Events Marketing & Communications

Nicola O’Loughlin

Chartered Marketer, MCIM, MA

About Me…• Chartered Marketer and member of the Chartered

Institute of Marketing (CIM)• CIM Professional Diploma in Marketing• Masters in Events Marketing Management, London

Metropolitan University• BA (Hons) Media Studies, De Montfort University

(Leicester)

• 8 years in events and marketing, including both charity and business sector.

• Blog – www.oloughlinmarketing.com• Twitter – @nicola_a

Why should events be part of your marketing mix?

4 main reasons to hold an event:

1. Branding & Awareness

2. Lead Generation

3. Customer/Client/Supporter Engagement

4. Education

3 Key Questions

1. Who is my target audience?

2. Is this event relevant to the target audience?

3. How will I get my target audience to attend?

Event Planning

• Your event planning should include a marketing plan from the outset.

• Include costs of marketing within your overall event budget

• Include timeline for when marketing activities and communications will take place

• Don’t forget to include post-event marketing within your marketing plan

Marketing Your Event

Email marketing

Direct marketing

PR

Advertising

Social media

Email MarketingPro’s Con’s

• Easy to use• Quick to set up• Range of templates and

providers which can be used (i.e. Dotmailer, MailChimp, etc)

• Inexpensive• Your message reaches people in

the place where they are most likely to respond instantly (i.e. at their desk)

• Can reach a high number of people with relative ease.

• Need to have a database of contacts

• Cold contacts can lead to poor open rates

• Could be seen as spam• Impersonal

Direct MailingPro’s Con’s

• Easy to use• Usually seen as more

personal than email• More people keep a hard

copy than an email• Open rates seen to be better

than email

• Need to have a database of contacts

• Doesn’t always reach the intended recipient

• Postage expensive (especially when sending bulk mailings)

• Requires more action to make the booking

Press / Press ReleasesPro’s Con’s

• Newspapers and publications are always looking for copy now, so well-written content is often appreciated

• You write the messages and information

• Can include any information you want to communicate, such as human stories and calls to action

• Not sent to a targetedaudience, unless using trade press

• Cannot control the final published copy or that the information is included in publications

• Often a low response rate

• Audience demographicusually fairly vague

AdvertisingPro’s Con’s

• Your own design – so can be eye-catching, have your intendedmessages, etc

• You control the input and frequency of publication

• Can be done in a wide range of methods and places (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, online, etc) to best suit your target audience

• No guarantee that your intended audience will see it

• Audience demographic usually fairly vague

• Often a low response rate

• Can be very expensive, so usually not available to smaller events

Social MediaPro’s Con’s

• Often inexpensive• Reaches wide audience• Intended audience can be

segmented and targeted• Can regularly change

messages• Can get influencers to share

your message for wider reachand credibility

• Audience can access your messages at any time

• Need an established online presence to start with to get best results

• No guarantee that your audience will see orconsider your message, due to frequency of received messages on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

• Can be time consuming

Post-Event Marketing

• “Legacy” – an event doesn’t end when you pack up your equipment, and neither should your marketing.

• Your post-event audience should include those who didn’t attend the event.

• Follow up and measure ROI (return on investment) from your event

Post-Event Publicity, including Twitter conversation about the event. This all contributes to ROI.

For further information, get in touch:

Nicola O’Loughlin

nicola.e.oloughlin@gmail.com

@nicola_a