How To Create Amazing Photo Experiences

In this article, I'm going to teach you how to create an irresistible photo moment at your next event from the knowledge I've gained building Pixilated over the last ten years.

Not everyone will realize this, but having a photo moment built into your event is hands down one of the smartest moves you can make.

Photo moments empower your guests to help spread the word about your initiative by sharing on social media, gives them an awesome keep sake and gives you an opportunity to stay connected; through email of course;)

Getting your message out there is tough, getting people to actually show up is even tougher. When you learn how to leverage "shareable moments" in your events you use the former to accomplish the later.

Unfortunately, there isn't a playbook that breaks it all down so it's simple to execute. Well, there wasn't...

Roadblocks that needn't block the road.

There will always be reasons why people decide to Not do something and creating a killer photo opp certainly isn't an outlier. When it comes to the task at hand, a few of the most frequent excuses I hear are:

• "There's no budget"
• "My clients are too conservative"
• "I don't know how"
• "I'm not creative"

Ready for the good news? All four of the above, and many more, are 100% wrong assumptions. Keep reading and I'll walk you through my step by step process on how YOU can do this too!

Here's how, step by step:

Step 1: Take the time to think through how this photo moment will reflect your event/brand/brewery

To some this may seem extremely obvious, to many however, not so much.

Remember, one of our goals here is to empower attendees to help us spread our message through photos, so integrating that message gives you a leg up.

What's more, if you make it irresistibly cool you'll also succeed in driving some serious FOMO; never a bad idea.

So the question is how? In our ten years of making this exact thing happen we've seen hundreds of amazing ideas that range from classic and simple to complex and everything in between. Here's a few examples to help paint the picture.

• Carry over the branding your creative team has already established for the event. Any photo booth company worth it's salt (Pixilated!) will have design templates for your team to run wild with.
• Look to your event/brand/brewery/location/theme for a little creative inspo.
• Leverage a green screen and take your guests to another place entirely. What used to be a challenging feat (green screen vs. lighting) has become easier and easier to execute.
• Again, what may seem like table steaks is often a critically overlooked aspect of integrating a photo activation in your event. Messaging!

Step 2: Spread the word!

From the in-event signage to the copy accompanying the email and texts your guests receive their photos in should be well thought out for ease-of-use and optimizing ROI.

Simply put, if people don't know there's a photo opportunity, or more so can see it but are too timid to dip their toe since it isn't clearly spelled out, will result in underwhelming engagement.

It's not enough to just add an ingredient; you have to put the work in to integrate it.

Additionally, I'll refer back to Step 1 to re-emphasize our goal of having attendees help us amplify our message. Taking the time to sit with your social/communications team to decide what that copy should say and what your CTA is, is very much worth the effort.

One of my favorite aspects of "photo marketing" is that the open rates on the emails and text messages our photo booths issue are bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. Literally like a 99% open rate.

What's that mean? Well, for starters it means your message is going to get read A LOT. That's why we ensure our clients understand good copy "Hey , You Look Great!" and a well aligned CTA "Share this photo on social and use the hashtag #getpixilated" go a long way.

Step 3: The Triple Win - Look to incentivize engagement; it'll work:)

Folks love taking photos. Folks love sharing photos. The one thing that makes folks love taking & sharing photos even more? A chance to win something cool!

Now I know what you're thinking, but we don't have a Tesla to give away. I feel you, me neither. The good news? Your people don't really care about that. They care about their "why." That's why they showed up in the first place.

Look to your audience and mission for ways to come up with clever incentives that are unique to your event and that your community will love. One of my favorite things is brainstorming creative ways to incentivize audiences.

Here are a few ideas from the top of my head:

• Free consultation or prize from another participating sponsor. aka The Win-Win-Win. I've used this one tons because it creates insane value for everyone involved and really facilitates honest connections.
• Free tickets to next year's event. This is a no-brainer. If you're doing your event right, people will be chomping at the bit to have next year's ticket on the books.
• VIP access to after-parties, private dinners, keynotes and more.

Step 4: The post-event shuffle

They came, they saw, they swooned. Now it's time to put a button on it.

While I'm not going to go too deep into post-event follow-up strategy, I would be missing a huge opportunity to not at least mention how your massively successful photo opp will keep providing dividends.

At this point, you've probably amassed a ton of amazing photos and contact information to go with it. So now what?

Well, for starters, you can pick some of your favorite images and share them across your social. Encourage your followers to vote on their fave photos, tag people they know and generally make everyone who didn't come feel FOMO like no other.

This is also another great opportunity to drive engagement with some kind of contest or game. Still have a few of those free tickets for next year? This is the place to leverage them!

What's more, you've got their contact information and that is going to be pure gold. There are few things better than having someone's email address for the right reasons.

Planning a strategy for how you "warm up" this group to receive regular emails from you is a great idea. You should start with something that relates to how they ended up on your list, ie your event!, And go from there.

Here are a few ideas to get the juices flowing.

• Event recap
• Early-bird ticket discount
• Evergreen content from the live event
• Upcoming webinars
• Invite to join a digital community

Once you start brainstorming the ideas are going to flow like crazy. The important thing is to get started.

Still feeling stuck? Feel free to get in touch and we can work through it together.