Have you tried to organize a program or an event, only to have yourself and your crew attend it? It can be very frustrating after spending enough time to plan the event as well as spending money to get the program fixed. You ask yourself, what did I do wrong? Event planning (Check), good team (check), idea (check), so what could have possibly gone wrong? Marketing went wrong.
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Marketing is a major key to sales in any enterprise, business, and firm, not leaving the fact that marketing also cut across humans (“the way you dress is the way you are addressed” is a marketing word). With all this said, even events need marketing since it involves consuming a service.
Marketing events unlike other business marketing is very difficult because it involves buyers giving their time to attend your event and at such expect major satisfaction that will last for a very long time. This satisfaction must be filled with the need to attend the event before the event itself and this can only be done by marketing. Either you are holding a small convention, seminar, festival, award banquet and or executive dinner, in other to get people to come for the event, your marketing must have worked on three things;
- Entertainment
- Excitement
- Enterprise
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Entertainment
True to say there is an event marketing strategy that caught a lot of people’s mind even though the event was a failure, it met this three things that will make people attend an event. I am not going to be talking about the failure of the Fyre festival but I will be looking at the marketing of that event. Trust me, I must say that an event that could pull out about 5000 people to buy a ticket which became sold out within a month did well with marketing.
Before the emergence of the internet and the increase in the ownership of DVDs and Televisions, people always wanted to make time to go to an event to get entertained but with the increase in the ability of people to see events from the comfort of their homes, it became difficult to bring them out to an event. In other to get your audience and attendees to come out of their homes and come for your event, you need to make them see that you have entertainment they will not get if they were not present. Fyre while doing their promotional videos about the Fyre festival got the top models as well as top celebrities to shoot for them also, the team in their promotion telling the public that they will be able to meet with top notch celebrities and divas also, the Fyre team made the general public understand that the event will be holding in Pablo Escobar’s island.
Fyre promotional video
This was enough entertainment for the people who watched the promotional video. Nobody knew what the festival was about (maybe just dance and hangout which could be achieved by going to a random club) but who wanted to miss the fun of hanging out on Pablo Escobar’s island and meeting with their favorite celebrity? Fyre was able to compel the audience to leave their homes because it was offering something unique and different, something the audience feel was designed for them.
Excitement
The ability to make an event memorable before attending it, is one thing that will make your participant not miss the date of the event. The excitement is what the event is about to give to participant. What the event is about is the excitement. Fyre festival was said to be a music festival and that was the excitement, since people wanted to unwind and watch their favorite celebrities perform live. Creating excitements like eye-opening revelations, amazing program and opportunities is good in getting participant to want to never miss your event. One thing Fyre did that made it a failure was it never delivered. When you create excitement in the heart of your audience for an event, the one thing to never forget is deliver. They will hold on to this in your next event and or business
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Enterprise
You have never tried this before and if you have done several events, the one you are marketing is still in the future which means it needs a lot of energy and initiative as it is a risk. The willingness to keep marketing the event, create imaginations that will thrill the audience is needed to hold an amazing event.
Marketing is essential in every business but it has a different approach with event marketing. Holding a successful event is a 50:50 chance but with a proper marketing you will be amazed at how much success you have made. Fyre festival in terms of marketing was a huge success as it was portrayed to be a luxury festival yet sold out its ticket at the first month thanks to marketing but it was a failure in terms of event organizing and management.