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This blog post is part a series, based on the ebook 'Top 21 marketing ways for membership sites', written by The Subscription Coach Amanda Northcutt.
Download the whole series in a book
Creative marketing opportunities abound during trade shows and conferences: pay for an exhibit space, purchase a sponsorship through the organizer, host an off-site event to coincide with the show/conference or conference, and many more.
If you are lucky enough to find that someone else from your sector is organizing an annual conference in which your audience is together, it is your responsibility to attend.
In relation to hosting your own event, attending a conference that someone else is putting on is like hitting the easy button. But, if you simply show up, sans strategy and without a plan, it's probably best to remain at 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 for an event of someone else's is to be a speaker. The topic of speaking engagements will come up in a moment however, as uncomfortable as it may be initially, public speaking before your intended audience is as good as gold. This is a quick way to gain confidence and trust, provided that the speech you give is compelling meaningful, relevant and valuable.
Consider sponsorship opportunities similar ways to what you would with any paid advertising. They should be quantifiable and that's largely on you when you're a sponsor for an event. Your presence at the event, the brand the experience you provide, and call to action will likely decide the success of your event or lack thereof. Your event strategy needs to comprise pre-event preparation, an event-specific plan and an after-event sequence. This goes for whether or not you have an official sponsorship. However, it will likely be significantly simpler if you do have one.
Prep: If you can get access and exposure to the list of attendees before the event you can move people through the sales pipeline more quickly. If you're a sponsor you can ask the event organizers for ways you can make the most of the sponsorship. Ask for more than what is included in the package of sponsorship If you are able to find a way to provide the attendees with value and make the organizer look good.
If you don't have a sponsorship or aren't an influencer in your space You're not likely to attract the attention of event people who are organizing the event in any important manner. Get yourself on Twitter as well as Instagram and use the corresponding event hashtag to try and locate others attending. Meet them and think about hosting a party, happy hour, meal, or off site mini-workshop on the days or hours surrounding the main event.
The day: Sponsor or not Find a way to capture leads. You can definitely do this on a one-to-one basis through providing relevant resources or even a deal to a potential customer who is interested to exchange contact details or permission to connect with them on social media. Take a look around and avoid being pushy or pushy. If you are able to help someone, tell them you think you can and ask for permission to email them. Making a point of writing an outline of each person so you can send a contextual follow-up is going to set you head and shoulders above the ones who send generic follow-up messages completely lacking personal details.
Track the event hashtag through social media both during the event and afterwards, make sure you use the hashtag your personal hashtag. It's an easy way to amplify your presence and help you be more noticeable to guests. This is also a great opportunity to identify potential clients as well as influencers both during and after the conference.
If you do hold a booth in a conference, then you need a way to be noticed. This isn't a guru's advice however, you can go to Pinterest and look for some innovative ideas. Get noticed and if your business is a good fit for having a bit of fun and entertainment, you should play it up. One way to do this is to have a themed booth and have employees or helpers dress a certain way.
One thing I've seen done successfully is to have employees walking around and asking people would they like to be invited to an exclusive bar/restaurant to enjoy cocktails after the event. They then have to go to your booth to hear more about your offering and to sign up (lead capture) to receive an invitation. If you're doing this, you need to be a friendly group at your booth, people that your prospects actually want to have a drink with. You can rent an area or bar that is popular in a restaurant in town and pay the tab at the conclusion of the evening. This kind of thing creates a little buzz (no joke intended) on the night, allows prospects to have an enjoyable experience when they interact in your business and acts as an in-person lead magnet.
Follow up All your prep and preparation on site can be wasted If you don't follow up regarding the follow-up process. Keep in mind that lead-capture during the event is essential because otherwise, you'll not have enough people to follow up with. Oops.
After the event, write an individual email with your personal information you took note of when you met them (you did that, right?) and make a connection with them through their most popular social media platform for that two-in-one punch. Don't put it off for too long. You need to make the most of event hype and momentum and if you put this off for a week, you've likely missed the boat. Following the personal email, you can trigger the automatic drip sequence that you created prior to the event, from your email service provider (you have permission to send emails to your customers, didn't you?) and then move them along the sales pipeline just as you would a person who has visited your website. You've actually met them in person therefore your calls to actions (CTAs) should be of more significance (attend a value-packed webinar, start your trial, or buy) as opposed to someone who only beginning your drip process following the acquisition of the lead magnet on your site.
If you're only capable of handing out cards but not collect names and contact info because of some reason, make your own landing page and include an offer for leads just for conference attendees. Create a unique collection of business cards created which include your landing page URL and an overview of the amazing free resource specially designed for them on it. You can then place your email capture form on that landing page in exchange for downloading and start the automated nurture process to be followed.
There's an infinite number of possibilities to use this but the key point is that you need an prior the event, throughout, and after it plan that is measurable.
Webinars
Webinars are 45 to 90 minutes of value-added online seminars that can be shown live on the internet to an audience or recorded and played at any time. Webinars make excellent top-of-the-line source and build email lists instruments. They are also a great tool to use towards the end of a marketing funnel to solicit a sales.
Webinars can be produced yourself in a single event, or as a series, the summit, that includes guests or not, or you can be the guest speaker on other people's. In any case, they can and should be leveraged to showcase your knowledge as well as establish credibility and confidence within your field. You can use them for a single time, or you can create permanent webinars with the same content which should be applicable for the next 12-24 months.
If you run an open model for your membership (meaning it is only possible to open the site to new members handful of occasions per year) an individual event or summit could be a great way to close the deal. I would recommend offering this kind of webinar in real time and mentioning a a very special, exclusive, time-limited offer in your promotional materials. This offer can only be made available to live attendees at the end of the session, and not for those who watch the replay. The replay of the webinar should still be sent to people who didn't go live, but you can increase your live attendance and closing percentage if your audience knows the event will be special during the course.
Hosting a summit is one of the best moves you can make to become an authority/influencer. There must be a substantial email list in order to draw other industry experts as guests, but if you can achieve this feat, your efforts will be rewarded. It's a lot of work. I wouldn't recommend doing it unless you're willing to invest the time necessary to get your tech, your summit marketing guest speakers, content plan schedule, follow-up, and more completed.
Being a guest on someone else's webinar and inviting your viewers to join is the perfect way to dip your toe into the water and to get at ease on the camera without putting in the time and effort required to organize your own. If you are working with others on cross-promotions and already have an effective influencer strategy that is in place, you're more likely to be at the top of the list of guests for the webinars that are being hosted by those hosting them as well as summits.
Much like fully leveraging an industry conference or conference, creating a prior webinar promotion strategy as well as a follow-up plan is vital. As webinars and summits offer an excellent source of information to the people you want to reach (not to mention the hefty amount of work on your part) ensure that you are repurposing the content from the webinar: turn it into a blog post collection, an ebook podcast, or podcast series, YouTube videos as a lead-generator, and on.
The most crucial thing to keep in mind whether you are hosting or a guest is to offer an overwhelming quantity of value for participants of your webinar. It's not the time to hold back your secret sauce - it's the opportunity to demonstrate that you've got the sauce that's secret and there's plenty more where you can find it behind your paywall.
In-person events or meetups
In-person events and meetups may include one of these: organizing happy hours, live classes/lessons, workshops, sponsorship of events held in person in cities where a critical mass of your members reside as well as any other place you can get people together in real life. These events could be for unpaid or free and educational in nature or simply enjoyable for gatherings that build community.
Many of the membership sites we collaborate with include an online community element in the membership. Since a community is one of the biggest differentiators between a membership and a program. If you are able to gather your group in person and host an event that members (and future members) are excited about and later praise on the internet it will improve sales, cLTV and rate of conversion, as well as the strength of your online group.
Events like these can be a fantastic opportunity to allow members who are currently or prospectively to meet and talk. Let your current members take on their "selling" on your behalf prospective members through casual chat. If you have a few members of your current membership value your membership so much that they be present in person, talking about your membership can be an easy topic of conversations.
As with industry conferences or trade shows, you must prepare prior to the event, and make your event live up to the anticipation, and then have a follow up strategy. The way you prepare and the follow-up depends on the kind of event you're hosting.
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 the survey that attendees completed as well as bonus material, or a special offer for other items. If you've met someone in person and earned the trust of them, turn the momentum to create relevant upsell opportunities.
If you're hosting an evening of happy hour, a little prep work should be necessary. Concentrate on finding a suitable place, offering snacks or drinks, as well as making sure that people are there. When you're there, interact with all attendees and ensure that there's no one excluded. Asking current members to bring a similar-minded person to join you is a great method to increase your membership as well.
A happy hour is the last place to be salesy, if you're inviting prospective members, make sure you have a smart strategy to ensure that you can follow up with them. Lead capture might be entry into a contest for an unrestricted membership, merchandise, etc. It could also be some other method that is more subtle, such as handing out cards to prospects with the promo code that is specifically with a special promo code.
No matter what the occasion, make sure you've got the right plan to capture leads and follow up for prospects in attendance. Just as the materials you distribute to members must match what the paying members actually get behind the paywall, your promotion for the event must match what you can deliver 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 events rather than naysayers in order to be able to hold successful an event in the near future. This is the ideal time to harness the underpromise, overdeliver principle.
Speaking engagements
Perhaps this is even more frightening than direct sales to some however it's extremely effective when it's done right as well, documented, and leveraged. If you're not familiar with public speaking, don't worry about it. Things like guest blogging, guest podcasting hosting or even being a guest on webinars, creating videos as well as. All of these are great ways to prepare of public speaking.
It's not necessary to aim for the moon when you're just starting out. Look for a local association of business and present a talk on the spot or lead an individual workshop for a small group. There is even the option of going to an area where you don't know anyone to make a presentation if you really want to take the pressure off. Start small, and when your confidence and skills improve, you can up level to a bigger task.
Offer to lead breaks at conferences or organize an informal breakout session prior to or following another's occasion (in an honest manner obviously). 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 able to access relevant speaking opportunities because you're a part of a network and have taken your time and effort to develop an online presence within the network, then you're much more likely to be invited as a potential speaker, even if you're not particularly popular as of yet.
Speaking gigs with a higher profile are on par with publishing your own book or holding a conference or even a summit with other industry experts for reach and influence. Whatever the scope of the speaking gig, fully leverage your presentation using it in other mediums. First make sure you're able to record solid quality video of your talk or talk. Then post your video to your own site both behind and in front of the paywall. Put it up on YouTube and use the video to create a series of blog posts as well as a podcast, or to seed discussion within your free and paid communities as well as embed the video on the "About" as well as the "Resources" tab on your website.
Also, make use of the recorded video as a basis for other speaking gigs. After you've proved yourself to be a valuable speaker and market your self accordingly by recording a video of your presentation along with some social proof (positive reviews you got from attendees) and your public speaking life will get much more easy.