4 Practical Tips for Conference Marketing

As an important part of the marketing process, conference marketing is often widely used in marketing activities, especially in the B2B corporate marketing field.

Conference marketing belongs to the category of event operations, and its forms usually include salons, conferences, and exhibitions. Next, let’s take a look at the key points that should be grasped in different forms of conference marketing activities with Xiao Baige, and have fun with conference marketing!

1. Timely communication

Leaders are actually the ones who know the company’s strategy and future product directions best, so planners need to communicate with them repeatedly before the event. Before communication, make Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C with different venues, different themes, different presentation forms, and different budget levels. The people that each plan is expected to cover and the effects to be achieved need to be clearly listed. Only after determining the right direction can you achieve twice the result with half the effort.

2. Clarify the purpose and display the core content

Currently, industry summits and forums are important forms of brand display and industry communication.

Usually, a keynote speech is delivered on a certain topic, and corresponding sponsor booths are set up, while target customer groups are invited to visit and communicate on site. Therefore, as an exhibitor, the focus of planning is on: exhibition hall, speech, booth interaction, and media exposure.

For big brands, because they have sufficient budget, they generally choose customized exhibition halls to design unique booths that fit the product positioning and characteristics. Usually, such customized booths will be particularly "stunning" among a number of standard exhibitions and very eye-catching, so naturally there will be a lot of people visiting the exhibition halls.

However, for ordinary enterprises, especially those in the start-up stage, they may not have enough budget to customize the booth. So when choosing a standard booth, you should pay attention to several details:

1. Make plans in advance. Usually the exhibition is based on the contract signing date. The earlier the exhibition is, the more priority it has:

Make plans in advance. If you decide to attend, communicate with the organizer as soon as possible and reserve a location. Usually entrances and exits and three-way intersections are better than corners and single-channel locations. Follow the crowd guidance map and choose a superior location as much as possible. 2. Standard exhibitions can also be innovative:

Usually, if you choose a standard booth, you can save the work of exhibition hall design and construction. At this time, the background display board is very important.

Usually the background board display content + roll-up banner + brochure are a complete set of materials. The theme and style must be unified. The display board is a summary in one sentence, the roll-up banner is a display of key content, and the brochure is a complete introduction to the company's products as a whole.

3. Keynote speeches enhance customer awareness: Currently, industry exhibitions or summits are usually a combination of booths and forums. If the budget is sufficient, or there are people with IP effects in the company's leadership, it is recommended to choose the corresponding branch venue to deliver a keynote speech. Because on one hand, the speech can give customers a feeling that the company is relatively strong and has valuable information to share; on the other hand, after listening to the sharing, potential customers can increase their awareness of the product.

3. Grasp the key points and formulate emergency plans

Develop a conference marketing schedule, divided into three stages: before, during, and after. Different types of activities have different work requirements for the three stages:

1. Preliminary preparation

theme:

What is the purpose and expectation of holding the meeting? What is the theme? In what form? Customer appreciation party, fan meeting, or offline sharing by celebrities, etc.? Who will tell the story?

time:

Weekdays or weekends? It still depends on the nature of the event. If it is a fan meeting or a micro-class by a celebrity to improve personal skills, it is recommended to choose a weekend, accompanied by tea breaks, and the attendance rate will basically not be low.

Place:

Choose a suitable venue according to the scale of the event. At the same time, you can leverage the popularity and resources accumulated by the venue over a long period of time to jointly promote the event. Inviting speakers or audiences is a very reliable cooperation. Small salons, entrepreneurial cafes, joint entrepreneurial spaces, incubators, etc. are more suitable choices at present. The cost is not high and it is easy to create an atmosphere on site.

figure:

Try to mobilize resources to find big names. You can find them through introductions from acquaintances, communities, circles, etc. Clarify the purpose and direction of the conference activities and the benefits they can bring to the big names, such as getting to know a group of big names in the industry. The big names' practical knowledge and excellent speeches can greatly improve the level of the event.

process:

How to arrange the opening, climax and finale of the event, how to insert some small episodes in between, the time control and content structure of each speaker must be carefully arranged so that the audience can maintain a high level of mental concentration. Choosing an experienced host with strong control ability is very important for handling emergencies during the event.

Registration channels:

Relevant information can be released through third-party channels such as the company's WeChat and Weibo, social networks, and Baige events. However, it is recommended to use the same registration portal. You can also submit the registration information directly, preferably including key information such as company, name, position, telephone number, email, etc., to facilitate subsequent tracking and contact.

Budget:

You must be fully aware of the expenses of general activities and make a budget. If the budget is too small, it will be difficult to make additional adjustments later. If the budget is too high, a large portion of it may be cut. Reasonable market quotations and appropriate surpluses are prerequisites for ensuring that the event proceeds as scheduled.

2. Activity Execution

The division of labor and responsibilities of staff are clear:

Make a clear work division table and assign responsibilities to individuals. Don't just say vaguely who is responsible for a certain module and call it a day. Instead, every work detail must be clearly listed and confirmed.

Grasp the details:

Details are the key to determining the success or failure of the entire event, so whether every detail is implemented in place is related to the audience's evaluation of the event.

3. Post-publicity

Post-conference publicity should preferably be released on the day the event ends. If there is really no time, it can be arranged to be released on the second day. This is what is meant by striking while the iron is hot.

For example, some salons are continuous, and you can take this opportunity to preview the next issue and inform the audience to continue paying attention to the latest developments.

4. Timely analysis and summary through data

Not only should we continuously monitor the real-time data of the event, but we should also know how to recover the data after the event. Collect the overall data of the recycling activity to see how much the final effect of the activity differs from the expectations in the activity planning stage, and find out what links affect the expectations of the activity. Is there a problem with the activity content or the activity delivery channel? In addition to the problems, analyze the causes and then find solutions to avoid repeating the same mistakes in the next event.

An outstanding event organizer needs to have a global perspective, excellent communication skills, and excellent coordination and execution capabilities. Of course, all of these require experience accumulation. If you don’t have it now, take a look at this article and hope it will bring you some gains~

Author: Sohu

Source: Sohu