If you're not exactly sure what event marketing is, think of
Earth Day, the Renaissance Faire, Woodstock, Shop Rite's Can-Can
Sale, President's Weekend at Macy's... and let's not forget
Valentine's Day, that "Hallmark Holiday" disguised as a day of
Love but really meant to boost candy, card, dinner and gift
sales.
I'm going to be blunt with you here, hope you can handle it. ;)
Event marketing is not just an excuse to cheer about something.
Your motive in "inventing" and promoting a market-driven holiday
or celebration is to gain new visibility in your niche, drum up
excitement with your target audience, and ultimately increase
profits for your business.
If you're still a little guy just yet, you may have to wait on
those cash sales until next year when people know you better...
but revenue earned by way of new customers who notice you during
the event counts as profit and makes the event worth the effort
in the long run.
Generally, your goal is this:
Position yourself at the helm
of the event and drive mass traffic to the event so that folks
develop an association between the event and your brand.
Event planning is a highly effective networking strategy in
itself. In promoting the event and encouraging participation,
you will become acquainted with many, many new faces and forge
more solid bonds with old faces. In coordinating the event, you
will learn who the "ideal" colleagues are to work with, and how
your strengths can best be leveraged while putting other people
to work on the tasks you find more challenging.
You may wonder how on earth you could possibly execute an event
"virtually." The truth is... with so many active online networks
and Power Groups forming, the internet is possibly the simplest
and least expensive venue for your "invented event." Instead of
a convention center, you have a "home base" website. Instead of
live public speakers standing on a rented out podium in a rented
auditorium, you have virtual "spotlight guests" on your blog or
website. Your event won't require costly shipping of hard goods
and transportation, because your "trade show booth" can be
managed from a website that's launched once and remains live all
year to generate residual traffic and help you rank better for
the following year.
Who might want to join you in promoting an event, and what type
of holiday or celebration could work with your niche? Basically,
the idea is to just zero in on what your audience would find
most valuable and attractive, in the celebratory sense.
Following are a few ideas off the top of my head, but I'm sure
that you can come up with something fabulous to fit your
market.
If you sell gourmet pies, you could invent "Pie in the Sky" or a
Month-Long Virtual Bake-Off. Complimentary vendors who might
join your celebration: gourmet coffee distributors, Longaberger
reps, companies who sell baking and kitchen equipment, folks who
run dessert websites, other pie sellers (sorry, in event
planning, you often have to deal directly with "the competition"
but it's so much fun that nobody ever seems to mind.)
If you normally target the "alternative health" or audience of
herbalists, a health fair has the potential to lure potential
buyers in droves and get them on your mailing list. If your
website is focused around writing or design, you can hold a
contest to attract fresh talent. I've come across websites where
designers are encouraged to "submit entries" which are then
posted and judged, with prizes handed out. The creations are
often very funny and a great way to scope out up-and-comers.
Don't forget:
contestants should be encouraged to sign up for
your paid memberships or at the very least get on your mailing
list; otherwise the event is "virtually" pointless.
Planning an event on the internet requires someone with dynamic
leadership skills, a good sense of timing, a solid "people
network," the ability to mesh with a variety of personalities,
strong organizational skills, and of course- an expert handle on
all the traditional means of online marketing.
Skills needed for proper event execution: website design,
copywriting, email and list management, blogging, publicity,
brand-building. If you possess these skills yourself, wonderful,
but know there is an incredible amount of work involved, so
getting backup assistance is imperative.
Necessary resources: web hosting, FTP (file transfer protocol),
blog hosting, word processing, a good graphics program, numerous
article marketing directories, several memberships to major web
PR sites, a pdf creation tool, an advanced email management
program (such as Microsoft Outlook), an online discussion forum,
a subscriber sign-up form, file backup.
Want to witness event planning live in action? Please join me
and my marketing friends for the First Annual Web Content
Awareness Day, scheduled to launch on February 9, 2006 at
http://WebContentAwarenessDay.com.
Sneak Peek: Visit the
Countdown to Web Content Awareness Day
Blog and learn how you can ride our wave of high web
traffic!
Paste in this link:
http://wordfeeder.typepad.com/web_content_awareness_day/
Copyright 2006 Dina Giolitto. All rights reserved.
About the author:
You want killer content and you want it now. Dina at
Wordfeeder.com is driving mass traffic to the first annual
Web Content Awareness Day and she'll drive it to your
website next. Count on Dina to deliver laser-focused copy that
will emotionally snare your readers. Convert visitors to
subscribers... and subscribers to paying customers. Visit
http://Wordfeeder.com
