Holding a business event is big for entrepreneurs and their respective marketing teams. It takes a lot of preparation, resources, and marketing to succeed. But once the customers start flocking in, you’ll rest assured that all the effort to develop the business event was genuinely worth it. Finally meeting your customers in person gives you that unique opportunity to engage with them and increase their interest in your brand in the most impactful way.
Business events can be anything—such as trade shows, conferences, fairs, conventions, product demos, launches, and sampling, to name a few. How you go about with it falls back on the nature of your business while considering your business needs and preferences. But what matters the most is to have attendees itching to make it to yours, as they also get tickets for Retail Fest NZ, among other business events.
Here are some clever ways to attract customers and get them to attend your business event.
- Hand Out The Best Swag Bags
Swag bags are a must-have for every event. Why? People love anything free! Even the smallest and simplest freebie is enough to send them into a frenzy, with others even returning for more. And the best part? Swag bags can be filled with anything: samples and corporate gifts like pens, tumblers, fans, alcohol containers, etc.
Every time you hand out a swag bag to a potential customer, you’re setting up a tit-for-tat that encourages them to learn more about the products or services you’re selling. Some may not wind up purchasing something right there and then, but at least at that instant, you were able to market to them. Who knows, after trying out products in your swag bag when they reach home, they’ll try your brand.
- List Your Event On Event Discovery Sites And Social Media
Handing out fliers and posting ads about your event works, but there’s another way that undeniably has a higher reach: event discovery websites and social media. Tap into the opportunity those sites provide by listing and posting your event. Those likes, views, and shares go a longer way than the usual fliers would.
This is precisely why hosting a business event isn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. You must give this a lot of thought and preparation so that you’ll have final, set details on your event very early on. Once that’s in place, you can confidently proceed with marketing on the Internet. The earlier you’re able to do this, the better.
- Allow Attendees To Try Out Your Products
You can only talk about your products for so long until the person listening to you eventually gets bored. Unfortunately, when the timeframe reaches that point, you could have that individual leave your conversation without showing the slightest interest.
To prevent this, a doable solution is to allow attendees to try out your products. On top of handing out samples, have a station where would-be customers can test the products. This brings a higher window of opportunity for a query or test run to convert into a purchase.
- Provide Valuable Information When Opting For Content Marketing
Whether you’re promoting a product, service, or a business event, one aspect of marketing stays effective and crucial: content marketing. However, for business events, the catch is more than keywords or ranking for search engine optimization is needed. You have to go as far as to ensure that every content marketing paraphernalia you post provides valuable information that your readers, who are would-be customers, can use.
By ‘valuable information,’ this refers to write-ups that convince readers why supporting your business is a good choice. Give them reasons to attend your business event and even more reasons to purchase your products or services. By reading your content, would-be buyers should feel like they’ll be significantly missing out on something they need if they don’t decide to purchase your offers.
Make Your Business Event A Smash
If you can’t stomach one more traditional ad or email marketing campaign for this round of marketing paraphernalia, it’s time to start thinking outside the box. There are still loads of other forms of marketing, albeit calling for more effort this time. One of these is hosting a business event. It’s costly, time-consuming, stressful, and daunting, but it’s also not impossible to smash. If you’re seriously considering having a business event soon, remember to get motivated by the tips above before you even start sending out the invites so you’ll have an influx of new and old customers as you’ve never seen before.
