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This post is part of a series, inspired by the book "Top 21 Methods to Market Membership websites Written by the Amanda Northcutt, a Subscription Coach.
Download the whole series in a book
Creative marketing opportunities abound in trade shows and conference events. You can pay for an exhibit space, purchase sponsors from the event's organizer, host an off-site event to coincide with the conference or show as well as many other.
If you're fortunate enough discover that someone else in your industry is organizing an annual gathering in which your audience is together, you need to attend.
When it comes to organizing an event on your own, attending an event that an individual has planned will be like hitting the easy button. However, if you take part in the event with no plan, and without a plan then it's best to remain at 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 in a different event is to be a speaker. Speaking occasions will pop up in a moment and, however uncomfortable it may be at first, public speaking to your targeted crowd is as potent as gold. It's a fast path to the confidence and trust of your audience, as long as the speech you give is convincing, relevant, and relatable.
Examine sponsorship options like you'd expect to be purchased. They should be quantifiable and the burden is on you when it comes to the sponsorship of your event. Your participation at your event, your branding impression you make, and the calls to action you make will decide whether your event is successful or lack or lack of. Your plan for the occasion should include pre-event planning, an event-specific plan as well as a follow-up sequence. It's not a matter of whether or not you have an official sponsorship. However, it's likely to be more straightforward when you have one.
Preparation: If you can get access and visibility in the list of attendees prior to the event you can move your attendees through the sales funnel quicker. For corporate partner inquire with the event's organizers on what they can do to increase the impact of your contribution. Request more than you receive in your package of sponsorship if you're in a position to come up with an innovative way to provide participants something valuable and also make the event look nice.
If you do not have sponsorship or aren't an influencer within your field, you're not likely to get the attention of the organizers in any sort or significant way. Get yourself on Twitter and Instagram and then using the hashtags to find others who attend. Get to know these folks and think about hosting a lunch or happy hour or a mini-workshop offsite in the days and hours throughout the day and evening prior to the big occasion.
The day of: Sponsor or not Find a way to get leads. This can be done on a one-to-one basis through providing relevant resources or even offering a discount to an interested prospect to exchange contact details or permission to follow them on social media. Be attentive and don't make yourself appear pushy or selly. If you're able to assist someone, tell them they could help them and ask permission to send them an email. Spending a moment to create an outline of the person whom you're contacting in order to write an email that is personalized is sure to put your name in front of people who have general follow-up emails that do not contain specific information about the person.
Follow the hashtag for the event on social media at the time of the event as well as afterward, make sure you use the hashtag you created on your own. This is a cost-free way to improve your visibility and help you be more noticeable to the attendees. This is also a great opportunity to identify potential clients or influencers during and after the occasion.
If you are able to hold an exhibit at a conference, you need an opportunity to get your presence known. There is no advice from an expert, but you could visit Pinterest and browse for ways to improve your creativity. You should be noticed. If your business is a place that is conducive some lighthearted and fun entertainment, it's time to play it up. A good way to achieve this is by having a themed booth and have staff members or assistants dress in as they'd like to dress.
Another way I've witnessed that has worked is to have employees wandering around asking guests whether they'd want to attend an exclusive restaurant or bar to have drinks after the event. Then, they have to head to your booth to find out more about the services they can offer, and then sign up (lead capture) to receive an invitation. If you're doing this and you want to make sure that you've got a fun crowd of people working the booth, people potential customers actually want to drink with and spend time with. You can rent a well-known area or bar at the town's restaurant and then pay for the bill when you're done with the event. This creates some anticipation (no pun intended) at the event and allows potential clients to have an enjoyable experience as they engage with your business and acts as an opportunity to generate leads in person.
Follow-up: The entire effort of preparation and on-site work will be wasted if you do not follow-up on the process of follow-up. Be aware that lead capture at the event is essential because you'll have sufficient people to follow up with. Oops.
On the day following the celebration, contact them individually with the contact information you provided when you recorded your time in their company (you already took notes do you not?) Make a connection to them through their preferred social media outlet for an extra edge. Do not put off this. The key is to capitalize on the publicity about your event, and also the momentum. If you postpone this step for longer than a week, you've missed the boat. When the personal email has been received, turn on the auto drip sequence you set up before the date. It is possible to do this via your email service provider (you have the right to email them as well, don't you?) And then, move them along the sales pipeline just as one would an individual that has visited your site. But, you've met the person in person, therefore your call to actions (CTAs) must have greater significance (attend an informative webinar or trial to begin, or purchase) as opposed to those who are just beginning the drip program following the purchase or purchase of your lead magnet on your site.
If you are only able of giving out cards but are unable to gather names or contact information due to reasons, create your own landing page . You can include a special lead magnet offer just to conference participants. Create a set of business cards made that include your landing page's URL as well as brief descriptions of the free download that you've made just for the attendees on it. You can then place the forms to capture email there to ask for downloads and begin the automatic nurture process to adhere to.
HTML0 There are a myriad of methods to implement it out, but the main point is that you require an initial as well as post-event strategy that can be measured.
Webinars
Webinars are 45 to 90 minutes worth of online training which can be broadcast live on the internet to an audience or recorded and consumed on the demand. Webinars are great as high-quality sources for top-of-the-line marketing and tools to build email lists However, they could also be used in the final stage of a sales funnel in order to encourage a sale.
Webinars can be created by yourself as a one-time event or in a series known as a summit with or without guests, or even as a guest at a different's. They can and should be utilized to demonstrate your skills and increase authority and trust in your specific industry. It is possible to use them just one occasion, or you can create permanent webinars - the contents are likely to be relevant over the coming twelve to 24 months.
If you have an open model for your member base (meaning that you open your membership site to prospective members only a few times in the year) one conference or event could be an excellent closing technique. I would suggest hosting this kind of live webinar, as well as mentioning an opportunity to offer a unique, unique and time-sensitive promotion in your marketing materials which can be made available only to attendees who participated live in the presentation, only to people who watched the replay. It is still possible to send the replay to those who did not participate in the live stream. You may, however, have the ability to increase your attendance live and closing percentage in case your participants are aware that something unique happens during the session.
Hosting a summit is one of the best moves you can make to become an authority/influencer. It's essential to maintain an extensive list of emails for attracting other experts from the industry as guests and if you are successful you will surely be recognized. It's a lot of effort, and I would not advise doing this unless are willing to commit to the amount of time required to get your technology in place, summit promotion guests, guest list, content planning, scheduling, and follow-up done.
Participating as a guest who is hosting a webinar and inviting their guests to take part is an excellent way to dip your toe into the waters and get comfortable with cameras without having to put in the effort and time to host your own. If you're working alongside different companies in cross-promotions and you've got an organic influencer strategy, you're more likely to rank at the top of guests for people who host webinars as well as summits.
Like fully harnessing the potential of a conference or event, having a pre-webinar marketing strategy as well as a strategy for follow-up is essential. As webinars and summits are fantastic sources of information to your target audience (not to mention a ton of effort on your behalf) make sure you're repurposing your content from the webinar: turn your webinar content into blogs, ebooks, podcasts or video content uploaded to YouTube, podcasts as a lead-generator, and further on.
The primary thing you need to be aware of regardless whether you're hosting or hosting a guest webinar is that you offer an unimaginable quantity of benefit to those who attend the webinar. It's not the right time to keep your secrets sauce. It's moment to show that you have the right recipe and that you can enjoy many additional benefits that you can discover in the back of your paywall.
Events or meetups in person
Meetings in-person and meetings could include one of these: holding happy hour, in-person courses/lessons workshops, or sponsoring on-site events in cities which a significant portion of your participants reside or other ways you can get people together in real life. The events can be either cost-free or paid for and also informative or great fun to gather people and build the community.
The majority of the sites that we collaborate with include an online community component within the membership. At the end of the day, it's about community. is among the major features of a membership versus a program. If you're able to bring together your members in person, and host events that your members (and potential members) are enthusiastic about, and then raving about on the internet, you're going to boost your sales, cLTV, convert rates, and the overall strength of your community online.
These kinds of events can be a wonderful opportunity for members either currently or are planning to be there to get together and discuss. Allow your members to do their "selling" on behalf of you for prospective members by engaging in casual chat. If you find that some of your existing members are enthused enough about your membership to spend time in person to discuss your membership, it can be an ideal topic of conversation.
Similar to trade shows, you need to plan ahead for the event. You must make your event live up the hype. You should also have an action plan to follow up. The way you prepare and the follow-up depends on the kind of event that you are hosting.
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 contain an audience survey as well as bonus material as well as the possibility of discounting some other product. If you've met someone personally and earned the trust of them, turn that momentum into relevant opportunity to upsell them.
If you're planning to host a happy hour, little prep work should be necessary. Be sure to choose a good location, offering food or beverages and bringing guests there. While there, you should interact with those in attendance to ensure you don't have any absentees. It is a good idea to invite current members to invite a friend who is similar with them is an effective method to boost your attendance as well.
Even though a happy hour may be the last time to sell when you're inviting potential members to join, it's important to have a clever way of following up with the people you invite. Your lead capture could be participation in a competition for the chance to win a membership at no cost, merchandise and so on., or things like giving out prospect cards with a special promo code on them.
No matter what kind of event you're planning to host, make certain that you have a plan to lead collection and follow-up with those who are the venue. As your marketing materials must match what the paying members receive behind the paywall, the promotion for the event must match what you're able to deliver in person , or your event could be known as a negative name online. Make sure you have raving supporters of your events, not negative critics to ensure you are capable of holding profitable events in the coming years. This is the ideal opportunity to take advantage of the underpromise overdeliver principle.
Speaking engagements
Perhaps this can be more terrifying as direct sales are to certain However, it's incredibly effective in the right way recording, recorded , and utilized. If you're not familiar with public speaking, it's fine. Things like blog posts, guest podcasting hosting, appearing as a guest speaker on webinars, creating videos or videos, etc. Each of these is a excellent ways to practice for public speaking.
You don't have to shoot in the sky when you're just starting out. Find a local business association and make a presentation at the event or conduct an on-site workshop for small groups. It is also possible of going to the city nearby which you do not know for the presentation, if you truly need to chill. Start small, and when your confidence and skill set improves, up level to a bigger job.
Ask to host breakout sessions during conferences. You can also host an unofficial breakout session before or after an event of someone else's (in an ethical manner Naturally). 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 keeping an eye out regarding speaking opportunities that are relevant due to the fact that your connections are strong and you have put in the time to develop the social capital of that group, you'll be more likely to be a candidate for an interview, even though you're not as well-known.
Presenters who have more acclaim are just as valuable as writing your own book, holding a conference or even a summit with other experts from the field regarding influence and reach. No matter the nature of the event it is important to maximize your talk by incorporating it into different formats. Make sure that you're able to take a quality video of your talk or presentation. Upload the video to your website, both behind and in front of the paywall. Upload it to YouTube and use the video for a blog post series or podcast subject as well as to start discussions within your communities which are free or paid and embed it on your website's "About" and "Resources" tab on your website.
Additionally, you can use the recording of your video to be able to speak at other events. Once you've proven yourself to be an effective speaker, and you promote yourself accordingly, making a video of your speech together with some evidence of social (positive feedback you received from the audience) and your public speaking life will get much simpler.
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