual channels may be utilized to reconnect with and deepen ties with existing clients, partners, and industry colleagues. Seeing people in person is crucial if the foundation of your business is long-lasting connections.
Hosting live events gives you the chance to meet with a lot of clients and partners in one location over a few days, which is one of the largest advantages. It is not unusual for those sessions to be more productive than numerous calls and emails.
Build brand
For marketers, attending industry events in person provides an enormous opportunity to raise brand awareness, establish market positioning, and launch new goods or services. Businesses that use display booths are aware of the effects having a physical presence in an exhibit hall can have on market perception and on attracting new customers from attendees.
However, many conferences also give businesses the chance to have staff members present, take part in panel discussions, or otherwise supply attendees with thought-leadership information. There are also chances to fund participation in other events or associated networking activities. In each case, these measures aid in positioning the business’s brand in attendees’ eyes.
Non-verbal communication
Nonverbal communication is significant in our lives because it may improve a person’s ability to relate, participate, and generate meaningful interactions in daily life. Information is conveyed by nonverbal cues, which are inputs that do not include voice or words. This contrasts with body language, which uses movement and gestures other than only the face to communicate. According to research, nonverbal indicators like posture and eye contact can affect how people judge a person’s personality attributes like competence.
