The first consideration for many organizations as they begin planning an event are the logistics, such as venue, speakers and vendors. Yet, it is imperative for the success of the event for a marketing plan to be conceived and approved at the beginning of the process. While relying on participants and board members to share and promote events on social media channels and to their networks does help in spreading awareness of the event, neglecting to make a strategic marketing plan can lead to poor registration numbers and last minute panic to increase registrations as the event date approaches.
It's essential to recognize the significance of working with marketing experts to devise the best strategies, channels, and creative approaches tailored to your target audience. Below, we look at some ways working with an MM marketing strategist can help reach your association’s registration goals.
Website Optimization
The website serves as a digital storefront for your organization. It is where potential attendees look for information about the event, register and engage with event content. Most traffic from any promotion, whether that’s via email or social media, will also be directed to the website, so organizations have to ensure they are user friendly across all devices.
Our marketing team will be able to test and improve the navigability of your website – how easy it is to find relevant information and register – in order to increase the conversion rate of visitors completing key actions on the website, such as watching promotional videos, accessing information or submitting registration. Other key elements of websites that our marketers can improve are ensuring calls-to-actions are clear, the load speed is within the acceptable standard and that all the website visitors information is captured lawfully.
Further, poorly designed and outdated websites can discourage potential attendees from registering, for some this may be seen as an indicator for the quality of the event. Accessibility is also a key consideration, the way you use colour, hyperlinks and tags can impact whether those with disabilities can access the information on your website. Our marketing specialists can look at all these elements, they will know the best practices, have a great eye for design, and be aware of all the web accessibility requirements.
A strategic marketer will also be able to analyse how users are interacting with the website in real-time and make improvements throughout the campaign, ensuring it always stays user friendly and relevant to the target audience.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO plays a key role in enhancing the visibility of your events. By helping optimize event-related content for search engines, marketing can attract organic traffic, increase website visits and spread awareness about the event.
Our marketing team will be able to identify keywords and match them to the search intent of your target audience; optimize content, such as blogs, landing pages and meta tags; they will also be able to help with link building strategies to boost the event website’s authority in search engines.
Paid Media
Advertising is a powerful tool that can help you reach new audiences. Platforms such as Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and LinkedIn offer sophisticated targeting options, allowing marketers to reach a specific demographic that matches your target audience.
Associations often rely on either word-of-mouth, or existing audiences – mailing lists and member lists – to drive registration, they are missing out on new audiences that are either not aware of the organization, or don’t follow them so they don’t know about new events or initiatives. Targeting these individuals based on their professional affiliations and interests, can infect life into the marketing effort by opening it up to a fresh audience.
Gathering great content, amazing speakers and innovative networking sessions are all important parts of any event, but without marketing support, nobody will know about what you’re offering. A key to success is to involve them early on in the planning process, allocate budget to marketing efforts and seek their expertise.