One of the best ways to find clients isn’t online – it’s actually by meeting people in real life. That’s places such as seminars, launches of products, even trade shows, and other networking events. Making the most of these is a powerful way to meet people, and also get to reach out far beyond the computer.
If you’re serious about your business, you may already be attending some of these. There’s simply no denying that these are a powerful way to build your business while boosting your personal and professional brand. Hosting an event is also a smart career move, but takes a hell of a lot more work and effort!
For events that you’re going to be attending as a guest or a business with a slot (as a speaker, a stand, or in some other capacity), you really need to come up with a powerful followup strategy so you can get back to people afterwards – you’d be very surprised to know how many people forget this.
So, before the event even starts, you should be focused on looking at your current database of leads and customers. Segment your list to decide who would be most interested in knowing this news; if you’re super-segmenting, you could even divide that group into more segments to create slightly different and personalized mails to let them know.
Once that’s done, it’s time to create a drip campaign, starting around 2 months before the event starts. Tease, reveal, cajole, just market the ever-loving hell out of it: you want people to know and be excited about what you’re doing – so excited that they will come if they’re hyped enough!
While the event is in progress, you’ll want to shift the focus to lead generation. Whether you’re a guest or host, you’ll want to make sure that everything is optimized to attract attention and also to attract leads – including ones who have specifically told you that they will be there.
Remember, at events like trade shows, your direct competition will often be there, so you really want to grab as much of the limelight as possible. There are plenty of ways to do this, such as creating interesting booth designs, coming up with a theme that makes people curious, giving away freebies – the list goes on and on. Just make sure that you’re going to stand out from the crowd!
For those times when people engage with you to talk about your business, have awesome elevator pitches ready. Note the plural: not one, but many. Think of the questions you usually get asked, and design pitches that cater to those. Most of all, make sure that you’re giving people an amazing first impression.
After the event, you’ll also want to get emailing again, segmenting the leads you collected from the event into “slightly interested” to “hyped” and anywhere in between, depending on the reception you get. Ideally, email them no later than 48 hours after. The good news is that you can prepare this email with the drip campaign for the pre-event campaign!
You won’t want to leave it there either. You might want to add some personal details – explain how you got their name, where you met them, a few details, even a specific conversation you had with them. The more accurately and honestly personalized this mail is, the better. In an age of personalized depersonalization, a real personalized email can go the extra mile.
The point of all this, of course, is to do a Godfather: Make them an offer that they simply can’t refuse. You should already know which leads are most likely to be salivating with desire to take you up, but rather than go straight for the jugular, focus on further engagements.
The best way to do this is with content marketing that would appeal, and drop in notes of future events that you’ll be appearing at. Got deals and offers? Remember the 80:20 rules of marketing and keep it subtle, especially with the lukewarm leads, as they are far less likely to take action.
One thing should be clear though: when in doubt, just be persistent. Don’t let your brand fall out of their head, keep chipping away until you get that end goal of recognition: people thinking of you without you having to prompt them!
This breakdown is focused on the different stages of event marketing in a smart, automated way that maximizes your use of the leads you already have, and how to make the most of the new leads you will acquire at any event.
Hopefully it has given you a much better idea of how you can best approach these from a marketing viewpoint to maximize your time investment, and of course any financial investment you have made into showing up.
While this is more focused on attending events, the same strategy works very well for a hosted event to, just with a few tweaks to reflect that you’re in charge of the event, rather than just an attendee. Of course, that comes with a whole world of responsibilities, but the rewards can be huge, especially if you create a major new event! Good luck – and get out there!