Corporate events provide you with an opportunity to promote your company. They can be held strictly for your own team, but can also be used to raise your profile with vendors, partners, and suppliers. Whether it is for internal purposes or a way to promote goodwill in your industry or within your SOI, promoting your corporate event takes some careful thought. Here are eight ideas to help promote your corporate event.
1.Social Media
Social media is free, and if you are lucky, provides a built-in audience. You can quickly announce your event without much effort and go across many channels including Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. You not only can make an initial announcement but add exciting details leading up to the event, such as prizes you might acquire, elements of entertainment you are introducing or keynote speakers. You can also create a hashtag for your event that can be used by other event participants to share and post more information. This can generate a hashtag trend for further free exposure. This also works well post-event as people can use your hashtag when posting images of them attending the event. If the event is of special interest you might even have some attendees broadcasting live from the event. All of these things help you get more mileage from the event before, during and after it takes place. You can also take advantage of other channels and platforms such as YouTube by recording key moments of the event and posting a video so people can watch it if they did not attend or if they want to share their experience with others. When using social media, always be prepared to answer any questions or feedback your posts generate.
2.Extraordinary Invitations
Although corporate events tend to be announced within the company, it is always good to take the time to send out a special invitation to all those who are expected to attend. An e-vite is an easy way to reach people whether it is staff, your SOI, suppliers or customers. Make sure you include as much detail as you can, or set up a landing page on your website with all the details. You should send an invitation out as soon as you have the date and venue solidified and then you can send a reminder a little closer to the event and even the day before or day of to keep people interested. This is ideal for situations where you require registration or RSVP, as you can link directly to the registration page, or just add an auto response option with a yes, no or maybe answer.
You might choose to send an invitation via email that includes a video invitation from someone important in your organization or a surprise guest speaking at the event. If you have become pretty good at throwing these events on an annual basis, send an email with highlights from the past events to remind them of what they might miss if they don’t attend. Of course, you can also choose not to take the e-vite route and instead go more old school with a quaint handwritten invite if that suits your theme or purpose.
3.Use SEO
This would only work for large events where you want to generate more guests. You can use industry keywords to attract people to your website and pages where you are promoting the event. A good idea is to create some blog posts and landing pages that speak about the event, what people can expect there, profiles of participants, if there will be any keynote speakers, etc. This will take time, so as soon as you have information you can share, you need to get it posted and continue to post at least once a week with more info so that search engines can index your pages.
4. Add a Charitable Element
Partnering with a Non-Profit is an excellent way to promote your event. It generates positive PR and promotes your goodwill efforts in the community. It can attract existing customers as well as new ones. Finding an organization that aligns with your mission statement, products and services is always advisable. However, if your business is more unique, you can go for something generic such as helping the homeless or food drives. But you can get creative and consider what you do and what would work best. This can include doing a charity walk if you are an athletic store, physio company or health and wellness company, or helping to build homes if you are in the home building or renovation industry. Expand the charitable aspect to allow those in the community to get involved so it is not restricted to those attending the event. Besides being good karma, this also will get more shares, likes and comments on your social media pages.
5. Be Selective with your Guests
It is always important to ensure the people attending and participating in your event fit in with your event objectives. You have to ensure for example that specialists and speakers you invite will meet the expectations of your employees and other guests. Therefore, you should define your objectives first in order to make the right choices to impress those you invite. An effective event should influence and take advantage of networking with the perfect mix of guests and participants.
6. Be Innovative with your Setting
Even a standard budget can make way for innovative ideas that will allow your event to stand out. You can find ways to introduce special elements whether it is inventive décor, inspirational music, an unexpected element that entertains or interesting use of light. Each aspect of your event should tie into your theme and objectives, so everything makes perfect sense. Being clever with the details allows people to look deeper at what is happening and raise interest in what you are trying to achieve. If you do not have the budget to book your event at a more expensive or unusual venue, use your venue as the backdrop for something special. Look at prop rentals and technology available to transform your venue into a different world that will stay with people for years to come.
7. Add Unique Elements
Look for ways to create a truly unique experience. Condense and improve the information you are sharing with more guest speakers who participate in ‘lightning lectures.’ These short little bursts of information are short and sweet sharing info people will want to hear, without the monotony of long and boring lectures. You can also look at ways to use more technology with large screen video conferencing, 2D or 3D videos or even holograms.
8. Think Across All Channels
Don’t forget that you have a lot of new ways to keep things interesting. You can provide both live experiences in hand with online interactions. Look for opportunities to include thought leaders from the online community such as bloggers and social media influencers to keep things trendy. They, in turn, will help promote and feature your event with the chance of your event going viral.
These ideas will help define your event and reach your objectives with lasting impact.
If you would like to talk more about a venue that can be the perfect fit for your event, click here to speak to the Chateau Le Jardin team.
