relevent/ marketing ideas
Before you can grow your audience, get to know your audience.
We refer to the process of answering these questions as “audience mapping.” It’s literally the process of mapping out an audience’s demographics, paying particular attention to their presence on, or absence from, social media sites.
Identifying where your audience is and how to reach them will help you determine which channels and approaches will let you meet your audience where they already are. Once you’ve determined this, you’ll be able to plan a communications strategy to get them talking about your event.
To do this effectively, you’ll probably find you need to segment your audience. For example, you might decide to use separate email campaigns for past attendees vs. past speakers vs. industry contacts.
If part of your audience uses Facebook, try to match the platform by using more visual, chatty updates. The site has room for comments, so encourage two-way conversation by asking questions or posting open-ended discussions. Facebook also allows you to place ads targeted by location, industry, age and other demographics can help you reach people who otherwise may not have known about your meeting.
If your audience is using Twitter, provide more informative links, as well as a consistent, unifying hashtag to help rally community members around your meeting. As you’re limited to only 140 characters, be sure to keep links short with concise, clear text. Leave room for followers to retweet to their own networks and add a comment – tweets between 71 and 100 characters are the most likely to get retweeted.
Using key industry hashtags can ensure you’re found in searches related to that topic. For example, if you hope to reach neuroscientists, including hashtags such as “#neuroscience, #psychology, #brain” in your tweets means you’ll be visible to anyone looking at only those terms.
Twitter too has recently introduced the ability to offer promoted posts and targeted ads to reach specific demographics. This allows your content to be visible to those interested in certain keywords or topics.
If your targeted demographic is very active on LinkedIn, this can be a great place to reach out to new connections and create collaborative relationships. Connecting with industry influencers and engaging in groups and discussions specific to the field you hope to reach can bring a lot of attention to your meeting’s brand and position you as an important resource and thus must-attend event.
Though email campaigns have been used for several years, they’re still a highly effective marketing strategy, especially for events. In one recent study, 77% of consumers said they preferred to receive marketing through email. Ensuring your site has a visible, easily-accessed opt-in function ensures potential participants are able to get updates directly to their inbox.
Social sharing links on your website and in eblast campaigns is an essential way to get noticed, not to mention creating content that’s worth sharing. Popular shared content includes blog posts, keynote speaker announcements, Call for Abstract dates, contests & photo/video sharing campaigns, fun facts about your event history or industry, final program details and more.
Finding your audience where they already are and speaking to them in a language they’re already using will give your message that much more weight, and will pique their interest in your event.
Rachel Stephan is the owner of sensov/ event marketing. She has over 18 years of experience in marketing, advertising and creative direction in the event space.
