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There are some new rules to marketing conferences; it entails
committees working side-by-side to promote the educational content!
Education committee – these group of people are working hard on sourcing the best speakers on a topic, the most relevant content and laying it out for an intriguing meeting design.
Marketing committee – these group of people are tasked with developing the conference’s marketing message and executing strategies that will hopefully boost attendance (e-blast, video, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, mobile, apps).
For conferences that are well-attended and have a long life-span after, there’s a successful equation their steering committees have figured out. The education and marketing committee collaborate on driving the reason why attendees want to register.
In terms of marketing and education committees working together, the outcomes include:
- Buy-in from potential attendees- Show them what they’ll learn, introduce them to people they’ll meet and show them again. Demonstrating that there’s value in attending the event will get potential attendees to latch on and register.
- Word-of-mouth - Every conference owner should make sure there are hashtags and a constant wave of interesting content on multiple platforms to ensure the conference’s marketing can go viral. Education and marketing working together will allow the conference to gain it’s own set of cheerleaders early in the marketing stage.
- Increased SEO – a library of blog posts, videos, interviews and more on the website is an easy way to build search engine optimization for the conference. Curating relevant content prior to the conference pushing the website higher in Google’s results and drives traffic prior to the event.
- Longer conference lifetime – it’s no secret that the Millenial generation (and others) want content year-round. Conference in April? The marketing committee should spread session content/wisdom for last year’s speakers and the upcoming year’s speakers to continue selling to attendees all year long. It’s an opportunity to ensure your attendees keep momentum and want to attend year round.
Interested in finding out how to market your conference effectively? We found this post by Jeff Hurt to be very informative, Social media and Events Continue to Grow: 2012 including stats on what marketing platforms are most important to event organizers.
