If you are hosting an event, you certainly want more people to attend. At this point, you should be aware of two issues. You cannot host an influential event without a promotion plan, and you can’t have a successful promotion without following a conference marketing plan template.
If you decide to go with the flow, you will stumble upon a variety of downfalls. Event marketing takes place before, during, and after the event. So, without a proper plan, you will most probably fail to reach your target audience at either of these stages. Therefore, you will not be able to sell your event to potential visitors.
And that’s not where it ends. Sure, you need a plan, but not every promotion is a successful one. The question at this point is, what makes a conference marketing plan template effective?
Key Elements Of An Effective Conference Marketing Plan Template
If you follow our blog, you have already read our detailed step-by-step guide on creating an event marketing plan. A successful event promotion strategy begins at the event planning stage.
Then, it all comes down to the following steps:
- Defining your value proposition
- Establishing a targeted segment
- Setting up your event marketing goals
- Performing a market research
- Analyzing your competition
Now that you get the basics, you know where to start. However, simply following a scheme will not provide you a competitive advantage. And that’s precisely what you need in today’s changing business environment. In other words, you should be able to provide your potential clients what they need with as few resources as possible.
3 Tips For A Successful Conference Marketing Plan Template
Here are several actionable event marketing tips for developing an effective conference marketing plan template.
Be As Specific As Possible
When you start planning your event, you will set up all details, including the date, venue, schedule, guest speakers, or any other extras. However, an effective conference marketing plan template must be as specific as humanly possible.
It’s not enough to choose the building or conference room where the event will take place. At this point, you should set transportation details. When and how is your team going to get there? And what about the guest?
You should specify at what time each guest speaker will begin and how much time his/her speech will last. Then, are you going to leave space for Q&A sessions or any other accompanying workshops?
This list can go on for days, but you probably get the point. It would be best if you never underestimate the power of a specific plan.
Another excellent example at this point is the establishment of the event goal. No doubt, each event has its purpose. But it’s up to you to define and communicate it with all other parties involved.
“I want this event to generate more conversions” is a typical bad example of an event goal. What you should say instead is, “I expect our event scheduled in March to increase customer conversions by 10% in the following month.” The second statement satisfies the SMART criteria. Thus, it’s more likely to provide an incentive to your employees or marketers to work harder and find a way to achieve it.
Keep Everything Documented
To ensure you have all the information you need at all times and don’t miss a step in planning, you need proper documentation. Of course, you can use a checklist template that includes deadlines and other related essential points for your event marketing campaign. But we are not referring to this exclusively.
It would be best if you documented all ideas your team suggested. Say you are doing brainstorming for the upcoming event, and someone proposed a particular guest speaker. You reached out to this person, but he/she was unavailable to attend. Now, you can either forget about this person or enter their information in your database. Then, you can reach out once again to this guest speaker in the next month or even year. Maybe then, they will contribute to your event promotion and attract potential visitors to attend.
What doesn’t apply to your current event marketing strategy might prove especially useful in the future. So, make sure not to miss out on good opportunities and don’t put limitations on your team’s creativity.
Use A Combination Of Resources
In today’s competitive marketplace, you must use a mix of resources and promotion channels to develop a successful event marketing campaign. You should feel free to combine manual work and automation tools. However, make sure to include this information in your conference marketing plan template.
For instance, you can use your database of potential attendees and automate your email campaign. There are many email marketing automation tools to assist you in your work, such as Sendinblue or Mailchimp. Incorporating automation in your conference marketing plan template will leave you more time for strategic thinking and decision-making.
It’s essential to keep your automated emails informative. It would be best not to overdo it, as this might irritate your potential visitors instead of attracting them to attend your event. Your content might involve the value proposition, some behind-the-scenes short videos, or a preview of what is about to come. Either way, you should plan what you are going to send, when, and to whom.
Get Ready For Tons Of Attendees
Today, all successful marketers understand the value of planning. An effective conference marketing plan template can help you better develop your event marketing campaign, attract more visitors, and generate more conversions. However, not all marketing plans turn out successful.
Apart from the general step-by-step approach to developing an event marketing plan, we have also done our research. By spotting several critical and common issues, we were able to propose solutions. Three practical tips in this regard are to be as specific as possible while developing the conference marketing plan template, keep information documented, and use your database along with automation as a more efficient solution.
All these combined can facilitate the work and communication within your team, as well as the one with your existing and potential customers.
