The human attention span is only eight seconds. That means for event planners, creating an event plan that captures and retains their audience’s attention can be nearly impossible.
Brands need to use all of the tools in their arsenal to boost event engagement rates. Keep reading to learn more about how you can program engaging events for your brand.
Use a Street Team to Promote Event Engagement
The concept of street team marketing was initially used by the music industry. Record labels would send out marketing staff to the streets to hype up upcoming artists and shows. Although many advertising firms have strayed away from this method of marketing, street teams are a dynamic way to generate buzz for an upcoming event.
Street teams are able to give your brand a physical presence in a location before your scheduled event. By engaging with your target audience face-to-face, they can organically increase the attendance and excitement around your event.
On the ground, teams are able to connect with the community and ensure event success. When street teams are on the ground they can scout the best street marketing locations, single out local influencers, and measure the success of an event in real time.
Publish Event Marketing Branding
A well-designed brand can increase your event’s attendance rates and profitability. Showcasing a clear and concise brand around your event will help consumers positively connect with you.
Organizational marketing and brand consistency are very important for the success of any company. Events should have complementary branding to their parent organization. An event’s marketing materials should stand on their own and not rely too heavily on the parent organization.
Developing a branding kit specific to your event will help the event stand out from the competition. Creating a name, logo, and messaging guide can help prepare you for success.
A comprehensive branding guide is essential to promote an event properly. Advertisers can distribute these materials in bulk to give the public a positive look at your event. Comprehensive event branding guides create a brand synergy.
Conduct Event Staffing Training
Outsourcing event staffing for events can help your business generate a profit. By hiring an event staffing agency, your brand can be freed of recruiting, screening, onboarding, and training responsibilities. Event staffing agencies specialize in equipping employees with the tools to thrive in the fast pace of events.
The professional event staff is able to quickly absorb your company’s brand. They will serve as temporary brand representatives as they work to facilitate the event. By working with a professional event team, you can save time and money.
Event staffing agencies provide a plethora of training for their employees. This includes training on how to engage with event attendees and manage any customer service problems that may arise.
Events are very unpredictable and constantly in a state of crisis. Not only are professional event staffers able to absorb the technical aspects of the event quickly, but they can also solve problems. Your temporary staff’s experiences with events will be unmatched so you can feel confident in your event’s success.
Produce Evocative Content
In such a heavily saturated market, marketers need to fight for consumers’ attention. Creating modern graphics or high-quality videos is no longer enough to capture your audiences’ attention.
Before executing your event, you should establish your event’s goals clearly. Events exist to build community, give people a purpose, or fill them with joy and excitement. When you produce content, everything should be driving back to that goal.
The best way to capture your audience’s attention is to make your marketing produce an emotion. Evocative marketing is designed to tell a story and tap into your audience’s emotions. Consumers want to feel something when they engage with marketing and programming.
Introduce Interactive Elements
Events need versatility in order to retain their audience’s attention. Introducing interactive elements to your event can dissuade participants from zoning out. By mixing in polling and Q&A sessions, you can diversify your event and promote audience engagement.
Gamification has grown in popularity as a method to engage your audience. Gamification in marketing involves pairing gaming elements with non-gaming elements to improve engagement levels and get participants to take certain actions. You can embed gaming elements into your event by offering virtual points or badges for participating in different activities.
Although event planners’ greatest fear is participants zoning out and texting, phones can be used as an asset in event planning. Encouraging the use of mobile devices during an event can actually help you retain your audience’s attention. You can even introduce these gamification elements to follow up with your attendee.
Offer Mixers and Networking Opportunities
Events are a great space for networking with like-minded individuals. However, event programmers often miss out on the opportunity to facilitate peer-to-peer networking. Creating break-out groups and spaces for mingling can help attendees get the most out of their attendance and increase their likelihood of participating in sessions.
Programming networking opportunities such as happy hours and mixers can ensure that your audience members are engaging with one another. Planning breaks and mixers in your event can help you make sure that attendees don’t doze off and are re-energized to go into sessions.
Promote Positive Event Engagement
Events are an incredible way to increase brand recognition, boost membership rates and drive a profit for any organization. However, planning an event can be less valuable if you don’t prioritize event engagement rates into your success. Connect with us to learn more about how to retain event attendees’ attention.
