Digital-Age Event Marketing

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You are probably familiar with the line made famous in the 1989 movie “Field of Dreams” — “If you build it, they will come.” While this philosophy may have worked for Kevin Costner, it doesn’t hold water in the world of marketing events online.

In today’s digital age, the Internet has changed the way organizations communicate with their key customers by offering a wealth of tools and technologies to connect with them more effectively. Websites have become one of the main touch points between businesses and their customers, providing a wealth of information and resources at the click of a button.

For many organizations, their websites are also the primary vehicle for communicating event information.

Effectively promoting an event online can lead to increased attendance and deeper, more profitable relationships with customers. However, companies often invest countless hours and resources into creating and executing their events, only to bury static information on an events page that doesn’t engage the end user. This could result in low attendance and decreased revenue.

When it comes to marketing events online, it’s no longer sufficient to just display a static calendar of upcoming events and hope that people will attend. In a time of information overload, with so many companies competing for mindshare and people to fill their seats, the effective marketing of events online can be the key to a successful event.

Companies are discovering how new event marketing technologies can better engage their website visitors and lead to increased awareness and attendance for their events. New online calendar publishing tools, for instance, have transformed the marketing of events online into a two-way communications vehicle that enables organizations to create, publish and promote events that actively engage target constituents. When integrated with other event marketing technologies such as e-mail marketing, these innovative tools and techniques are changing the way organizations communicate event information and allowing them to build direct relationships with their key audiences.

Below are some guidelines for promoting your events online to increase awareness and attendance:

• Make it Interactive: Let people sign up to receive e-mail updates of event-related information or create Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, which provide a way for users to receive newly released content from your site.

• Connect your Customers to Events: Embed interactive event calendars that allow your visitors to pull information and integrate it directly into their personal calendars, forward the information to friends and set e-mail reminders.

• Engage Visitors: Create short surveys every week to check the pulse on an issue and post the results or provide links to related sites and stories of interest.

• Post Dynamic Content: Include the latest industry/
  event news or consider adding a blog to your site with fresh content and guest commentary that is updated on a daily or weekly basis.

• Increase Traffic to your Site: Optimize your site with search engine keywords that bring your event to the top of the list when someone conducts a search.

Technologies and tactics for marketing events online are enabling organizations to communicate event information more effectively to drive customer participation and increase loyalty among their customers. With dynamic, interactive and always changing content, organizations can increase repeat visits to their site and drive event awareness and attendance with minimum cost and complexity.

Whether your event is a large trade show or a more intimate affair, integrating technology for marketing events online can turn it into a field of dreams.

About the author: Jeremy Jaech

Jeremy Jaech is founder and CEO of Trumba, a provider of event marketing technologies that enable organizations to create, publish and promote events through an interactive Web-based calendar and e-mail solution.

Contact: Jeremy@corp.trumba.com