When you leverage marketing events correctly, they can be one of your brand’s best ROIs in terms of marketing. Whether you are a sponsor at a live event or do an online webinar, provide a way to bring your product or service to life in a tangible way. It lets potential and existing customers interact with you and your brand. Events also allow you to create experiences that live on and provide long-term value because they live on social media and that in turn can generate publicity. Live events can also help you capture original content to tell your brand story and bring it to life in other digital forms.

One of the first things to consider is the location if your event is live. You want to make sure that wherever you hold your event, it is central to most of the people you expect to attend. Accessibility is important if you want to maximize attendance at your event.

First impressions are crucial, so you want to make sure your publicity for the event is exciting, informative, and inviting. Give them a good reason to attend. Similarly, it is equally important to leave a positive impression when the event ends, so consider having members of your brand team available to see your guests off. Consider handing out discount cards, an actual product featured at your event, or a souvenir of the event. Offer to take pictures with your guests.

There are many ways to maximize your ROI for an event. Here are several more suggestions you can use to maximize your event ROI:

• Focus on your pre-promotion for your event and be diligent in recruiting to maximize attendance at the event.
• Encourage participants to bring a guest. Consider offering a discount for a guest.
• Capture emails asking for permission to continue communicating with the person in the future.
• Drive the conversation by using a hashtag and encourage people to use it. Place reminders throughout the event and create opportunities and special places where folks can take pictures.
• For live events, provide professional images of people who are enjoying your product or service. Get as many photos of your product or service being used in real-life settings as possible.
• Hire a photographer and/or videographer for several hours prior to the event start and give them a shot list so they can capture behind-the-scenes photos, videos, and interviews you can use later for online brand storytelling. Don’t forget to post photo and video disclaimers throughout your event venue so guests are made aware their images may appear in social posts or on social platforms.
• Always follow up your event with a thank-you to those that attended and include a call-to-action in the thank you such as follow us on…..or 10% off as a thank-you for attending our event and trying our product.
• Issue a Press Release before your event that includes photos and ask them to put it in their calendar.

Any event has the capability of generating a solid ROI. When you focus on the fundamentals, engage with your audience and use the right tools, you will maximize the ROI of your marketing event.

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