Ep. 22 Part 1 | Behind the Scenes: Exploring the Intricacies of Event Management.

Ms.Biz

Welcome to Episode 22 part 1 on maximizing your brand's presence at events! Here are the key points we've summarized from the transcription:

* _Community events_ like fairs and festivals offer perks such as *brand recognition*, *community involvement*, *in-person connections*, and *cost-effective participation*. Nonetheless, the challenges include being perceived solely as a vendor, committing high man hours, having superficial conversations, offering costly memorable giveaways, and lacking a connection to attendees.
* _Hosting your own event_ projects an aura of authority, lets you gather attendee contact information, and provides attendees an opportunity to personally engage with you. However, it demands thorough planning, staffing, and budgeting.
* _Virtual events_, like webinars, are cost-effective and have extensive reach. On the flip side, they are deprived of personal connection, so you need to up your game drastically to foster engagement.
* When attending community events, go all out with memorable interactive displays or takeaways. Remember, it's about *quality over quantity*.
* Craft creative, on-brand giveaways and touches that will stand out at events. Your goal should be to make attendees say "*wow!*".
* Utilize event speeches and videos to position yourself as an authority. Don't hesitate to hire production assistance if required.
* Make it a point to collect business cards and follow up with contacts post events. Add them to your email list.
* Optimizing social media for SEO with keywords can make your posts stand out. However, you should also incorporate relatable language to connect with your followers.
Stay tuned for more tips on how to enhance your brand's presence at events! Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe.

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Full Episode Transcription:

Rachel: Back to School Bashes, Trunk or Treats, webinars, we all have attended these events. But as business owners, events can take on a whole new meaning as they are an opportunity to increase visibility for your business and make connections within the community. In today's episode, we are gonna review the types of events as well as their pros and cons. Today's episode will be broken into two parts, so please be sure to listen to both.

Brooke: When I first started my business, community events and Events in general were not a part of my marketing plan. But over the years, I have come to realize the benefit that they bring to building my business. And for today's podcast, I've categorized the events into three types and we're going to talk about the pros and cons of each. The first type of event we're talking about is community events. Events that you participate in as a sponsor or an attendee, where you set up a booth or a table and you're one of a number of vendors.

The second is events that you host yourself, that you are the, you put the event together, you are the host, you are the coordinator of the event. And third are virtual events. These are things like webinars and zoom calls that are virtual. So when you're if you're first starting out, the community or virtual events are probably going to be more appealing to you because there's a lower cost and less staff needed to assist in the planning and preparation and invitations. But if you're further along in your business, you really should be posting in-person events yourself, And we'll talk about the reasons why.

So Rachel, can you, and actually, Rachel is the first person who really encouraged me to start doing community events. I never wanted to do them because I just perceived them as I don't want to stand outside in the heat for six hours you know handing out air fresheners I just I didn't want to spend my time doing that and Rachel said I'll do it it will benefit the firm I'll do it so we bought a tent we got you know a table got a tablecloth got some merch and giveaways and she really started doing it and that was the first time that Bolts Legal started participating in events.

Rachel: So in terms of community events, some of the major pros include brand recognition. When you are sponsoring an event, people get to see your name, whether it's on your tent or it's on a table. Or even if you're just talking to people, you don't have those branded items at your table. You're still talking to people. People get to see your business and may have an opportunity to be able to identify you, whereas prior to that, they might not have even known who you were.

Also, being involved in community events, it shows community involvement, and people like to do business with individuals who show their support to the community, who are contributing to a cause, or trying to make a larger impact. Also with the community activities this is an in-person meeting which I think is very important because it's going to increase the likelihood that someone will remember you and will contact you later. There's a huge difference between seeing an ad on TV or seeing a billboard or seeing you know an ad on Facebook. When you get to have that shared experience with someone, whether it be the business owner or employees of the company, you really get to form a connection in a much more impactful way than just simply seeing something from a distance or seeing a logo or some form of advertisement. Community events are an excellent opportunity to gather up business cards.

You can gather up business cards so that you can incorporate them into your email marketing campaign or even just follow up with them. If you have their address, you can send them a thank you card or you can give them a call on the phone as well. Also community events are very inexpensive to participate. Usually the fee to be a vendor or to have a table set up is very inexpensive and can benefit your business to reach more people that you wouldn't have normally been able to reach. And sometimes depending on the event, Whoever is coordinating it will tell you, you know, well last year we had X amount of participants or the year before that we had X amount of participants or we're expecting this amount of people to be here.

So that'll be a good way to gauge how much exposure you're going to receive and then be able to do the math to say, well, is my financial investment worth the amount of people that I could potentially connect with? Another pro of community events are the giveaways and games. So the Promotional Products Association International reports that 73% of people use promotional products at least once a week and 45% of people use the promotional product at least once a day. The brand spirit blog also reports that 20% of individuals have made a purchase from an advertiser after receiving a promotional product, which I think is an important statistic to be aware of. I also think it depends on the type of giveaway that it is, if It's something of value and useful.

But that's a great way for people to remember you and to be able to have that subliminal advertising ingrained in their brain after that initial point of contact.

What's great about flyers and brochures is consumers trust print advertisements 34% more than search engine advertisements when making purchasing decisions.

Brooke: So there's obviously a lot of pros to participating in community events as a sponsor. And if you're wondering how do you participate in these type of events, if you're a business owner, you probably will already be getting emails from different events asking if you want to be a sponsor golf tournaments the city where I reside puts on all kinds of events Every year they do something for St. Patrick's Day, they do something called Bark and Brews, they do food truck nights, just almost every holiday Easter, they're having some type of community event. So if you just spend a little time online searching for events in your area, you'll find a website and there's going to be a link there to a sponsorship opportunity. But community events have pros but there's also some limitations and some of those things are yes it's going to create some more awareness of your brand, but you're going to be seen as one of probably dozens, if not hundreds of other tables or tents that were there.

You're seen as another vendor, not necessarily as a leader in your space or an authority figure. Also, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of man hours. And the return for your time is not always there. The financial investment to participate is low.

But the cost of the giveaways can be high. And the cost of your time can be high. And so, and if you have to have multiple staff people there, you have that staffing expense, and you know, it's just, it's a lot of work. Rachel can tell you setting up that tent, I mean she brings the tent herself and sets it up herself and sets up this big table, we put the tablecloth, she has all the different merch items. It's a lot of work And then you have to tear it all down at the end.

So it's just a lot of man hours. So that's a con in my opinion. Also, the event itself tends to lead to more surface level type conversations. When people are coming to these events they are there with the intention of just going from tent to tent or vendor to vendor grabbing a giveaway and keep on moving. And so it's They're not coming with the expectation of diving deep and talking about deep conversations and building an emotional rapport.

Next is the giveaways. Rachel talked about the giveaways are pro in that you're having an opportunity to access a lot of people in one place. You don't have to worry about shipping costs or mailing things out. These are gonna be people in your community who are gonna be likely part of your target audience, so you're having an opportunity to give them something in their hands about your business right then and there. But you wanna stand out.

You don't wanna be giving away something that they're accustomed to receiving, that they're just going to glance at and throw it in a bag. And to do that can become costly. We had some Boltz legal shirts and hoodies that we were giving away at events for a while. And I eventually was like, this is too expensive. The price per unit was very high.

And so it was really popular. People would come to our tent just to get, and we had hats too that were Under Armour brand. So people would come saying, I want to Under Armour hat, or I really love the hoodie that because they were, we had some crop top hoodies, like we had some really good quality, and really nice designed clothing merch that we were giving away. So people, people appreciated it, they came and asked for it, but it was expensive to be able to give away that much merch to that many people. And another con about the giveaways is that they don't have a connection to your business, the people who are attending, And because they're getting so many giveaways at once, that there's a good likelihood that yours gets forgotten or thrown away.

I know I've gone to events where we carry around a plastic bag in every booth. They give us a bunch of giveaways. And then at the end, the kids go through and grab the few things that they care about, probably slime and fidget spinners or poppets or something, and then the rest of it ends up in the trash. So, and maybe a pen, pull out a pen, put it in the pen drawer, something like that. But a lot of it gets thrown away just because of the volume of giveaways that you're getting at that event.

So there's, it's tough to find a good giveaway that is going to stand out, be memorable, be something that someone wants to keep, but not be so expensive that you can't afford to give it away in mass quantities.

Rachel: And I think I think it really if you can figure out something that relates to your brand that can be something different and unique, that that is going to stand out. So for example, I have a friend who is a realtor, and she has her own brokerage, and her whole theme is about bees. So one of the giveaways that she does that I think is genius is she gives seeds. She gives like flower seeds to people with instructions on how to plant them. And that's relatively inexpensive.

It's a good activity that kids and parents can do together and it's it's unique so it makes it memorable. Also in terms of the giveaways, you know, that is a great opportunity for you to have a shared experience with someone. So you have to have the promotional giveaways to entice them, and even the games, to entice them to come to your booth, especially if you're at a really big event with possibly hundreds of other vendors and thousands of people coming. You know, you've gotta find a way to strategically get people to want to visit your booth and not just walk by you. So having something that is really unique and can create that aha moment, that moment of shock is going to be something that leaves a lasting impression on them.

So for example, One of the things that Brooke had at one of the Easter events, is she had this big egg, and it was a beautiful egg, but because it was an egg, and there were a ton of kids, these kids really wanted the egg. The Golden egg. Yes, they really wanted this egg and their parents were willing to you know sign over all their information so their kids could win this egg. So we ended up getting a ton of people you know their contact information so we could add them on the email campaign. But then it was such a, like everybody came over to our booth and everybody I think remembered that because nobody else was doing that at that time or had that beautiful egg at their table.

So there are ways that you can do it that's relatively inexpensive, but you really have to think and try to come up with a strategy to do it.

Brooke: So when we first started doing community events Rachel I think was signing up for all of them she could find. It seemed like every weekend she was spending her day at these events.

And she would bring her kids sometimes, and they would help her. And they were troopers, because it's hard work to be out there, and it's hot here in Florida. And we were doing quantity over quality, I think is how we were approaching the events. Just get out there and let people see us. And now I think we've kind of shifted from that perspective to where I've adopted a go big or go home mentality with regard to events.

To me, I am now focusing on a few key events per year that I really want to focus on and then we put in the money to be memorable and to stand out so that it can have the most impact at the event. So we're shifting to a quality over quantity method. Some examples, I went to an Easter event in the community, and there was a real estate firm who had a their own version of a build a bear where the kids could come and stuff their own stuffed animal and that booth was so popular that there was lines of children and parents waiting for their turn to make their stuffed animal. And it wasn't a branded product. It was just a stuffed animal.

But I would bet that those parents will remember that real estate company because they did something that was unique and made their children so excited. Also I read a book, I've talked about it before on the podcast called the, of course now I can't remember the name of it the ultimate sales machine there we go by Chet Holmes and he talks about doing community events or the example he gives is a trade show where they had set up a booth and he and his employees, they wore Hawaiian shirts. They did a Hawaiian booth with like a tiki hut and just a fully decked out decorated booth and they had frozen drinks with little umbrellas in them that they were giving out. So everyone wanted to come to the Hawaiian booth to get their frozen drink and when they came he would give them a little invitation to come to an after-party that evening at you know one of the hot spots in the town. And he gave that example of really being memorable, standing out, going above and beyond.

Another example, we at Boltz Legal are sponsoring a chiropractic association event coming up soon. Actually by the time this airs the event will probably have already occurred. And we are going all out. I purchased the highest sponsorship that was available because it gives me five minutes of speaking time to the audience. And I'm using that time.

I've hired a production company to create a video that I'm hoping will be very memorable and will get people talking. It's going to be a music parody of a popular song that's going to involve, it's essentially a music video. So Rachel and I will be working on our dance moves for this parody and it's in my mind it's going to be awesome. You'll have to stay tuned to see how it turns out. But the goal, again, is to go big or go home.

If we're going to participate in this event, and it's got chiropractors there who are a great connection for me, I want them to remember me so I'm doing everything I can to be memorable to them by making this video and then I've been working on my two-minute speech once the video is over, and also putting together giveaways that align with the theme of my speech and video.

Rachel: So in addition to community events, what is highly recommended is to host your own event. And just like before, there are pros and cons. So some of the pros to hosting your own event is it creates the appearance of being an authority figure and perception is reality. Whenever you host your own events, people will literally line up to talk to the host. They will wait, you know, even like a half an hour or an hour after the event has finished just to talk to the host even if it's just saying like wow I really love this like people want to make that connection with the host we're just saying thank you

Brooke: yes Sometimes they want to just say thank you for for having me. Thank you for hosting this.

Rachel: Yep. And with with hosting your own event, you know, you have the opportunity to get contact information for all attendees for email list and follow-up and a lot of times you don't have to necessarily get this information at the event you already have this information if you've invited them because it's on one of your forms that you have or whatever the case may be. A lot of times you have this information so you don't have to bother people but it's also an opportunity if you know there is someone like let's say you invited someone but they brought like their practice manager with them you know you have the opportunity to get their business card and you know share share contact information with them and follow up after

Brooke: Stay tuned for part two of today's podcast episode on events in person, community events, hosting events, and virtual events.