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This article is part of a series, based on the book "Top 21 marketing ways for membership sites', written by The Subscription Coach Amanda Northcutt.
The entire collection is available in a book
Opportunities for marketing creativity are plentiful in trade shows and conferences: pay for an exhibit space, purchase a sponsorship through the organizer, host a spin-off event in conjunction with the conference or show as well as many other.
If you are lucky enough to find that someone else from your industry is organizing an annual gathering in which your audience is together, it is your responsibility to be there.
Relative to hosting an event of your own, taking part in an event which someone else has organized is like hitting the easy button. But, if you simply go to the event without planning it's best to stay home.
There are often conference/event/trade show sponsorships available for purchase, booths, and other opportunities to get amplified exposure to attendees over what you can accomplish on a one-to-one basis. One of the Holy Grail of event engagement at someone else's event is to speak at an event. Speaking engagements will be discussed in a moment, but as uncomfortable as you may feel at first, public speaking before your intended public is just as effective as gold. It's an easy way to build confidence and trust, provided that your presentation is entertaining, valuable, and relatable.
Assess sponsorship opportunities in the same manner as you do with any paid advertising. It should be measurable, and the responsibility lies with you with an event sponsorship. The presence you make during the event, your brand the experience you provide, and call to action will likely be the determining factor in your success or failure of it. Your strategy for your event should be pre-planned, with an on-site strategy, as well as a follow up sequence. This goes for regardless of whether you've got a paid sponsorship, though this will be much easier if you have one.
Prep: If you can gain access to and visibility on the attendees list prior to the event you can move people through the sales pipeline more quickly. If you're a sponsor and organizer, inquire with the organizers on how to fully leverage the sponsorship. Ask for more than what is included within the sponsorship deal If you come up with a unique method to offer the attendees with value and help the organizer appear nice.
If you don't have a sponsor and are not an influencer in your space it's unlikely that you'll get the attention of the organizers in any significant manner. Get yourself on Twitter or Instagram and using the appropriate hashtags to discover others that are attending. Meet them and consider hosting a happy hour, meal, or off site mini-workshop in the days and hours that will be around the occasion.
The day: Sponsor or not find a method to attract leads. It is possible to do this with a one-to one basis, with a pertinent resource or offering to an interested prospect to exchange contact details or permission to connect with them on social media. Read the room and avoid being pushy or salesy. If you're able to assist someone, tell them you think you can and ask for permission to email them. Taking a second to write an e-mail to every person in order to make a personal follow-up email is sure to put the bar higher than people who have generic follow-up email messages completely lacking personal details.
Follow the hashtag for the event on social media during and after the event, and then use it for yourself. It's an easy opportunity to boost your profile and help you be more noticeable to attendees. This is also a great method to find potential customers or influencers throughout and following the occasion.
If you have a booth at a convention, you'll need to figure out how to be noticed. It's not my expertise so get yourself on Pinterest and look for some ideas for your creative process. Be noticed, and if your industry lends itself to some fun and lighthearted entertainment make sure to play with it. One way to do this is to create the booth themed, and then have employees or helpers dress the way they want to dress.
A method I've seen well is having employees going around and asking attendees if they'd want to attend an exclusive club/restaurant for cocktails following the event. They then have to go into your booth and learn more about your offering and to sign for (lead capture) to get an invite. If you decide to do this, you need to ensure that you have an enjoyable group of people at your booth, people whom your customers would actually like to have a drink with. Hire a popular bar or room inside a popular restaurant and pay the tab at the conclusion of the evening. It can create a buzz (no joke intended) on the night, allows prospects to have a positive experience of your company, and essentially serves as a direct lead magnet.
Follow up The preparation and preparation on site can be wasted If you don't follow up in the follow-up plan. Remember, lead capture during the event is essential, otherwise you won't have enough people to follow up with. Oops.
The day after the event, write an individual email including your contact information that you made a note of when you met them (you already did this, don't you?) Make a connection to them via their preferred social media outlet for the two-in-one punch. Don't put it off for too long. You need to capitalize on event hype as well as momentum. If you delay this for one week, you've probably been missing the mark. After you've sent the customized email is sent, activate the automatic drip sequence that you created prior to the event, from your email provider (you have permission to send emails to them, too, right?) and then move them along the sales funnel the same way you would someone who visited your website. You've actually met this person in the flesh and your calls to actions (CTAs) should be of greater significance (attend a value-packed webinar, sign up for a your trial, or buy) rather than someone who in the process of establishing your drip program when they click on the lead magnet on your site.
If you are only allowed to distribute cards and not capture names and contact info because of some reason, make your own landing page and include an exclusive lead magnet specifically for attendees of conferences. Have a special set of business cards created that include the web address of the landing page and brief descriptions of the free download specially designed for them. Then have your email capture forms on that page to request downloads and to kick off the automated nurture process to adhere to.
There's an infinite number of possibilities to use this but the key point is that you must have an prior event, post-event, and during plan that is measurable.
Webinars
Webinars are 45 to 90 minute value-forward online seminar that can be shown live on the internet to an audience or recorded, and consumed upon demand. Webinars make excellent top-of-the-line sources and email list building tools, but can also be used toward the conclusion of a marketing funnel to ask for the purchase.
Webinars can be produced yourself in a single event, or as a series, a summit with or without guests, or you can be an invited guest at someone else's. Whatever the case, they can and should be leveraged for demonstrating your expertise, as well as establish credibility and confidence within your particular industry. They can be used for a single time, or you can create permanent webinars - the contents of they should be relevant for the next 12-24 months.
If you operate an open model for your membership (meaning you only open the website to new members couple of times in the year) A single webinar or summit can be a great way to close the deal. I'd suggest offering the webcast live, and then mentioning a very special, exclusive and time-sensitive offer within your marketing materials that will only be offered only to attendees who attended live following the webinar - not those who watch the replay. You can still send the replay for those who did not attend the live event, however you could improve your attendance live and closing ratio in case your attendees know that something special is happening in the closing.
Hosting a summit is one of the best moves you can make to become an authority/influencer. There must be a substantial email list to get other industry experts as guests, but if you can pull this off, your efforts will be well-rewarded. This is a lot of work, so I would not recommend it unless you're willing to invest to the amount of time required to have your technology, summit promotion guests, guest list, content plans schedule, follow-up, and more hashed out.
Being a guest on someone else's webinar and inviting your audience to attend can be a fantastic opportunity to test your hand in the water and get comfortable on camera without putting in the time and effort required hosting your own. If you are working with others on cross-promotions and have an organic influencer strategy implemented, you're likely to be at the top in the list of guests for the webinars that are being hosted by those hosting them and summits.
Similar to fully exploiting an industry conference or conference, creating a prior webinar marketing strategy and a plan for follow-up is crucial. Since webinars and summits are an excellent source of information to your target audience (not to mention a ton of work on your part) ensure that you are repurposing the content that you learned from the event: transform it into a blog post collection, an ebook, podcast or video series on YouTube as a lead-generator, and on.
The key factor to remember whether you're hosting or a guest is that you provide an unimaginable amount of value to webinar attendees. Don't be tempted to hide your secret sauce. It's moment to show that you've got the secret sauce and that you have plenty of other benefits that came from behind the paywall for your membership.
In-person events or meetups
Meetups and events in person may include one of these: holding happy hour, in-person classes/lessons, workshops, sponsorship of events held in person in cities in which a significant portion of your participants reside as well as any other place it is possible to bring people together in person. Events can be free or paid, educational in nature, or simply enjoyable for community-building.
Many of the membership sites we collaborate with offer an online community as part of the membership. In the end, community is the biggest differentiators between a membership and a class. If you're able to bring together your community in person and put on an event that your members (and future members) enjoy and then praise on the internet, you're going to improve sales, cLTV and conversion rates, and your overall strength as a group.
Events like these are a great place to allow members who are currently or prospectively to mingle and chat. Let your current members perform the "selling" on your behalf to prospects through casual conversation. If a handful members of your current membership value your membership so much that they be present physically discussing your membership, it is likely to be a natural part of the conversation.
For industry events or trade shows You must plan prior to the event, and make the actual conference live up to the anticipation, and then have the ability to follow-up. Your prep and follow up will depend on the type of event you're holding.
If it's a workshop, you're likely charging people to attend, and will need to prepare marketing materials, and then the workshop details themselves (workbooks, handouts, a slide deck, your presentation, guest speakers/instructors). Follow-up materials should comprise a survey of attendees along with bonus materials and an offer to buy something else. If you've recently met people in person, and earned the trust of them, turn the momentum to create relevant upsell opportunities.
If you are hosting a happy hour, little preparation is required. Make sure you choose a good location, serving food and maybe drinks, and making sure that people are there. Once you're there, engage with all attendees and make sure you don't have anyone awkwardly left out. Inviting members who are already there to invite a friend who is similar to join you is a great option to boost your attendance as well.
And while a Happy Hour isn't the best opportunity to make sales when you're inviting potential members, have a subtle way of making sure you can follow up with the people you invite. The lead-capture strategy could include entering them into a contest to win an unrestricted membership, items., or something more subtle like handing people cards that have the promo code that is specifically on them.
Whatever the occasion you're hosting, be sure to have an approach to lead collection and follow-up for potential customers in attendance. Just as your marketing materials for memberships should be in line with what paying members actually get behind the paywall, your promotion for the event will need to be in line with the content you're capable of delivering in person or else you're at risk of being branded a bad name on social media. Make sure you have raving supporters of your event, not naysayers to ensure that you are able to successfully host future events. This is the ideal time to harness the underpromise, overdeliver rule.
Speaking engagements
It's possible that this could be more fear-inducing than direct sales for some of us However, it's incredibly effective in the right way as well, documented, and used. If you're new to public speaking, don't worry about it. Things like blogging, guest podcasting hosting or even being a guest on webinars, making videos, etc., are all great practice for public speaking.
There's no need to aim at the stars as you're starting out. Find a local business association to give a speech on the spot or lead an in person workshop to tiny groups. There is even the option of going to an area where you don't know anyone and present a talk if you really want to ease the burden. Start small, and as your experience and skill set improves, move up to a larger task.
Offer to lead breakout sessions at conferences, organize an informal breakout session prior to or following another's conference or event (in an honest manner of course). Once you've done those things successfully, start to harness your organic influencer, guest blogging/podcasting/webinar hosting strategies to move further up the speaking ladder. If you're privy to relevant speaking opportunities because you're a part of a network and have taken the effort to create the social capital of that network, you're many times more likely to be invited to be a candidate for a speaking slot even if you're not particularly famous yet.
Higher profile speaking gigs can be as lucrative as writing your own book, holding a conference or even a summit with other experts from the field with respect to impact and reach. No matter the size of the speaking gig, make sure you maximize your presentation through repurposing it to various other media. First make sure you're able to record solid quality footage of your speech or presentation. Upload your video on your website, both before and behind the paywall. Put it up on YouTube and use the video as a blog series or podcast subject, and use it to start discussions within your paid and free communities Include an embedded video under your website's "About" as well as the "Resources" tab on your site.
Also, make use of the video recording to apply to speak at other events. When you've established yourself as an effective speaker, and have promoted yourself accordingly using recorded video of your presentation and some social proof (positive feedback you received from the audience), your public speaking life will get much easier.