How can you optimize your event marketing strategy?

As with anything, starting at the beginning with the "why" is important. When you identify the desired outcomes, you can build a strategy to achieve those outcomes, along with the right targets to measure the performance. With these items defined, you can build out the detailed "how" and "what" of the event.

Involve all stakeholders early. If they feel they have input and understand your vision they’ll feel they have ownership of their contribution and that will all help to achieve a successful event. And, as others have said, start with the end in mind. What are you wanting to achieve with the event, who is it for? You can then work back to put in place the correct building blocks for a successful event.

The brief should be the foundation of where all the main information is. Unlike an advertising/media led campaign, event marketing can achieve several objectives. Assigning a primary objective (Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Action). The dynamism of an event gives the opportunity to then assign individual objectives (which should ladder up to the main one) to each engagement. Equally important is to consider creativity, to break through the clutter. Leaning on common measurement as the foundation, for a group of events of the same type, is what will allow you to optimize.

Throwing a successful event is a bit like hosting a great party. You've got to know who you're inviting and what will make them have a blast. Before you even send out those invites, do your homework. Find out what your guests (or audience) like, what they want to know, and how they like to have fun. Use surveys or just listen to what they're saying online. Once you know that, make your event about those things. Make sure you also let them know why your party is the place to be—what cool stuff will they learn or experience? That's your value proposition!

This is the baseline, before assigning objectives and should be part of the brief: Target Audience Reach (how many in attendance) Frequency (how many times through several events, or through asset/interactions will the brand connect with the target audience) Time (During what period of time is the campaign) Budget (to optimize investment) Content (what type of interactions will be developed to engage with main target audience) All these are critical in order to meet objectives.

Choosing the right format and platform for your event is critical. Consider how and where your target audience want to engage. If you decide to do a virtual event, having the right platform that can support the type of experience you want to create is key. There are many great platforms on the market, but not all of them offer the same type of features or the same quality is terms of reliability. I would also recommend that you think about post-event capabilities. If you plan to reuse content from the event (and you should!), some platforms provide features to make leveraging the content easier.

There are so many new tools to manage the event logistics, that it is about what will the team feel confortable with. And more importantly, what would work best for a virtual, hybrid, or in-person event.

To optimize a result-oriented event marketing strategy, the first step is to create a: ***MARKETING CALENDAR*** This will help all the channels to sync with each other where inter-related marketing strategies can be created. Seeing the same creatives and brand tone on all media is the best way to communicate the brand message and to have a cohesive user experience.

A good frame work I advise to use is: - Attract [before] (media tactics/channels to promote the event) - Interact [during] (media to amplify and produce potential content) - Act [after] (media to support main objective, to create amplify awareness, or crm to cultivate leads)

All results should ladder up to the original goals, to validate and benchmark all KPIs. If a recap is more than a week old, and comes after the next event, may not have the ability to optimize investment or impact.