Know Your Event: Type, Topic and Audiences
In the first stage, you need to know what type of event you have: a conference, a trade fair, a webinar. The type of event plays an influential role in determining the marketing methods. For example, a webinar held online needs online marketing methods above all to receive recognition in its target market.
You also need to know the topic of your event. You will recognize your target market and select more suitable methods by knowing the topic. For example, when you hold an event on music, your target market includes artists and music fans, so your ambient advertising should be based on these people's taste.
There are two classes of audiences for an event. Participants are individuals who are working with you in organizing the event, such as booth holders, sponsors, and speechmakers. Visitors are the individuals who play no part in holding the event but simply pay a visit to it. In some events visitors must buy tickets; in others, free entry is granted. You determine the type of entry based on the type of your event.
Having proper knowledge of your audience will guide you in selecting the marketing methods. Consider an event whose participants are representatives from other countries. The type of introduction and advertising location is definitely quite different from an event with local participants. The more information you gather on your participants and visitors, the better you advertise, because the ultimate goal of all your marketing activities is to absorb the audience.
The marketing strategy for absorbing participants differs from the strategy for absorbing visitors. Therefore, write two types of plan in your event marketing plan. Visitors can often be common; at a food fair, the people who visit are certainly working in food-related areas. But categorize them into two groups to clarify who your audiences are.