Events Create Community

The pandemic added new pressures to the live event field. An already oversaturated market that had seen the end of numerous star-level events gave way to complete year after year cancellations. As vaccination levels have grown and the delta wave passes, people find themselves with record amounts of cash on hand and a desire to feel connected.

Marketing budgets for events are tight and?the public is skeptical of traditional advertisement strategies. The answer for making an event feel like an extension of community, as well as extending the reach of the event, is to provide every entity connected to the event with content and marketing materials that binds the event to its partner.

The first step is to begin a master list of partners within the region or psychographic/demographic community. Most events have varying demographics and so a focus on lifestyle and attitude as well as other alignments to the theme of the event should be considered paramount. This list would include any entertainment, sponsors, vendors, and prominent members of the community or region, and friendly media influencers.

Remember that events have an economic impact outside of the event. Local tourism-based businesses often prosper from events and will help promote. The content marketing game is expensive for your partners as well, so providing your partners with engaging content opens up their outlets and by extension their audiences to the event.

The next phase is to research the overall clout of your partners. Take a quick sweep of their follower count and engagement across social media as well as web traffic. We often feel concerned with the digital but ephemera can often be provided to showcase in brick and mortar operations. For ephemera, foot traffic is a concern. This list once sorted by overall clout can be then grouped into similar entities. You may design several different pieces of marketing material both physical and digital. Events are often multifaceted and determining which partner’s online audience will prefer what type of content will boost engagement and look more attractive to your partners' social media and web managers.

Relationships matter and personalizing your outreach to the right people within an organization matter. Your goal is to get content that increases event attendance into the hands of those who will be able to complete the marketing objectives. Your job is to make sure that trust is high enough that you easily get files with logos and art from them in order to produce content that will boost the esteem of their brands via a partnership with the event. Imagine a music festival producing content for a beer brand to give that feeling of excitement or for a tech company to bolster its ethos by looking smart and thought-leading by sponsoring your event. These relationships can help sustain and grow the event year over year.

Remember that your event is a place and a moment in people’s lives. The incorporation of a community-based slant to your communications will help reintroduce the public to the joys and comfort that being a member of a group can provide. Wrapping your content around other trusted brands within the community can benefit both sponsor partners and events.