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This post is part of an ongoing series of posts, which is based on the ebook 'Top 21 marketing ways for membership sites published by the Subscription Coach Amanda Northcutt.

 Download the entire series as an ebook

Creative marketing opportunities abound at trade shows and industry conferences: pay for a booth, buy sponsors through the event's organizer, hold an event that spins off with the conference or show, and more.

If you're lucky enough that someone else in your sector is organizing an annual gathering that brings your targeted audience together, it is your responsibility to be there.

When it comes to organizing your own event, going to a conference that someone else is putting on is like hitting the easy button. However, if all you do is attend without a plan, you might as well go in your home.

There are often conference/event/trade show sponsorships available for purchase, booths, and other opportunities to get amplified exposure to attendees over what you can accomplish on a one-to-one basis. One of the Holy Grail of event engagement at someone else's event is to be a speaker. The topic of speaking engagements will come up a bit later however, as uncomfortable as it may be initially, public speaking to your targeted group is as powerful as gold. It's an easy way to build credibility and confidence, provided your presentation is entertaining relevant, informative, and memorable.

Examine sponsorship options in the same manner as you do in any advertising paid for. It should be measurable, and that's largely on you with an event sponsorship. Your participation during the event, your brand experience you create, and the call to action you make will decide the success of your event or lack or lack of. Your strategy for your event should be pre-planned, with an event-specific plan and an after-event sequence. It doesn't matter regardless of whether you've got any paid sponsorships, although it will likely be significantly simpler if you do have one.

Prep: If you can gain access to and visibility on the attendees list prior to the event, you will be able to move their sales funnel quicker. If you're a patron and organizer, inquire with the organizers on how to maximize the value of your sponsorship. You can ask for more than is included in the sponsorship package If you find a approach to give value to attendees and make the organizer look nice.

If you don't have a sponsor and are not an influencer in your space, you're unlikely to get the attention of organizers in any kind of meaningful way. You can overcome this issue by joining Twitter as well as Instagram and using the appropriate hashtag to find others who are coming. Meet them and think about hosting a party, happy time, meal or a mini-workshop offsite during the hours and days surrounding the main celebration.

The day of: Sponsor or not Find a way to attract leads. It is possible to do this with a one-to one basis, by providing a relevant resource or even a deal to a potential customer who is interested to exchange contact details or the permission to interact with the person on social media. Read the room and be respectful, not pushy, or salesy. If you can help someone, tell them they can help and ask for permission to contact them. Making a point of writing a quick note about each person so you can create a personalized follow-up message will put the bar higher than the ones who send generic follow-up messages that do not include personal information.

Find the hashtag used for the event on social media during as well as after the event and then use it for yourself. That's a free opportunity to boost your profile and help you be more noticeable to attendees. It's also an excellent opportunity to identify potential clients and influencers during and after the conference.

If you're planning to hold a booth at a conference, you need a way to make your presence known. This isn't a guru's advice, but get on Pinterest and look for some innovative ideas. Be noticed, and if your sector is conducive to some fun and lighthearted entertainment, then play that up. Another way to make this happen is to have the booth themed, and then have employees or helpers dress the way they want to dress.

One thing I've seen done effectively is having staff wandering around asking guests would they prefer to join an exclusive bar/restaurant to enjoy cocktails following the event. They then have to go to your booth in order to learn more about the services you offer and sign up (lead capture) to receive an invitation. If you do this, it is essential to have a fun bunch in your booth. People whom your customers would actually like to have a drink with. Hire the most popular room or bar inside a popular restaurant and then pay for the bill at the end of the night. Something like this can create a excitement (no joke intended) during the event. It lets potential customers have a positive experience of your company, and essentially serves as a direct lead magnet.

Follow-up: The preparation and work on the day can be wasted when you fail to follow-up regarding the follow-up process. Keep in mind that lead-capture during the event is crucial as you'll be left with enough people to follow up with. Oops.

After the event, write an individual email with the personal details you made notes of your time with them (you have done that, didn't you?) And connect to them via their preferred social media site for the two-in-one punch. Don't put it off for too long. You must profit from the hype surrounding your event as well as momentum. If you postpone this step for a week, you've likely missed the boat. After the personalized email, you can trigger the automatic drip sequence you wrote before the event, from your email service provider (you were granted permission to email them, too, right?) and then move them along the sales pipeline just as you would a person who has visited your website. You've actually met that person face-to-face therefore your calls to take (CTAs) should be of greater significance (attend an informative webinar, sign up for a the trial, purchase) than someone who is in the process of establishing your drip program when they click on your lead magnet website.

If you are only allowed to distribute cards but not collect details of names or contact information for some reason, create an online landing page that includes an exclusive lead magnet specifically for attendees of conferences. Create a unique batch of business cards created that include the landing page URL and brief descriptions of the free download specially designed to them on it. Make sure you have an email capture form on that page to request downloads and to kick off the automated nurture process to be followed.

 There's a hundred methods to implement this, however the most important thing to remember is that you must have an prior event, post-event, and during plan that is measurable.

Webinars

Webinars are 45 to 90 minute value-forward online seminar that is live to a web-based audience or recorded and played on demand. Webinars are great as top of the funnel sources and email list building instruments. They can also be used toward the conclusion of a marketing funnel to request the sales.

Webinars can be created by you as a one-off, produced in a series called a summit with or without guests or you can be the guest speaker on other people's. In any case, they are a great way for demonstrating your expertise, as well as establish credibility and confidence in your industry space. You can use them one time or produce evergreen webinars, the content of they should be relevant for in the coming 12-24 months.

If you run a closed model with your membership (meaning you only open the site to new members handful of times per year) A single event or summit could be an excellent closing tactic. I'd suggest offering this kind of webcast live, and then mentioning a very special, exclusive limited-time offer on your promotional materials. This offer is only available to live attendees at the end of the session, and not for people who are watching the replay. The replay of the webinar should still be sent to those who don't attend live. However, you may be able to increase your live attendance and closing rate when your viewers know there's something very special happening during the course.

Hosting a summit is one of the best moves you can make to become an authority/influencer. You must have a sizable email list to get others from the industry as guest speakers and if you manage to pull this off you will definitely be recognized. This can be a significant amount of work. I would not recommend this unless you are willing to commit enough time to ensure that your technology, summit promotion guests, guest list, content plans, scheduling, and follow-up completed.

Being a guest on someone else's webinar and inviting your attendees to participate is a great opportunity to test your hand in the water and get at ease on the camera without putting into the work hosting your own. If you're working with other companies on cross-promotions, and you already have an effective influencer strategy that is in place, you're more likely to be at the top in the guest list of people who host webinars as well as summits.

Like fully harnessing the power of an industry conference or event, having a pre-webinar marketing strategy and a plan for follow-up is crucial. Because summits and webinars provide an excellent source of information for your intended audience (not to mention a ton of work for you) ensure that you reuse the information from the webinar: turn the webinar into a blog series, ebook or videos on YouTube, podcasts, a lead magnet, and on.

 The key factor to remember whether you are hosting or a guest is to provide an inordinate amount of value to the attendees of your webinar. It's not the time to keep your secrets sauce. Now is the time to prove you have the recipe that works and you have plenty of other benefits it came from under the paywall for your membership.

Meetings in-person or meetings

Meetups and events in person can consist of one of these: hosting happy hours, in-person classes/lessons, workshops, sponsorship of in-person events in cities in which a significant portion of your members reside, and anything else where you can get people together on the ground. Events can be free or paid and educational in nature or just good fun for community-building.

Many of the membership sites we collaborate with have an online community within the membership. Since a community is one of the biggest differentiators between a membership and a course. If you can gather your group in person and organize events that your members (and prospective members) are excited about and later talk about on social media it will increase sales, cLTV, rate of conversion, as well as the power of your online community.

Events like these provide a wonderful opportunity for members, both current and future to mingle and chat. Allow your members to perform their "selling" on your behalf prospective members through casual chat. If you have a few members of your current membership value the benefits of your membership to make it clear that they will appear in the flesh discussing your membership, it can be an easy topic of the conversation.

For industry events and trade fairs You must plan in advance, ensure that the actual conference live up to the hype, and have a follow up strategy. How you plan and conduct follow-up is contingent on the type of event you're holding.

If it's a workshop, you're likely charging people to attend, and will need to prepare marketing materials, and then the workshop details themselves (workbooks, handouts, a slide deck, your presentation, guest speakers/instructors). The follow-up should consist of an audience survey as well as bonus material, or the possibility of a discount for some other item. If you've met someone in person and earned the trust of them, turn that momentum into relevant upsell opportunities.

If you are hosting an event like a happy hour, only a small amount of preparation is required. Focus on choosing a great location, serving food or drinks, as well as getting people there. After you've arrived, you should engage with all attendees and make sure you don't leave anyone absent. Inviting members who are already there to bring a similar-minded person with them is an effective method to increase your membership as well.

And while a Happy Hour isn't the best opportunity to make sales, if you're inviting prospective members, make sure you have a smart method of ensuring that you follow-up with the people you invite. Your lead capture could be entry into a contest for an unrestricted membership, merchandise, etc., or something more subtle like handing out cards to prospects with an exclusive promo code printed in them.

Whatever the occasion you're hosting, be sure to have the right plan to capture leads and follow-up for potential customers who are attending. In the same way that your membership marketing materials should be in line with what paying members actually get behind the paywall, your promotion for the event must match what you're able to deliver in person , or else you're at risk of being branded a bad name online. Create raving fans of your events , rather than critics to ensure that you are able to successfully host an event in the near future. This is the ideal time to make use of the underpromise overdeliver concept.

Speaking engagements

Maybe this is scarier than direct sales for some however it's extremely effective in the right way recording, recorded and utilized. If you're not familiar with public speaking, that's okay. Events like guest blogging, guest podcasting hosting, being a guest on webinars, creating videos as well as., are all great ways to prepare for public speaking.

You don't have to shoot for the moon as you're starting out. Look for a local association of business and present a talk on the spot or lead an in person workshop to tiny groups. You can even go to an area in which you're not familiar with anyone for a presentation If you're looking to take the pressure off. Begin small and, when your confidence and skill set improves, move up to a larger job.

Offer to lead breakout sessions at conferences, host an unofficial breakout session either prior or in the aftermath of someone else's conference or event (in a non-shady way of course). Once you've done those things successfully, start to harness your organic influencer, guest blogging/podcasting/webinar hosting strategies to move further up the speaking ladder. If you're privy to suitable speaking opportunities since you're a part of a network and have taken the effort to create an online presence within the network, you're many times more likely to be considered for a speaker slot, even if your name isn't famous yet.

Higher profile speaking gigs have the same value as publishing your own book or holding a conference or even a summit with other experts from the field for the reach and impact. No matter the size of the event, make sure you take advantage of your talk using it in various other media. Make sure that you're able to record solid quality footage of your speech or talk. Upload your video on your site, behind and in front of the paywall. Put it up on YouTube and use the video for a blog post series, podcast topic, to start discussions within your free and paid communities Include an embedded video under your website's "About" or "Resources" tab on your website.

 Not to mention, use the recording of your video to be eligible to other speaking opportunities. When you've established yourself as an effective speaker, and have promoted yourself accordingly using recorded footage of your speech as well as some proof of social evidence (positive reviews you got from attendees) Your public speaking experience will be a whole lot more easy.