Event Planner Guide – Yapsody

Step Up Your Event Marketing Strategy in 2020

Yapsody — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 05:00:41 +0000

2020 – a catchy, well-rounded number that must’ve given event marketers a few eureka moments already to leverage it into their event marketing strategy. As we plunge into the New Year 2020, it’s time to learn from the past and move into the future with new insights. Do check out the Round-Up of Our Most-Preferred Features in 2019 that will give you an idea of how event presenters have been leveraging Yapsody for event marketing.

Without further ado, here’s our 10 step guide to step up your event marketing strategy in 2020:

1. Seek Out New Venues

Although you can’t bid farewell to traditional venues, seek out new venues that cut out the boring factor of the same old conference rooms and auditoriums. Seek out non-traditional spaces such as gardens, warehouses, rooftops, museums, art galleries, and co-working spaces. Anything that gives your attendees more time to network with each other and elevate the bonding experience. This doesn’t mean that you cross off the regular venues on your list. You just need to drape it better in terms of styling and decor. You could pick up a few pointers from our piece on Designing The Ultimate Event Experience.

2. Partnered Events

Partnering with local businesses or sponsors that tie in with your event is a marketing match made in heaven. Maybe your music festival could amplify it’s brand awareness and impact by partnering up with that world-renowned brewery. Your event marketing campaigns gain more speed and weight when marketed through your sponsor’s channels. Maybe partner up with an event ticketing platform like Yapsody as well? Just saying…

3. Event Website Persona

Your event attendees should get an instant feel and grasp of what your event will turn out to be. Don’t leave anything to their imagination except for a teaser that makes them grab your early bird tickets ASAP. This is where your event website persona plays a trump card in selling out the first phase of event tickets.

With our Online Ticket Store, event marketers can brand and customize every element present of their ticket store. Apart from getting a personal subdomain, you get the option to customize your event ticket as well. Brand it with your logo and tease the upcoming events on the ticket itself to create a strong brand recall.

4. Map Your Attendee Journey

Once you understand attendee personas, you need to map out their journey on your website and social media channels. There are multiple touchpoints for you to leverage – your event website, emailers, registration process, event check-in process, event perks and so on. What makes them click is the answer to win their hearts. Many of your events were mind-blowing but few fizzled out. You need to dig deep into insights and reports to check why that happened. With our Insightful Reporting, peak into your Event Sales report and Consolidated Inventory reports to plan better next time.

5. Create Content Buckets

Pillar your content based on different venues and types of attendees. Attendees for a seminar or conference might prefer podcasts and interviews from the keynote speaker. Similarly, for clubs and casino attendees, make them guess your next headliner act by putting up music playlists. Even if they don’t guess it right, you’ll understand which other artists they’d want to see live. We’d suggest you keep it topical and use hashtags to show up in trending searches.

6. Event Marketing Frequency

Now that you’ve figured out your content, you need to actually schedule them in a manner that would garner maximum reach and shareability. Are your event attendees most likely to DM your Instagram post to their friends on a weekend or a weekday? Your event marketing frequency should match your audience’s browsing patterns. Stop posting randomly to avoid random results. You might want to look at our Event Marketing Services that have strategically increased revenue for many entertainment enterprises.

7. Live Streaming

Your event attendees booked early bird tickets but unfortunately got stuck in a meeting on the D-Day. With live streaming, you’re giving them an opportunity to be a part of your event experience through different platforms. Instagram is a favorite among event marketers due to its innovative features and popularity. Divide your live streaming into pre-event, event, and post-event to keep them hooked. You can also save the stream on your camera roll which can be used in an after movie as well.

8. Utilize the Power of Video

2019 was dominated by video content and shows no signs of stopping. Blogs and emailers are great for the initial pre-buzz marketing. Content in a video format seals that deal for many event presenters. A 30-second teaser is great for grabbing eyeballs and generating leads across multiple social media platforms. A video montage of your past events, if done well, refreshes memories of your attendees and works as a magnet for new audiences. Invest in a production crew that understands your vision.

9. Turn Event Attendees Into Event Marketers

Just how you’d turn your event partners into marketers, turn your event attendees into live event marketers. Maybe a contest or a giveaway to up the ante and create a competitive aura works well. Hook them with a catchy hashtag, design a great event, and let their Instagram stories do the marketing. User-generated content is organic traffic that is a true test for your event success. Your brand’s notification page blowing up with tagged pictures will be a worthy reward for any event presenter.

10. Use Feedback and Survey Data

After everything is done and dusted, you still need to gather post-event data. Give your audiences a tool to voice their opinions. Some might rant out their frustration of being held up at the queue for too long while some might give you a genuine piece of feedback that will change the game for you. Watch out for that tidbit that will elevate your attendee experience for future events. Maybe after a week or so, ask your attendees all the right questions through our Questionnaires and Surveys feature that will help you create easy to answer logic-based questionnaires.

We hope this 10-step guide helps you step up your event marketing strategy in 2020. If you’re a new event organizer on the block, Sign Up with Yapsody to create, promote, and sell event tickets online.

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The Event Planner’s Guide to Instagram Stories

Yapsody — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 06:32:21 +0000

Just recently, while scrolling through my Facebook, I came across this hilarious meme that read, “Snapchat launched Memories, Instagram introduced Stories. Seriously, guys, ask each other out already!” On one hand, people won’t stop going on about how both the platforms are being ridiculous by introducing rip-offs as ‘new’ features. On the other, though, one cannot deny that these are probably not bad moves, after all.
Firstly, no matter how much people roll their eyes over it, nobody has stopped using Snapchat or Instagram out of contempt.
Secondly, just because these features are rip-offs, they’ve been publicized by users themselves and now everybody knows about them.
Thirdly, this attempt might actually drive users to be more loyal to either one of the two platforms. The reason would be a lost requirement to toggle between the two apps when both of them are serving pretty much the same purpose.
If you’ve already used Snapchat stories, here’s what you need to know about Instagram stories – nothing. They are exactly the same. The stories of your friends appear at the top of your feed in the form of circular images of their Instagram display picture. You tap on them to view their compilation of pictures and videos, and you can watch them any number of times within 24 hours. To create a story, tap on the ‘+’ sign at the top-left corner and click pictures or shoot videos. You can also manage who sees your stories. It’s no news that Snapchat has always posed as a competition for Instagram, although the number of Instagram users is double that of Snapchat. Owned by Facebook, the tech giant is doing all it can to weed out competition by making Instagram feature-rich and user-friendly.
But, why do you, as an Event Planner, need to bother about this? It’s a fact not unknown to every event planner that social media marketing is the buzz right now, and the moment a new feature is introduced on any platform, you need to figure out a way to include it in your strategy. While a lot of event planners are already using Snapchat Stories to promote their events, a similar kind of strategy can be adopted when it comes to Instagram Stories, and this blog will give you necessary pointers to achieve that.

1. Got A Secret?
Let your attendees in on little secrets to get them talking. If your event is a product launch, click pictures of your product and watch as your followers try to guess what it is and what it does. Plus, the fact that the story will destroy itself after 24 hours leaves it all to the memory and serves as a more interesting challenge.

2. What Happens Backstage?
As much as attendees want to enjoy the event, they also wouldn’t mind knowing what happens behind the scenes. Keep updating them about the venue, click pictures and videos of your team working on something, or simply chilling together. Remember to keep it funny and engaging.

3. You Should Do It, Too!
Being the event planner, it’s your job to keep posting stories before and during the event. But, if you find ways to make your audience do it, too, they’ll be indirectly promoting your event. One way to encourage them would be to have photo booths with funky props at the venue, or have entertaining performances during the breaks.

4. Tell Their Tale.
While Instagram Stories is a way to broadcast a message to the entire community, making it a little personal could actually make you a favorite among your followers. For example, post a picture asking people to comment their queries, and respond to these queries by uploading a 10 second clip in your story along with the username of your guest and the question they’ve asked. That way, they’ll want to view your story if their question was picked.

5. Peekaboo!
Curiosity is the best marketing tool, they say. Use this to your advantage by not revealing all details about your event all at once. For example, if you’re having a performance by a celebrity or a speech by a renowned personality, just drop in hints about them in your stories. You could put up blurred images, or rhyming clues, or even quotes by these people to intrigue your attendees. Maybe you could also announce a small reward for anyone who guesses it right!
Whatever little games these platforms are trying to play within themselves is not your concern. For you, as an event planner, this is yet another promotional tool to use to market your own event. The fact that you need to consider is that using this will help you reach out to a bigger audience in better ways, maybe, and that’s all.

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