We can promote our brands in all kinds of different ways, though some strategies seem to never disappoint. Event management or event branding, call it as you please, represents one of the most effective yet challenging ways to improve your brand’s reputation.

When you’re able to organize a beautiful event and portray it as your brand’s value representation, you are raising the standards of your company thus improving its reach and awareness in the marketplace.

Event management involves hosting themed events that would be both interesting to your prospects and useful to your brand. In today’s post, I’m sharing 9 steps to grow your brand’s reputation by hosting and successfully marketing interesting events.

1. Develop a Unique Brand Identity and Keep It Consistent

Since you’re branding your event, you obviously need to own a solid brand. What that means is that you should already have the basic things covered, such as your unique brand proposition, culture, identity, and so on.

A branded event can only be successful if you manage to showcase your brand’s identity, culture, and mission. For that, you should define the following aspects:

· How is your brand unique in the marketplace, and what makes it stand out from its competitors’ crowd?

· Who is my target audience? What do they need? What do they want? Country? Gender? Age? Interests? Problems? Fears?

· What is my brand’s mission? How does it contribute to the greater good?

· What are my brand’s values? Honesty? Innovation? Equal rights? Education?

· What is my brand’s personality? Serious? Funny? Dramatic? Outrageous?

By asking yourself concise questions like these, you’ll be able to see your brand as a whole, something that’ll allow you to effectively market your branded event.

Once you’re absolutely sure of your brand’s identity and culture, you can keep your message consistent everywhere you go. That means, your colors, your messages, your personality, your unique voice will be present in every aspect of your communication and publishing.

For example, your blog content, the color of your design, your sales copy, your email messages, your event promotion sales copies, and basically everything you represent should be aligned with your brand’s core identity.

2. The Name, The Tagline, The Hashtag

Before you create your event, you need to ensure that you pick the right name and build the right marketing angle. A great event is represented by a great tagline and a potentially viral hashtag.

You can brand your event in many ways, though taking advantage of a branded tagline and a branded hashtag is amazingly simple and convenient.

The tagline should be closely related to your brand, while the hashtag can be a keyword that gives more clarity to the event your proposing.

For example, Ted’s tagline is “Ideas worth spreading”, and their hashtag, of course, #ideasworthspreading. It has got over 45.000 posts until now and continues to grow. This is the power of user-generated content!

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3. Establish an Online Presence on More Channels

You should be present on more channels of communication, especially on social media channels. Establishing an online presence with the help of social networks is simply and accomplishable in a matter of a few days.

Starting a Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and/or YouTube is free, and so is your opportunity to reach diverse target audiences that have the same interests, the only difference between them being the social networks they use.

You should be present on all, but you should focus on the ones that truly suit your niche and audience. If your target audience mostly uses LinkedIn, then your active marketing campaigns should be focused in that direction.

4. Create Physical Advertising Material and Distribute It to Your Prospects

Printing is not dead yet, so you shouldn’t neglect the traditional marketing channels. You can create all sorts of physical advertisements, from huge street billboards to small banners and flyers. What you need is some ideas, a strategy, and the will to implement your plan without second thoughts.

You should also consider using radio or local magazines advertising in case you are targeting locals.

5. Network, Network, Network

Your network is a great help when it comes to event planning and management. Your event can’t be totally successful unless you have at least a bunch of individuals supporting you and your cause publicly.

Also, a network of like-minded individuals who are employed in different positions that might be helpful to your brand is a spectacular asset that can be used whenever the times dictate.

6. Promote Your Event Through More Types of Media

Don’t create just videos or just text. Create them both. But don’t stop to that, you can also tap into graphics and infographics. Why not? After all, visual content can tell much more information. A picture is worth a thousand words, but what about a video?

“Depending on the type of media content you’ll choose to use to promote your event online and offline, you should post your content on more than one channel. Upload your video on all the social media networks, including YouTube, and promote the video that gets the most attention.” — Joseph Rays, CEO at Assignment Geek Australia.

7. Organize Contests and Giveaways

People love surprises, and they especially love free things. You can pre-market your event by organizing a contest or a giveaway. You can offer free tickets, free products, free samples, free consultations, or something that your target audience will be interested in. Of course, try to make contests as viral as possible by asking the attendants to share your opportunity.

Read and Learn: How to Add Energy, Impact, and Results at Every Stage of Your Webinar

8. Promote Your Brand Effectively Throughout the Event

Throughout the event, your brand should appear in multiple circumstances. Depending on your strategy, you can choose to print your brand’s logo on the plates, on the table, on the walls. You can choose to hold a presentation, in which your attendants must pay attention, having the chance to read more after you’re done talking. Or, you may simply decide to keep it simple and traditional: a speech and private discussions.

9. Avoid Brand Overloading and Intrusive Marketing

No matter what you do, ensure that your marketing approach is not too intrusive. You don’t want to overload your event attendants and give the wrong impression. The last thing you want to do is harass the people who are supposed to support you.

Takeaways

Hosting awesome events and marketing them in the same great fashion is one of the most powerful methods of improving your brand’s reputation and positioning in the marketplace. The best resource is the human resource, and the more loyal brand advocates and followers you get the more solid your brand will be. Events help you do that, so start planning!

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To know more about how Hubilo can help simplify your planning process, click here.