In recent years, COVID has influenced how organisations hold events and engage with their consumers and the public.
Time-sensitive events and activities now have a more fluid, digital viewpoint thanks to special events.
Paid search and social media advertising are a great fit for raising brand recognition and encouraging engagement.
Think about advertising business events as a distinct approach from your regular ads, deserving of its own budget and infrastructure.
Preparing a Campaign: Things to Think About
Campaigns may be enhanced with sitelink and promotion extensions to accommodate any unique occasion.
Extensions of promotions are considered sales promotions and so warrant a price cut. The establishment of the extension should specify beginning and ending dates for both.
Creating Successful Event Promotional Campaigns: 4 Steps
After you have established a separate campaign for your event and allocated a specific budget for it, there are many more variables to consider that are specific to event promotion.
1. Speak plainly, concisely, and imaginatively.
Ads promoting the event in both search and display formats should be mobile-friendly and adhere to best practises by providing useful information such as the event’s purpose, date, and time in addition to a compelling call to action.
Those looking to join or join up should find information on how to do so.
If it’s a highly competitive business event, you should include the usual marketing elements—features, advantages, and any USPs.
2. When
If your event is only happening for a short period of time, such as a few days or a single day, timing is of the utmost importance when developing event marketing.
Is it more important to you to reach people when the event is happening or at a later time? Instead of waiting days, weeks, or months, why not work up to it?
Should we take a different tack when promoting the “build-up” to the event as opposed to the event itself?
Keep in mind the time of day the advertisements will run their final course as you plan their run dates and timetable. When Google shuts down at midnight, you can lose a whole working day.
Facebook lets you schedule posts at a particular time of day. This is in military time, so keep that in mind.
3. Places
The location of the event will have the most impact on the geotargeting, but there are still other factors to think about.
Geotargeting will seem differently for each advertiser depending on the concentration of their target audience. Case in point:
While doing a sidewalk sale in the city, the target area is typically rather small.
Attendees at a major event, like a tradeshow, will include both locals and visitors to the region.
The most difficult audience to hyper-target is a national one, therefore keep that in mind when planning a webinar with a national audience.
4. Aiming
It’s possible that event-specific targeting will seem different from the targeting used by the main ad account.
As this is applicable to many situations involving a physical event, let’s use a technological trade exhibition as an example.
Assuming the ad content is show-related, you’ll want to target showgoers who are actively searching for information while they’re at the event.
Google and Bing users may organise their inquiries using concepts like:
- Presenting technologies during the exhibition.
- Businesses participating in the exhibition.
- The official title of the event, such as “tech expo.”
Those who are physically present at the event might be specifically targeted by using these search phrases.
Using audience lists like “technology news and trends” or “new technology items” inside your target location might help you target your market in the search engines as an additional layer on top of the keywords or on their own.
How to Benefit from Events (Local or Elsewhere) Even if You Can’t Go is a Bonus Hint!
Although it has been assumed throughout this piece that you are actually taking part in or hosting the events in question, you may still benefit from the increased visibility by riding on the coattails of similar gatherings if they are relevant to your industry.
You may still market your local home services or material on your website that is linked to the exhibition by taking advantage of the publicity surrounding the event even if you aren’t an exhibitor.
When you consider the current economic climate, you can see how important it is to have fresh ideas for marketing your business event.
Use your imagination to come up with novel ways to persuade people to sign up or take part in your event, whether it’s in person or online. The trick is to zero down on certain geographic areas, searcher goals, and related topics.