Events are the perfect way to introduce your customers to your brand culture, services or products, whether you host them in-person or online. But your marketing doesn’t have to stop once the doors close on your event. In fact, the event itself can be a great source of content to enhance your marketing strategy moving forward. Whether it’s your first event or you’re an event planning pro, here are a few suggestions of how you can create effective post-event content.
Summary
1. The benefits of post-event content
Post-event promotion keeps people talking about your event long after it’s over, which not only gives you a chance to celebrate your successes but also helps your brand build connections with its audience. Post-event marketing allows you to tap into the core purpose of the event and your audience’s desire for education and connection, and to repeat your message so it stays at the forefront of everyone’s minds. It can also be used to build enthusiasm for future events, product launches and business developments.
2. How to develop marketing opportunities from your event
Your event provides so many opportunities for content and customer relationship building, from collecting feedback from your attendees to help you create better events in the future to providing you with content for a host of different marketing platforms.
Hone your post-event communications
Your post-event strategy should start with following up with your guests, which should include sending a thank you email to thank them for attending, and contacting those who couldn’t attend a ‘Sorry you missed it’ email to show them that they were missed and that you hope they’ll attend in the future. These communications help your customers feel valued and that goes a long way in not only helping with attendance for future events your business hosts but also encourages customer loyalty.
Build a post-event page on your site
A post-event page lets your guests relive the fun they had at your event (or in the case of those who couldn’t attend, see what they missed out on). There are several ways to develop this area of your site, from adding a recap video to photos of the event in a gallery, a music playlist that evokes the songs played on the night or a collection of tweets that attendees posted during and after the event itself. It’s a page you can link to in marketing content and almost use as a review of the event for future occasions.
Create video content for socials
Video is one of the most popular forms of content today, so it should be an essential element of your marketing strategy. Events are a great opportunity to develop engaging video content, from an overview of the event set to music to clips from speakers or entertainment, or interviews with attendees. It’s a different way to engage with audiences and provides you with valuable content you can use in email campaigns, on your website and on socials.
Use hashtags to develop communities
One of the reasons why people attend events is to connect with other people, network and find like-minded connections. So even after the speeches have ended and the chairs packed away, you can tap into this element by providing your audience with opportunities to get involved and connect with other people. In fact, your attendees can even become your content creators with the use of carefully chosen hashtags that they can use to post their own photos and videos of the event.
These hashtags and other opt-in communities, whether on Slack or other social platforms, not only enable people to contribute to the content but they create the feeling of inclusion and shared references that help everyone feel as though they’ve been a part of something truly special. It also provides you with another avenue to promote future events by getting in touch with people who have shown interest before.
Repurpose and refresh
You’ll have spent a long time and a lot of effort planning and producing content for your event, so don’t let it go to waste. The content you’ve already made to market the event can be developed further to create new content that will help you build engagement and promote your services, products or message.
This may take the form of repurposing content into a new format, such as taking a blog and turning it into a podcast episode or an email into a social media post. You can also remix content by combining existing content pieces, or refresh outdated content with new facts and figures inspired by your event. This will help you maintain consistent messaging throughout your marketing and prevent you needing to start from scratch when producing content.
Build engagement with contests
Keep the fun going and avoid any post-event blues by giving your followers something to take part in. For example, you may want to host a social media content with a prize for the winner, such as the funniest caption for a photo or have everyone submit their favourite photo of the event which others can vote on for the winner.
Or maybe you contact everyone on your email list to ask for their review of the event, with the best one winning a discount for your next events, or a prize from an event sponsor. It builds engagement with your attendees, continues the sense of fun and excitement from the event itself and provides you with reviews and testimonials you can use in the future.
While your focus may be on pre-event marketing, considering how you’ll maintain that engagement after the event is done and dusted is just as important. And as we’ve seen, it offers numerous opportunities for your business to enhance relationship building, your marketing strategy and engagement. There’s a chance to gather valuable feedback for even better future events, make your audience feel a part of the proceedings and create unique content far easier, all while meeting your event goals.
Discover the simple and effective tools that will help you in all phases of the organisation of your event: before, during and after, by clicking on the button below.
