In a world flooded with information, it can be difficult to market events successfully and increase event attendance, especially when there is such an abundance of exciting events competing for peoples’ attention.
This fact, coupled with these events being opened for the first time after a-one year-plus lockdown, explains why attendee engagement is incredibly important for event success. In terms of event attendance statistics (according to EventMB) 39% of event professionals agree that ‘engaging attendees’ is the most crucial element of an event.
We understand how challenging it can be trying to increase engagement, so we have compiled our top five solutions to the question of how to engage attendees before an event. Try all or some of these ideas to make an event engaging to your audience, and your tickets will sell out in no time.
Start early
You should start promoting your event early to gain exposure and attract interest in your event. This is a tried and tested method for increasing engagement in events. Think about Hollywood – films are advertised and teaser trailers are released when the film is still in production! This creates hype around the film and gets moviegoers excited in advance of the film’s release. You should take a similar approach to your event marketing, and start a drip-feed of information well in advance of the event to intrigue attendees. Teaser posts stating ‘we’ve got something special planned for September’ will generate a buzz and pique your audience’s curiosity.
Schedule frequent posts
Scheduling regular events over time will build interest and garner more attendees. You should coordinate your marketing efforts across multiple social media platforms to build momentum over time and gain maximum exposure. For efficiency, you can create the posts in advance, and queue them on your social media account, and the app/website will post it automatically according to the time and date you schedule.
Another social media tip is that you can also create a hashtag for your event which you can use on Twitter and Instagram. On LinkedIn and Facebook, you can create event pages dedicated to your event.
Also, think about your staff. One challenge people always want to solve is how to engage crowds for an event, but you should also be considering how to engage with the event staff, especially as they should be one of your channels for attendee engagement. Tag them in your posts, so they can share them to their accounts and boost team morale.
Create a Facebook event
If you’re wondering how to drive attendance to events using social media, Facebook events might just be one of the best free marketing tools out there. It’s a great tool to use as word of mouth spreads rapidly on social media. Not only does it let you let others know about your event, but you can keep event information updated on the widely accessible public platform. You can also interact directly with Facebook users who are interested in your event and answer questions they may have, which is sure to keep your attendees engaged. The interaction with attendees will also increase your event’s credibility.
Due to the social design of the Facebook algorithm, when someone likes your event or marks their interest or attendance on the event feature, this logged activity will appear on their Facebook friend’s timeline. This will help to increase visibility for your event. Before you know it, your event will spread like wildfire. You can include a CTA with a link using your official event website as a landing page which will help to sell tickets.
Run ad campaigns
To have attendees to engage with, you need high visibility. Due to the saturation of content on social media, even with prolonged and persistent marketing efforts, it can still be slow to drive attendance to events. On Instagram and Twitter, it can be particularly difficult to gain exposure if you don’t have a big following due to the way the algorithms functions. Running paid ad campaigns can be a great way to increase visibility and engagement for your event.
Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads are good contenders for ad campaigns. On Facebook, you can optimise your ads specifically for engagement. Twitter Ads have updated their algorithm to provide more flexibility in targeting consumers. For B2B and corporate events, consider LinkedIn Ads.
Create a promotional video
Using professional, polished video is one of the best solutions to the challenge of how to increase event engagement. According to Animoto, video is a consumers’ favourite type of branded content on social media. If you’re not using video as part of your marketing strategy, you should be! Video is visually engaging and can tell a story about your event. This type of content is likely to gauge plenty of interaction on social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
A promotional video serves as a trailer for your event: a video showing the exciting highlights for your event which excite and entertain the audience, making them intrigued for the main event. You can include clips of the venue, what the event will look like, interviews with the speakers or performers for your event, and testimonials from past attendees.
Video has great ROI. It might not seem cost-effective to spend money on a videographer to produce a high-quality video that’s 30 seconds in length – but the audience engagement speaks for itself. 88% of marketers say they’re satisfied with the ROI of their video marketing efforts on social media. Marketing experts at Forbes agree that video has the best ROI of any type of marketing tactic.
As well as the amazing conversion rate, video is great for SEO. If you want to optimise your website for search engines, video is the way to go! By adding video to your site, you increase the possibility of landing the first page of Google search results by a factor of 53. What better way to expose your event than by climbing the SERP rankings to number 1?
You’re not just limited to using event videography for your site and social media pages. You can even use video as part of an email invitation, an event announcement, an event launch, a reminder, or an FAQ. Combining a CTA with your video content will increase your conversion rate.
There are many other ways to engage your audience pre-event, but almost all of them have one thing in common – visual content.
If you need help with creating, editing or even planning visual content for your event, feel free to give us a call – we are here to help.
Splento offers reliable, on-demand videography at an affordable, fixed-rate, which is sure to increase your event engagement and meet your budget. Contact a member of our team to find out more.
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