Event Marketing Collateral that Best Showcases Your Brand – SilkCards
Category: :: 01/08/2020
No one can argue that event marketing is a crucial part of any company’s strategy when showcasing its brand. In fact, the average business spends roughly 20% of their marketing budget (event marketing collateral included) on events.
Diversified brand marketing strategies clearly give businesses an edge as they share their brand with customers and interact within their given industry.
Discover the Effect of Event Marketing Collateral
It’s an exciting time to be alive when it comes to event possibilities for your business. You can show off your brand at:
- Tradeshows
- Conferences
- Seminars
You also can be a presence at networking breakfast, lunch or dinner events. That’s not all, though.
More and more businesses recognize the importance of online gatherings such as virtual events, live-streaming events and webinars.
Both online and physical events are important strategies. Yet, some businesses are starting to wonder if online events are enough. Yes, virtual events save money compared to real world events.
“The hard reality though is that face-to-face interaction that takes place at physical events cannot be replaced or even replicated (for now) by virtual events.”
Face-to-face interaction is invaluable to relationship building.
How to Best Showcase Your Brand
Here are some ways to make sure that your event marketing collateral at your physical event represents your brand the best that it can.
Preparing Before the Event
As many reading this know, simply showing up for your event will not give you the results that you want. You’ll need to share your brand and market the event beforehand. If you’re used to doing this, explore some new ways to share with your potential customers this time.
You can utilize email, public relations and social media to communicate your brand. Periodic contact with customers through:
- Call downs
- Press releases
- Direct mail
These will help build interest and excitement in your audience.
Integrating Online Promotion at the Event
If you want to show your audience that you’re up on the times, try integrating your physical event with an online option:
- Provide live audio or video streaming to those who won’t be there.
- Participate in live blogging, Facebook Live or Twitter Chats
No one can argue that those who are physically with you will have the fullest experience. However, there’s no need to leave out a segment of your audience who are too far away geographically, have other obligations or just like to interact virtually.
“Hybrid” events will show your customers that you’re relevant to the times and that you can meet them where they’re at.
Engaging Show Attendee Senses
More than anything, you want to make your event memorable for your audience. You want them to be able to taste, touch, see, hear and feel your brand. The more senses you can engage in your audience, the more likely they’ll be to follow up with you once the event is over.
Regarding event collateral at the show, make sure:
- Font types are easily readable
- Text is free of spelling and grammatical errors
- Photography is high quality
- Videos are engaging
Make sure that the people who will be interacting with your audience have genuine enthusiasm and a caring attitude to enquirers.
NOTE: If you can incorporate free food into the mix, your audience will love that too!
Having Booth Staff Actively Use Collateral
No amount of flawless brand materials will make up for a failure in this area. In its most boiled down state, you and your staff are the purest representation of your brand for good or bad. You are the living, breathing brand.
If you show genuine interest in your audience and are enthusiastic about what you can offer, your customers will feel the same way about you.
Incorporating Brand Giveaways
Giveaways or drawings are an excellent way to share your brand with your audience. This shows that your brand is relevant, fun and cares about the best interest of the customer. This is also a great way for your audience to be motivated to bring along a friend to the event or share about your brand on social media platforms.
“Giveaways or drawings are an excellent way to share your brand with your audience.”
Giveaways can advertise your brand and meet a customer’s need at the same time. They can be as simple as magnets, pens, t-shirts or backpacks but the sky’s the limit. Just make sure your brand and logo are on whatever you give out.
Very few people turn down a fun giveaway.
Following Up After the Event
Make sure there are ways to get contact information from your audience while at the event.
NOTE: Quickly follow up with them after the event is over.
If you wait too long, your audience may forget about the positive impact that your brand had on them. You’ll also run the risk of your competitors getting to your audience first.
This is a great time to offer deals on products or services that they may be interested in.
Repurposing Collateral
Make sure that the paper collateral you use, whether in the form of custom brochures or flyers and high quality business cards is not made to be event specific. That way you can reuse this collateral in the form of mail outs to customers, office collateral for walk-in business or save it for future marketing events.
Repurposing collateral will save your business valuable time and money.
You can also repurpose live audio or video streaming of the event by making it available after an event is over on your website. This can help to build interest for future events that you may have.
By making the proper preparations, you can create collateral that best showcases your brand. More than anything else, the personal interaction gained with your customers will be meaningful and memorable.
By following some of these tips, you can make your brand stand out better than it ever has before.