When hosting a business event – or even attending one with your business – visibility is crucial. Elevating your business’ profile within the community is the whole reason to attend or go to the effort of planning an event or occasion. These are some top tips for your next trade show, festival or event in order to feature your business and maximise your ROI.
Go Flashy, Be Fun, Stand Out
If you are planning on attending festivals, fairs or any kind of B2C event, the chances are it’s not critical to your business that you appear professional and sophisticated in order for customers to trust you. This means you can have a little fun with how you capture the attention of passers by! This could be anything like using an air dancer to wave hello to a new audience, using a feature show or hosting a performance to drum up a crowd, giveaways or games are also fantastic options to give consumers a little taste of new product launches and goods.
Some brands might be a little reluctant to invest in the ‘fun’ things, but remember, this is the most effective way to build a community and to encourage engagement. Fun and friendly features incite action and make your team look way more approachable.
Build An Inclusive, Exclusive Space To Connect With Consumers
Attending events with your business – other than driving profit – is to increase brand awareness. It’s also a great way to intimately connect, offline, which is much more memorable to consumers. Depending on the plot you’ve been assigned at an event, why not construct a space that consumers can stop for a minute. This dwell time provides business representatives with an opportunity to speak to and connect with an audience.
Remember not to go with the hard sales pitch at this point, as it is likely to drive the captive audience away. Focus on relationship building and getting to know your customers needs and expectations even more. This information can be used to fuel your business’ future. But also, sows the seed of customer acquisition. This is a particularly popular option for those business’ who work in an industry in which customers tend to be loyal to one company. Look at how many phone companies sponsor festivals and consumer events, for example. Help your business to thrive and encroach on competitors market share with brand awareness and by showing your customers your personality.
Read More: Ten tips for planning an event that your guests will never forget
Use Social Media To Follow Up & Spread Awareness
Attending an event or festival with your business? The perfect photo opportunity! Depending on the industry, many businesses struggle to find exciting and engaging content to post. Take the opportunity to build anticipation, like you would with a product launch, encouraging followers to come and find you at an event. You can offer incentives of giveaways, too.
Yet, one way to measure the success of your business event is to track your social media metrics. Ask consumers sitting in your space or enjoying whatever game you have set up to follow you on social media – that’s the only payment you might have to ask of them – and then market and re-target those consumers.
User generated content also establishes credibility and a positive image for brands – of all sizes and scales. Launch a hashtag and encourage consumers to post about your brand, getting the word out about your services, but also conveying the atmosphere and attitudes you achieved at the event, perfect for adding personality to your business!
