When it comes to event marketing, it can seem like a lonely enterprise. But if you have stakeholders, contributors, speakers, stall holders, or anyone that is not you …then you have additional marketers for your event.
Even the event location can and should be involved in marketing your event on their channels.
The team putting up barriers, erecting the stage, providing the catering. They are all part of your event marketing network.
Harnessing the Power of Word-of-Mouth for Event Marketing
Word-of-mouth is a potent tool in your event marketing arsenal. But how can you harness this intangible force?
The key lies in crafting a compelling event mission statement.
Clearly articulate your event’s purpose and value proposition. This is your event’s elevator pitch.
To do this, you need to be clear about what your event is about and what the benefits are.
Having an event mission statement – one that is easy to remember and say – will greatly help with word of mouth.
A memorable and concise mission statement will fuel word-of-mouth marketing.
It’s the difference between “Erm the event is about networking and business development and also how to grow and for any business who needs help with stuff.”
And
“Grow Your Biz 2025 helps solo entrepreneurs market their business better…and James Jones will be giving new tips about marketing in the age of AI.”
A clear, targeted, value-driven, and repeatable mission statement is essential for effective word-of-mouth marketing.
I’ve seen first-hand what happens when this is not clear and watched as contributors being interviewed all had slightly different messaging and interpretations of the benefit. They struggled to convey the purpose of the event because it was confusing.
The “James Jones” comment is a talk trigger. A talk trigger, according to Jay Baer is something that compels conversation. This talk trigger needs to “be remarkable, relevant, reasonable and repeatable.”
In the statement above, it’s about a big name offering tips that you won’t get anywhere else. There’s value and there’s a talk trigger. Saying it to another person will give you social currency. You have valuable knowledge about this event and you can and want to share it.
Get this event mission statement right – and maybe have a talk trigger – and then your stakeholders can spread the word.
Make sharing your event easy
I was going to call this section – encourage sharing – but that really doesn’t work. You can encourage people to share all you like, but it involves work, extra work, and you can’t rely on that to happen.
So, instead, make the sharing and marketing of your event by stakeholders easy.
- Make a Facebook Event – and add collaborators.
- Create a Media Pack for press an interested agencies to find out about your event, get photos and social media graphics.
- Create social media graphics in all formats, that contributors can share.
- Create social media graphics about THAT contributor that they’ll want to share.
- Extra bonus points if you give your contributors the captions too!
- Create story posts for Instagram / Facebook and tag the contributors making it easy for them to just “add to Story.”
Provide social media training
Not all your contributors and stakeholders may be on social media.
You may have experts for your event who just know nothing about social media or even have accounts.
Why not give them some free online training they can do. You could record sessions using Loom or Screen Pal and give them the basics of creating effective profiles, posting, tagging and SHARING.
Email marketing
Don’t forget email marketing for your event!
Your contributors may have a network of contacts that they could share the event right into their inboxes.
Why not provide an email signature graphic that they could add for the duration of the event marketing period? Again, create this for your stakeholders…make their life easier.
Interview your stakeholders
Perhaps you’ve tried training stakeholders on social media, or they just don’t have the time to post, then you have one more trick up your sleeve.
Interviews.
Interview your key contributors or stakeholders for lots of lovely content. This could be done live on a social media platform, in real life, via zoom or even over a phone.
Get video footage, quotes or live content that you can repurpose. If they’re an important contributor having unique content from them will help attract viewers.
Use those testimonials
Is this the second time you’re running your event? Then use the testimonials and endorsements to help promote your current event.
If it’s your first event, then think about collating that in surveys on on-screen interviews for use for the next event.
Event marketing is a joint effort
Hopefully, I’ve explained how your stakeholders and contributors are all part of your marketing event network and how to leverage them.
My key takeaways are to make it easy for them to market your event by:
- Be clear about the mission statement of the event.
- Provide assets for stakeholders to use in a format that they understand.
- Facilitate event marketing by providing training and support.
- Use your stakeholders to create unique content you can use.
If you want more tips on event marketing, have a look at my online course, How to Promote Your Event on Social Media.
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