How to Launch Successful Event Marketing Campaigns for More Registrations
Written by Mate Tagaj
8 min read
Published on Oct 15, 2024
Updated on Nov 19, 2024
No matter what sector you’re in, events can be extremely powerful to raise awareness or to engage with key stakeholders. However, as a nonprofit, you may rely on events much more than others to generate support and spread the word. When there are so many organisations all trying to engage your audience, it can be hard to make yourself heard. Nowadays, building an event marketing campaign to attract attendees and maximise registrations requires a strategic and well-executed event marketing approach. This often takes months of hard work.
NGOs and associations organise thousands of events and conferences every year in Brussels for networking, awareness raising and campaigning purposes. In this article, we want to give you a quick guide on how you can run a successful event marketing campaign to boost the number of registrations for your event.
Create A Message That Resonates With Your Audience
Undoubtedly, the foundation of any effective campaign is a deep understanding of your target audience. We’ve spoken a lot about this in our previous articles, but we really can’t emphasise it enough.
Think about who you’re trying to reach. Is it people who have previously interacted with your content? Or are they existing supporters, sponsors, members or anyone with a specific interest related to your cause?
Here are two of the key ways we help our clients craft event campaign messages that resonate with their target audience:
1. Develop audience personas: Firstly, create detailed profiles outlining your ideal attendee’s demographics, interests, and pain points. This helps tailor your message and communication channels to resonate with them.
2. Highlight the “Why”: Secondly, clearly communicate the “why” behind your event campaign. Is it raising awareness for a critical issue? Providing educational workshops or networking opportunities? Framing the event’s purpose within your mission strengthens its appeal to potential attendees.
Embrace The Power Of Content And Storytelling
Producing valuable content should be something that you’re already focusing on. When it comes to promoting an event campaign, it could be your secret weapon to generate excitement and pre-register attendees.
It’s no secret that content can be extremely broad. However, you definitely don’t need to do everything to get more attendees.
Top 6 Event Marketing Content Types
Below, we’ve listed some of the most common content formats. Use it wisely and pick the most relevant ones to your audience and event promotion efforts:
1. Blog Posts: Create informative and engaging blog posts about the event theme. Feature speaker spotlights, attendee testimonials, or the impact of past events.
2. Teaser Video: You cannot plan for video production early enough. Don’t cheap out on hiring a videographer for your event. Producing a teaser video based on the recording of your event can be a great promotional asset for next year. Strategically plan and integrate video interviews of attendees to use their testimonials as social proof. We guarantee that this will inspire others with similar profiles to attend.
3. Social media: Promote your event across your social media channels. Share eye-catching visuals, short event promotion snippets from your video teaser, and interactive polls to create a buzz.
4. Emails: Start to send out email campaigns targeted at different audience segments who you would like to attend your event. In these emails, you should highlight the benefits of attending, early bird registration discounts, and sponsorship, poster submission, expo booth or other opportunities to get people involved.
5. Website: Design and develop a professionally built website or dedicated landing page to provide information about the event’s programme, speakers, and technicalities. Ensure that your online interface is as user-friendly as possible to capture registrations with ease.
6. Ads: Last but not least, dedicate some budget to promote your event with Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads or Meta Ads. If your budget is tight, consider Google Ad Grants as an alternative free advertising solution for a long-term campaign.
Create a Website or Landing Page to Power Your Event Marketing Efforts
There is a science to creating the perfect event website or landing page that generates maximum registrations.
At Boostern, we’ve worked with lots of nonprofits to create event marketing campaigns and landing pages. So we’ve learnt a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t. Here is our proven structure and key elements for event landing pages that will never fail:
Event Marketing Landing Page Elements
And here are some of the most crucial elements that you should never forget to include:
- A clear value proposition: The first thing that a user should see is the event’s purpose, the benefits for attendees, and the date/location details. The font should be big, the graphics should be impactful, and the copy should be concise to really grab attention.
- A compelling call to action (CTA): Once people know what the event is about, you should make it extremely easy for them to register. You can do that by including a clear and prominent CTA button. Something like ‘Register Now’ or ‘Sign Up Here’ are simple and to the point.
- Easy registration form: Registration doesn’t end with clicking on the CTA button. Your registration form should be equally user-friendly, simple, clean and straightforward.
- Social proof: If you have any testimonials from past attendees or notable speakers, this can build trust and credibility that could encourage people to sign up.
- Mobile-friendliness: Chances are, a lot of people will be viewing your landing page on their mobile phones, so make sure your landing page is optimised for a seamless user experience across all devices.
- Motion Graphics: There is nothing more engaging on the web than movement. Static content is boring and people are more engaged if you add some flair to your graphics. For example, you can ask your web designer to implement some parallax effects on your website or landing page. Studies show that interactive elements can increase user engagement by 2-3x times. So making sure that your site is more interactive will help you grab user attention and make them stay longer leading to a more positive experience.
Get a Quote
Do you need a unique website or landing page designed and developed for your upcoming event? Get in touch with us today to discuss your needs and get a free quotation.
Think About Paid Advertising for Your Event Campaign Strategically
You could be creating the best content possible to promote an event, but you can’t always guarantee that you’re going to get in front of the right audience – this is where paid advertising comes in.
If you’re a nonprofit, you will have access to Google Ad Grants and Microsoft Ads For Social Impact, which can cover the cost of your paid advertising campaigns if you’re eligible. In this case, you’d have the possibility to push your landing page out to a much wider audience through search engine advertising.
We’ve created guides on how you can use these platforms, but the process is simple: choose the demographics that you want to target, set a budget for your campaign, and set up conversion tracking to track registrations and campaign performance.
If you’re feeling confident, you can also experiment with A/B testing, where you test different ad variations with headlines, visuals, and CTAs to see which resonate best with your audience.
Paid advertising can be extremely powerful, but it’s crucial to understand the stage where you are targeting users. If you’re just starting to invest in paid advertising, we suggest that you focus on attracting people to your event landing page or website. Running awareness-level ads first will allow you to later retarget a massive pool of people who already know about your event and are more likely to sign up for your event’s newsletter.
The next stage would be to retarget those people with lead-generation ads and ensure that they sign up for your email list.
Finally, you can use the power of email marketing in conjunction with conversion ads to ensure that people on your list eventually register for your event.
Once people are registered to your event, you still have one chance to take things a step further. Implement rewards, thank you gifts or referral programmes to turn your registered participants into promoters. Inspiring people to invite peers from their network to register will ultimately allow you to tap into the power of referral marketing.
Streamline The Registration Process
Most of us don’t have very long attention spans so aren’t willing to spend more than a couple of minutes signing up for an event, so it’s vital that you create a smooth and efficient registration process to convert website visitors into registered attendees.
Make the form as short and sweet as possible, cutting out everything but the most essential information – the fewer fields required, the higher the completion rate. It should also be just as easy to complete on a mobile device as it is on a desktop.
Once a user has completed the form, make sure you’ve gotten triggered confirmation emails waiting to go out. This will provide the attendees with clear details about the event and share any important information they may need to know.
Don’t Forget About Your Attendees After They’ve Registered!
Just because someone has signed up for your event doesn’t mean they will actually attend, so you should be dedicating a good amount of time to post-registration engagement.
For instance, this could include sending emails with speaker bios, event schedules, and logistical details for guests. You could also create a Facebook group, LinkedIn Event or online forum to promote the event. For instance, these can serve as digital meetup points where attendees can interact with each other, build excitement, and ask any questions they may have.
If you’ve got social media accounts set up, start counting down to the event and sharing event marketing content. You could even start your own dedicated event hashtag and encourage attendees to use it.
Final Thoughts
By implementing these strategies, you should be able to create a successful event marketing campaign that drives more registrations.
Remember, a successful event marketing strategy is not a one-time effort. Continually evaluate results, adapt your approach, and leverage data-driven insights to refine your campaigns over time.
This ensures your nonprofit’s events remain a cornerstone of attracting new allies and furthering your goals.