Try some of these tips and find your event marketing for next year is even more effective:
Advertise the Date for Your Next Conference
If you have your date and location, make sure to display it prominently in several places at your conference. After having a great experience with this year’s event, your attendees will be more likely to want to come back and clear that date. They may even start making the case with their employers now to keep that date clear so they can attend again. That case is easier to make when you have the particulars and can put together a budget for costs.
Collect Video Testimonials
When are people the most excited about your event? When they are at your event. Considering the effectiveness of peer-to-peer marketing, take advantage of that enthusiasm by asking some of your attendees to give a video testimonial. You can do this with technology as simple as your phone and a microphone (to ensure the testimonial is heard clearly).
Create Engaging Content
If you keep your attendees engaged throughout the year, you will be top-of-mind when they consider where their conference funds should be spent. One of the best ways to do that is by consistently sharing great content, even when you are not looking for registrations. But what does that look like and how can you start doing it at this year’s conference?
Blog posts
Write blog posts with takeaways from each breakout and keynote speech. Instead of flooding your current and potential attendees with all of that content at once, trying release it one at a time, whether it be weekly or daily (depending on your capability to keep the blogging up after you are done with this content). Be sure to start with the content that is most likely to change in the future (trends, social media, etc.), so your information is current.
Podcasts
Podcasts are hot right now for good reason. People can listen to them while in their car commuting, out for a run or while at work. That means it’s easy to consume.
If you want to go this route, make sure you have access to quiet rooms. That makes convention centers like Duke Energy Convention Center and Sharonville Convention Center ideal if you are looking to do this. You not only have easy access to bigger rooms for your actual event festivities, but you can also have access to smaller rooms for activities such as podcasting.
Find someone that is great at interviewing people and bring in your speakers, sponsors and prominent attendees to give their career advice as well as industry advice. You can then release these podcasts throughout the year and include information about the next event as a part of your marketing.
You can even take the information you receive for these different kinds of content to create Facebook posts, tweets, infographics, or whatever content that is appropriate for your audience.
How are you getting ready to market next year’s conference at this year’s conference?
