How to Successfully Promote a Brand New Event - Top 3 Tips

Your event is scheduled (live, virtual or hybrid), the date is set and you are thinking about the best ways to promote your brand new event. Where do you start?

It is a particularly difficult time for event organisers to drive event attendance for established events never mind for launching a brand new event, so here are 3 top tips to get you started:

Tip #1 – Content marketing

You will have heard it hundreds of times but it’s true – Content is King.

There is a lot of content out there just now, but remember “cream rises to the top”. Good quality content will be one of the pillars of success for your event, so showcase speakers, themes, topics, sponsors and the USPs that you can offer your audience.

Create and share material online such as whitepapers, surveys, videos, blogs and social media posts that will educate your audience. By sharing these materials you won’t necessarily be explicitly promoting your brand, but you will be generating interest in your brand. Be sure to capture data from the user downloading your content, so even if they’re not ready to register for your event yet, you can use that contact information to remarket to that user. You can then use the remarketing ads to provide additional education, or highly relevant offers such as an early bird or special registration discounts, which increases event visibility.

Used wisely, content marketing provides event organisers and marketers with new sources of data that can be used for remarketing to drive registration conversions or exhibit sales. Avoid the hard sell approach and infuse empathy into your communications.

Tip #2 – Reach new data on the Google Display Network (GDN)

Google is a highly effective platform to drive awareness for a brand new event, provided you use it correctly. When launching a brand new event it is sensible to allocate some of your budget to an awareness campaign such as custom intent. You can use custom intent audiences on the Google Display Network (GDN) to build awareness of your event. By creating custom intent audiences you will be able to target users that are currently researching specific topics related to the brand, such as products, solutions and competitors, on Google Display or on YouTube.

It is also important to test ad copy and messaging to see what resonates best with new audiences and remarketing audiences, and optimise as appropriate.

https://tagdigital1.wpengine.com/news/improve-your-event-marketing-strategy-with-custom-intent-audiences-on-youtube/?utm_campaign=tagdigital-blogpost&utm_source=blog&utm_content=promote-new-event-blog

Tip #3 – Video video video

Event promotion video ads are a cheap, super effective and great way to engage users and you can also build new audiences through those users that have engaged with the content.

“72% of customers would rather learn about a product or service by way of video”
HubSpot

Remarketing Using Video

Using video is a great way to educate the user about your new event. You can showcase key influencers speaking about the event or exhibitors speaking about what to expect at the show. Data will be captured from any users that have viewed or engaged with the video, which will allow you to remarket to these users. Parameters can be set on the remarketing so that you can target users that have viewed at least 3 seconds of your video or at least 95% of your video. You can then remarket to these users with additional content to push them down the funnel to register for the event. This process allows you to educate the user and have a much softer approach to generating leads for a new event. Don’t forget – video remarketing can also be used on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, not just YouTube.

YouTube

YouTube has improved significantly from a conversion point of view and can even have lower CPAs than some competitive search campaigns and/or display audiences!

Using YouTube as a platform at this stage of launching a new event is key, but how can you successfully promote an event using video?

TrueView in-stream ads

Using TrueView in-stream ads is one option. These ads show before or during another video a user is watching on YouTube. Viewers will see five seconds of your video ad and then have the choice to keep watching or skip it.

Image of skippable in-stream ad — Source: Google

TrueView for Action

TrueView for Action drives conversions as it includes a clickable call-to-action (CTA) over the video to drive traffic to your event website to complete an action – whether that is to download content or register for the event for example.

Discovery ads

Video discovery ads (previously in-display ads) appear alongside other YouTube videos, in YouTube search pages, or on websites on the Google Display Network that match your target audience.

TrueView in-stream ads, TrueView for Action ads and discovery ads allow for a broad reach, which is ideal when you are trying to reach new people with a new event.

Based on our experience, we know that event organisers are often in need of more video content, or just have outdated post show videos. We have a video offering – creating a teaser video for your upcoming show to excite the audience, ensure you are ready with the best format for ad networks and utilise this cheap and effective media.

“By 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic”
Cisco

Download our video production brochure

For any more information on how to successfully promote your brand new event then book a call with one of the team here. We’d love to hear from you.

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24th September 2020

Author: Fiona Hinchliffe