Using Events to promote your business

Hosting an event is quite possibly one the very best marketing methods that you can use to promote your business.   Hosting events allow you to show off your business, position the business as a “go to” for the particular product or service and attract new and previously untapped target clients to the business.

Event hosting or event marketing as it more formally known can also help to improve the relationship with your existing customers and find you much more professional contacts to propel the business forward.

Before we go further, let us define event marketing? Event marketing describes the process of developing a themed exhibit, display, or presentation to promote a product, service, cause, or organization by leveraging in-person engagement.   Events may occur online or offline, and can be participated in, hosted, or sponsored. 

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Here are a few practical tips you can use to ensure that your event benefits your business:

1.       Because you get an opportunity to ‘touch’ your target market directly, all the event’s activities can be dedicated to converting attendees into clients.  Ensure that you collect client contact information i.e. telephone numbers, email addresses and social media handles.  Depending on the type of event, collect additional information such as age, product preferences, income, number of persons in the household and buying patterns etc.,

2.       In planning your event, find out exactly where your target audience gets information, and use only those outlets.  Especially since you are a startup, your limited marketing budget must be spent efficiently i.e. if your market is online, there is no need to place adverts on radio.  Use outlets such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to narrow your target so that you reach only those you need to reach, directly.

3.       Once the attendees get to your event, sell, sell and sell some more.  Provide promotional material and memorabilia, get feedback (and use it) and launch new products and services.  If the business is membership based, have a special membership drive, if you have a customer rewards or loyalty rewards programme, ramp it up.  Do all you can to ensure that you see returns on your investment.

Of course, these tips are not exhaustive and vary according to business that you are in.  The important thing however is to stay ‘in touch’ with your target market to ensure that you are meeting their needs.