Singapore has one of the largest event management industries in the world. The country’s reputation as the top convention city and top international meeting hub positions it as the preferred destination for exhibition, meetings, conferences and other events. The recent introduction of Integrated Resorts will boost the country’s reputation as an ideal destination for organisations and companies that want to hold conferences.
According to a recent study, the media and entertainment sector in Singapore has grown by more than 150% from 2010 to 2016. It contributes to more than S$33.1 billion revenue to the economy and more than 76, 400 people work in the industry. One of the most sort-after services in this industry is event entertainment services.
Event management is a massive industry in Singapore and it is rapidly growing in step with the city’s position as a business city in the world. The government’s vision is to expand its entertainment, arts and sports sectors, and appropriate infrastructure developments, the city’s event management industry will certainly become a larger part of its economy. But how do you make your business stand out from others as the ideal event organiser in Singapore?
Starting Steps Before You Execute
Here are a few marketing tips to help you:
Step 1: Define your target audience.
Who will be attending your event? This is the first and most critical step. In order to properly market your event, you need to have a clear idea of who you are talking to and what they need. This step will help you decide on the type of content you’ll need to create for marketing purposes. If you’re not sure who your target audience is, ask friends or family members who know them well.
Deciding on your target audience is a lot like deciding what kind of products you’ll need to sell. For example, if you’re throwing a corporate event, you’ll want to target corporate executives. If you’re throwing a wedding, you’ll want to focus on bride and grooms-to-be. When it comes to marketing your event, be sure to define your target audience clearly so that you don’t end up with all sorts of content that doesn’t match your intended audience. Ask yourself the following questions:
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- Who are my target audience?
- What do I want my attendees to know or do before, during, and after my event?
- How do I want my attendees to act?
- What will they say about my event?
The answers to these questions will help you determine your target audience. Don’t worry too much about who you are talking to now; instead, think about what they need. In addition to helping you plan your event, the answers to these questions will help you find your target audience and determine what content you’ll need to create for marketing.
Step 2: Identify your ideal buyer.
There is more than one type of buyer for your event, but you need to focus on a few different types to be able to target your ads effectively. You have guests who are there for the event and want to learn as much as possible, attendees who are there to make important business connections, and attendees who are there just because they want to have fun. Knowing which type of buyer you are looking for will influence the types of content you’ll produce and the platforms you’ll use for marketing.
For example, if you’re looking for guests, you might want to produce content that draws in educated, high-earning men. If you’re looking for people who want to make business connections, you might want to produce content that connects them to other businesses. If you’re looking for attendees who want to have fun and meet new people, you might want to create content that encourages them to go outside their comfort zone and try new things. The list of potential buyers for your event is endless, so take some time to think of different types of people you might want to target for your event.
Step 3: Determining the price.
The cost of your event is directly linked to the amount of people you have attending. If you want to attract the most attendees, you’ll need to charge a higher price. It’s important to think about how much you’ll need in order to attract the right audience. Be sure to consider the cost of food, beverage, and entertainment as well as whether or not you’ll need some sort of travel stipend. Once you have your budget in mind, it’s easy to determine how much you can spend on marketing without sacrificing the essentials.
Step 4: Create a buyer persona.
The process of creating buyer personas is a lot like the process of defining your audience. Instead of just taking a quick glance at the world around you, you’ll want to dive deep and create detailed profiles of your ideal buyers. Creating a buyer persona will help you identify what they need and want from your event. It’ll also help you determine how you can appeal to them and make them a part of your marketing mix. Without a buyer persona, you’ll have a hard time marketing to the right audience.
A buyer persona is a group of individuals with shared interests and characteristics who will be interested in your product or service. When you create buyer personas, you examine the decision-making process of your target audience and map out what they’ll need in order to make a purchase. Examples of buyer personas are:
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- The business executive who needs a vacation but doesn’t want to spend the whole week camping
- The millennial couple who want to celebrate their engagement with a luxury honeymoon but can’t afford a huge wedding cake
- The parent whose children are about to head off to university and are looking for ways to have a long break while still feeling connected
- The 20-something who wants to build their personal brand and establish their independence by working at an established company
Use the questions below to help you create more detailed and accurate buyer personas. You can also use this opportunity to map out what you’ll need in order to market and sell your event.
Where are they located?
Think about where your target audience is located and what surrounding areas you need to consider. If you’re unsure where they are located, use Google Maps to find their address. Don’t forget about international attendees as well since the world is a lot closer than you think. You can use the information you gather here to determine what platforms to use for marketing and where you’ll need to target your ads.
What are their interests?
Interests are a good starting point for defining your target audience. If you can’t think of any interests that your target audience might have in common, try creating a list of interests and then selecting the top three. For example, if you’re throwing a corporate event, you might want to target executives who like to travel or adventure or who love to eat out. If you’re throwing a wedding, you might want to target couples who like to cook or entertain guests.
Having interests in common is important because it will give you something to work with when creating buyer personas. You can use these common interests to determine the tone of your content and the types of ads you’ll need to run. For example, if you know that your target audience has an interest in travel, you might want to create content that encourages them to travel or do business abroad. If you decide that your event will be a celebration of culture, you might want to create content that highlights your culture or the culture of the area you’re in.
What are their motivations?
Your target audience’s motivations are the reasons why they’re at your event. When you think about marketing your event, you’ll want to consider what drives your target audience to want to try your product or service. For example, if you’re throwing a corporate event and your target audience is there to make business connections, you might want to create content that encourages them to do so. If your target audience is there to have fun, you might want to create content that highlights this aspect of your event.
Informative Brochures
A well designed brochure will help you to build your reputation as an event organiser. Potential customers in Singapore will make judgments about your business based on how you’ve designed your brochure; therefore, make sure that it is professionally designed.
Your brochure should contain all the information in your business card and allow you to expand on it, especially by adding photos of successful events you’ve organised. Don’t forget to add a photo of yourself.
Increase your chances of success by ensuring that your company brochure matches your type of business. Make sure that the brochure looks professional; however, if you are marketing your business to a budget-conscious group, a flashy brochure can send the wrong message. Just like business cards, make sure that you leave your brochures with photographers, caterers and other vendors you’ve worked with.
Connect With Corporate Companies
Government incentives such as tax rebates and favourable business environment have led to an increase in the number of foreign companies that are setting up offices and warehouses in the country. Most of these businesses hold outreach and in-house events on a monthly basis and require entertainment services to entertain their guests and employees. Networking and pitching your services to these corporate companies will help you to get more contracts and compete with other providers.
Customer Service Management
If you want to maintain high customer satisfaction rates and keep them coming back, you need to look out for new ideas on how to improve the service you offer. Here are a few points that you need to consider:
- Take a course on event management
- Talk to an industry consultant
- Join trade organisations
- Attend arts-related functions
- Subscribe to professional newsletters
Direct Mailing Campaigns
You can distribute your brochure through direct mail. If you choose this option, make sure that you check your mailing list well. Although word of mouth is one of the most effective methods of advertising, mailing list can help you to deliver results.
Referrals/Networking
As an event planner, you must be social by nature. It is no wonder most of them find networking as the most powerful marketing tactic. It involves nurturing and developing relationships with friends, family, and businesspeople who can refer you business. It can be as easy as a mutual referral like a planner referring a wedding client to a hotel and the hotel referring a party customer to a planner. Find reliable and reputable partners that reciprocate the gesture. Regularly reach out to existing and former clients and inquire from them if they know anybody who could be in need of your services.
Email Marketing
Emails can be used in three different ways. First, emailing former and existing customers to check whether they or their associates require event planning services. Secondly, you can build a list through the website (using inducements like free e-newsletters) and using information gathered at trade shows and other fora then periodically emailing these contacts with useful events related information. Third, involves using email contacts to link up with prospects and referral partners to share expertise and exchange leads back and forth across community members.
Facebook Marketing
For Facebook marketing, you will first need to create a Facebook page for your event organising business, but only use it to promote your business. When posting on your Facebook page, make sure that you include some fun tidbits about what you’ve learned about a new business event venue in Singapore. Check out Facebook pages of other event organising businesses and learn how there are using the social media platform to their advantage.
It requires a well-crafted Facebook page and building a good number of fan page “likes.” Develop more likes by asking acquaintances to like your page, including links to your Facebook page on your website page, newsletters, and email footers. You will also need to make regular posts to develop your Edgerank. The posts should include videos and photos. The process can also be automated using specific software.
Twitter Engagement
Twitter allows you to tweet quick messages to those who have subscribed to your twitter handle to remind them about your event marketing business. For example, “Zoe Toy has just confirmed his attendance at Stones Concert! Get your ticket now!” This message not only promotes your business but also offers benefit to the reader.
For any event company marketing technique to be useful, it must be employed consistently and as recommended. As a rule of thumb, any event marketer should understand that nothing can market his business as much as the quality and reliability of his services. Leaving a memorable impression on customers and guests will surely keep you ahead of the rest.
source: https://www.foleon.com/topics/19-types-of-marketing-collateral-you-need-now
Build A Great Website
Having an awesome website designed and built for you helps you broadcast your experience and extensive portfolio easily to clients locally and abroad. Let them know about the various services and value add-ons you provide that can create a bang for the client’s press conference, showcase, roadshow, conference or exhibition.
Make Some Noise When You Hold An Event
Whenever you are organising an event for a client. Make sure your name is displayed and passed around surreptitiously so that people know you did a kick-ass job (without usurping the limelight from your client’s event).
Use Printed Materials and Outdoor Signage
Printed materials and outdoor signage will complement your digital marketing campaigns by helping you connect with customers at a deeper and more personal level. Make sure that the design of the materials is professional and the information printed on them is accurate. Marketing materials such as flyers and brochures can be distributed to potential customers at trade fairs and conferences.
It is not easy to build a service-oriented enterprise like an event planning company in Singapore. This is so, as you mostly market and sell yourself and your capacity to do what you say you can do.
Why Not Use The Services Of A Professional Digital Marketing Agency?
You need to be actively involved in online marketing to reach out to millions of Singaporeans who use mobile devices and computers to access the internet. Hire a professional SEO and SEM service provider that has a proven track record to help you plan, execute, and monitor your online marketing campaigns.
MediaOne is a top rated company that helps businesses that offer event entertainment services to market their services online in Singapore. Here is a sample of the SEO service we rendered an events organiser in Singapore:
Whereas this event organising agency’s competitors were dumping tens of thousands of dollars – this firm had loads of FREE leads gushing in to support their multi-million, multi-divisional events business.
Find out how we did it! Call us at (65) 6789 9852 to learn about our search engine marketing and optimisation services.
Well, the above strategies will help you market your company events, but to reach out to the largest audience possible, you should consider focusing more on social media and email.
There are approximately 4.55 billion active social media users across the globe. Marketing the event via this platform will help you connect with more people without spending a fortune. Use the following tips to achieve that goal.
Hire Influencers
Obviously, you want the event participants to be people who are genuinely interested in what your brand offers. Hire influencers whose followers are inclined to your niche to help pass word about the event.
Influencer marketing has been proven to be one of the best ways to vent into new markets and build brand credibility on social media platforms. Request them to promote the event by posting the banner and writing posts on their profile.
Complement the event banner with a co-branded video to connect with an even larger audience. The two should be posted organically on multiple networks. Besides relevance, hire an influencer based in the region you expect to hold the event unless it’s an online event that is not geo-specific.
Every brand is competing for attention, and it gets murky if you don’t have a plan to promote your event well. Get more views by investing in paid social ads. Before running the campaign, decide the average return on investment per participant who signs up and their location to avoid spending money displaying ads to an uninterested crowd.
Use retargeting pixels to channel your ads in the right direction and do regular split-test to ensure you are headed in the right direction. For that, you will need to run at least three ad campaigns concurrently to get enough data for analysis.
If you are unsure how to go about the process, we recommend using a professional PPC service.
Unknown to most people, hashtags are still effective in helping companies expand their reach on social media. You stand to get twice as much engagement as you would if you just posted the event banner without them.
Most of the social media platforms have analytics pages that you can use to benchmark the effectiveness of a particular hashtag in creating a buzz around your event. We recommend having at least three hashtags covering the event, topic, and targeted audience.
Doing so will ensure that the posts are displayed mainly to people interested in the theme/topic of the event and part of the target user persona.
Personalise the Posts
Posting event banners on social media is good but won’t get the job done if the message in the banner is not personal. Create an emotional bond with the target audience by spicing up the banner or promotion with a personal message. Show them that the event will offer value or answer questions that they may have regarding your services, products, or the brand in general.
Leverage LinkedIn and Facebook Groups
Targeted social media ads will enable you to market the event to the right group. You stand to get even better results if you post on Facebook and LinkedIn groups related to your niche. Engage with them by answering questions that they may have regarding the event to show that your brand is a thought leader in the industry.
However, be vigilant not to go overboard with the promotion. Instead of merely encouraging the group members to attend the event, highlight the core reasons or benefits of the event subtly. Be a professional by genuinely expressing your desire to help them by asking for feedback and genuinely contributing to any discussion regarding the event theme/topic.
Before launching an event marketing campaign on social media, it’s imperative to have a posting calendar. This calendar should indicate the format of the posts you intend to create before, during, and even after the event to keep the excitement and buzz. You don’t want the audience to forget about your brand after the event, do you?
The post types should include the speaker updates, partnership & sponsorship banners, agenda, highlight video, schedule updates, giveaway contests, and much more. The idea is to give the audience all the information before the big day.
Create 360 degrees integrated social media strategy to post the information on all the relevant platforms. The posts should appear at different times of the day to be displayed to as many people as possible.
It’s of paramount importance to choose platforms that match the theme of your event’s theme and your brand for you to achieve the expected results. Not all platforms may be ideal for the event. Some are best used to spark a discussion, while others deliver high engagement levels.
Below is a comprehensive overview to help you decide which platform(s) to use to promote your upcoming event.
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LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a social media platform packed with professionals looking for business networking opportunities. Therefore, it’s ideal for promoting corporate events that touch on industry trends and other related facets of your business.
Concisely, if you are to hold an online event for industry leaders who have technical and business background, LinkedIn will get the job done. The event will help you establish an audience of professionals, business executives, and decision-makers.
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Instagram
Instagram is a visual social media platform that majors on videos, photos, and graphics. It’s perfect for creating a buzz around an upcoming promotional event. Help the audience recall similar past events and build awareness by posting quality photos of previous events. After that, post the new event banner and consider collaborating with several influencers to get even better results.
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Facebook
Facebook is undoubtedly the largest and most popular social media platform today. Theoretically, every target customer has an account here, and even if they don’t use it actively, they login once or twice per week.
One of the benefits of promoting an event on this platform is that you can do so with great precision by customising the campaign settings and paid advertisements. There is no type of event that you cannot run on Facebook.
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Snapchat
If your ideal audience is young adults and teenagers, Snapchat is the perfect social media platform for you. Unlike the other four platforms discussed, Snapchat has a highly engaged and substantial user base in size.
You need quality content to succeed in promoting your event here. Use Snapchat’s geo-filter feature to target users in specific locations and particular demographic groups.
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Twitter
Twitter is a unique platform that allows for rapid conversations. Compared to other platforms such as Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook, it has fewer active users, but its audience is highly engaged and passionate.
Try different post formats and monitor the results to know which format you should stick to for your event to gain traction here. If you’re lucky, it may trend or be picked by a celebrity with many followers, thereby resulting in massive organic traffic to the event page.
The five platforms have immense potential for promoting your event to the target audience. Compare and contrast the pros and cons, features, and audience to find one or two that’s ideal.
How to Market Company Event Via Email
Email is another great way of getting people to know about your upcoming event and attend. Here are tips on how to market company event via email.
Optimise the Email for Mobile
A large number of emails are read via mobile devices. Ensure that the email copy is optimised for mobile to pass the intended message to the target event attendees effectively. Run tests before sending the email to ensure that the content looks great on multiple devices.
Unlike before, there is no shortage of responsive email templates that you can use for this purpose- find one that suits your event.
CTAs Should be Bold and Clear
Like the conventional CTAs on your website, the call-to-action buttons in an event invitation email should pop. Before, you would get away with using a hyperlink instead of a button, but with most users spending 11 seconds to skim emails, you cannot afford to make that mistake.
Create buttons with bold and attention-grabbing colours to motivate the recipient to click to learn more about the event. This may sound cliques, but the CTA should not be more than three words.
Spice Up Content with GIFs and Interactive Content
A standard email won’t get the job done, bearing in mind you only have 11 seconds to deliver the message. Be creative by spicing up the email body with interactive content such as GIFs, videos, and high-quality graphics.
Research shows GIFs increase the click-through rate by 26%, while videos achieve a 22% click-through rate. You don’t have to spend hours creating a video for the event campaign. Save time by grabbing snippets of the last similar event and using GIPHY or any other online tool to create a custom GIF.
Create Interest by Organising an Event Launch
Event launches are similar to product launches in that they generate interest before the official big day. Event launches entail sending informational emails to the target audience informing them of the upcoming event and when they should expect more details about it.
A handful of emails are enough to generate the desired interest and invite the right audience to join the event. Get creative by including media and promotional content to create hype.
If it’s a paid event, be sure to include a CTA and highlight the successes of the previous events. Give discounts to people who join early and create an urgency to encourage more people to join soon after they receive the email.
Use Vibrant Content to Encourage People to Share Your Event
Word of mouth is a powerful way of spreading information about an event, especially on social media. One sure way of encouraging people to promote your event is by sharing vibrant content. For example, send emails encouraging the subscribers to invite other people to create more awareness. Make it easy for them to share to event details by including social media buttons in the email.
The email body should have vibrant colours that evoke positive emotions and a welcoming language that encourages the recipients to subscribe and share.
Highlight The Important Details as to the Big Day Nears
Promoting an event via this channel involves sending two emails. The first email is to attendees who have already purchased the tickets and require specific event details such as the date, speakers, and venue. The second email is to potential attendees who are yet to buy the ticket and need more details, such as the registration process and pricing.
Please note some campaigns may entail more than two emails, but these two will work for most online events.
Ensure that the details in the email are accurate and compelling enough, especially the email sent to people who have yet to purchase the ticket. Your goal when creating the content is to convince them that the event is worth attending.
People Should Able to Ask Questions Easily
No matter how thorough your email copy is, rest assured that you will get questions from the audience. Some will need clarification about the topic and others the pricing and discounts available. Hence, make it easy for them to ask these questions by providing your contact information and a brief FAQ.
In addition, encourage the people to reply to the email with any questions regarding the event. Go the extra mile to post on social media requesting people to submit questions. Be sure to respond to the questions promptly.
Send a Reminder Email
As the big day approaches, send a reminder email to people who subscribed and those who are set to sign up. Include a bold CTA that creates a sense of urgency to get last-minute registrations. Remind the people who have already subscribed and purchased tickets of the event date and venue to reduce the number of refund requests after the event.
