5 Reasons to Never Pause Your Event Campaigns
Always-on (365 campaigns) are the ultimate campaign to drive awareness, audience engagement and to build data throughout the year, and should be a vital part of your marketing strategy.
All event organisers will be in planning mode for their 2023 marketing strategies. Those that budget for a 365 campaign/always-on campaign will already be starting 2023 ahead of the game.
What do we mean by always-on or 365 campaigns?
This campaign type should not be turned on and off as with your event promotion campaigns. Always-on or 365 campaigns run throughout the year, promoting and amplifying a variety of content pieces depending on your objectives.
The always-on campaigns can be used for overall brand awareness, generating leads, data building, and engagement. The campaigns will keep the audience warm throughout the year, then 16 weeks out with your event you can begin to push your event promotion.
There is a lot of terminology in the industry when referring to campaigns that run throughout the year:
How do always-on campaigns fit into your overall campaign timeline?
The digital strategy timeline below highlights Tag Digital’s recommendations for exhibitor promotion campaigns, visitor promotion campaigns, and attendance campaigns as part of the always-on strategy.
Typically event organisers run all of their campaigns focused on their event date. Always-on campaigns should be continuous outwith your event cycle.
“It is common practice for event organisers to switch off after the event and the audience they’ve nurtured goes cold”.
Nicola Shaw, Head of Growth
It is important to keep the momentum with your audience. Ensure you have your always-on strategy in place to continuously digitally connect with your audience and keep them engaged after the event.
5 Reasons to Never Pause Your Digital Event Marketing Campaigns
1. Reach a new audience all year round
There is a whole world of untapped audiences present on digital channels that you should be trying to reach throughout the year. Being relevant within your industry and the wider industry all year builds brand credibility and overall brand awareness outwith your event cycle.
Use always-on campaigns as an opportunity to tap into new geographical locations, and new niche industry sectors while you have the flexible budget to do so.
These campaigns work well for launch events suffering from low branded search, poor brand awareness, or a niche event title that struggles with engagement.
Building your audience throughout the year will improve the overall performance of your paid campaigns and digital presence.
2. Reduce the cost of your event-focused campaigns.
Consider the large proportion of your marketing budget that is spent promoting your event during the short 12-16 week event cycle and the level of traffic you build into your marketing funnel.
If your marketing stops straight after your event and you stop engaging with the audience you have built over the last 12-16 weeks, they stop seeing your valuable content.
When we pause campaigns, we need to start all over again the following year, building the audiences into the website at a high scale, and our remarketing audiences again.
You can avoid the costly task of rebuilding your audiences at the start of a new campaign by implementing a 365 strategy and keeping your audience warm all year.
Running visitor promotion campaigns as part of an always-on campaign means the audience that has been nurtured for the last 8/9 months will be ready to convert quickly. This creates a cheaper cost-per-acquisition, CPA, and will result in higher volumes of registrations.
3. Keep your active audience engaged
Always-on campaigns keep your audience engaged all year round and build your brand awareness.
Organic posting alone does not keep your active audience engaged. On average, only 2% of your followers will actually see your content unless they are frequent engagers.
Running ads to your engaged audience, remarketing lists, and your social followers, ensures you are pushing valuable industry content to your users without relying on only organic.
Keeping this audience warm throughout the year will drive down your CPA, as these users will convert quickly.
4. Protect your brand against competitors
A hot topic in the events industry, especially due to the volume of new events entering the markets, is ensuring you are protecting your brand against your competitors.
It is important that you protect your branded keywords as if you do not bid on them, someone else will. Also, tapping into customer intent and competitor targeting ensures you are staying at the forefront amongst your competitor audience too.
It is important to stay front of mind with your target audience all year and ensure the wider target market is receiving your valuable content outwith the event cycle.
5. Build your data 365
You need to ensure you are building your data for 365 days of the year, as first-party data is the most valuable asset that businesses can own to generate revenue and sales.
What content works for always on campaigns?
Focus on pushing key content pieces that are engaging to your audience.
All of these types of content are valuable to your audience and will keep them engaged. You can adapt what content you are pushing out throughout the year, but the Tag Digital team recommends aligning your 365 campaigns with your marketing content calendars.