Event marketing refers to the activity of using an event to market your product or services (basically your company).
Alternatively, it can also be said that event marketing is the strategy to promote events. Either way, the idea is to use events for marketing.
Let us dive into understanding what is event marketing all about and the benefits of marketing your event.
1. What is Event Marketing and why do Companies Use Event Marketing?
Event marketing is usually huge and done on a big scale, meaning that these gigs are actually assigned a good 30-40% of the marketing budgets, they are a very effective medium of marketing.
The most important aspect of marketing using events is the whole face-to-face interaction with the customers.
And if your product is tangible, it adds to a second added advantage of providing the customer with the exact look and feel of the product.

But after the pandemic, there has been a huge shift towards online events, and now for products or services that are intangible, the preferred source is online events; as these can be conducted in the exact same manner and can be used to get an equal type of engagement as you get in offline events.
Event marketing has been seen to somewhat fall close to websites in the means of marketing, due to the effectiveness and conversion rate.
To list down reasons why event marketing is a great strategy we can say that it helps in building very positive and visible brand awareness by increasing customer engagement.
It also helps in educating the prospects and potential customers, generating leads, and upselling customers. Let us understand more about event marketing below.
2. Developing Event Marketing Strategy
2.1. Set Goals for the Event
First, do an analysis of what has to be marketed by the company through the upcoming event, or if the event has to be marketed then what are the goals that have to be achieved via this event.

There can be different types of goals that companies might want to achieve for a new company and the goal would be to create brand awareness, for a company launching a new product, the goal would be to get conversions.
When you are setting a goal also keep in mind that if there have been any events in the past, consider the conclusions of that to lay out tasks for the next one.
2.2. Create an Engaging Environment
The whole motto of an event is to provide experience. When you are planning any event make sure to include activities or formats in the event that will promote engagement.
The interaction and the face-to-face marketing will accentuate the whole marketing to another level.

Try to create spaces where people can solve queries, build a complete understanding of your product or service, and if possible then try to provide them a working model of the same for the maximum long-lasting impact.
2.3. Incorporate Online Viewing
Although providing experience offline is not really comparable to any other sort of marketing.
But what we need to consider now is that online streaming of the live event is almost equivalent because there will be a lot of people who might not be able to attend the event offline, but would anyway like to be a part of it.

Streaming life makes them believe that they are a part of it in real-time. This way your event caters to a lot more people, and impact therefore is much more.
2.4. Promote the Event
When everything is completely set up and planned and it is time for execution, then it is time to make sure that you have the maximum attendance for the event.
This can be done by promoting your event to the maximum. Usually, social media is the best way to achieve the same.

You can use social media handles to promote your events, provide detailed itineraries, and give snapshots of what will be happening.
Tell people how will they benefit from the same. Also provide them with complete details of how to enter, register, or be a part of the event online.
2.5. Measure Event Success
Always measure how successful your event was, this will help you to calculate your return on investment for this marketing strategy, which will also help you to make the decision for your next events.
Also see what is the difference in your social media handles, and how many followers or subscribers have increased.

Follow the same for your website and sales metrics so you have a complete understanding of what this event provided to your business, and how helpful was it.
3. Benefits of Event Marketing
Event marketing is one of the best ways to increase your brand awareness, it is like a window that helps you reach your customers directly.
You can talk about your brand, your story, your products, and their applications. You can spread awareness, and tell about previous customers and their reviews.
Basically, you can give them the entire details about the company and yourself in a very effective face-to-face format. They also allow you to build good partnerships, which are strong and reliable.

This is because when people are coming down to attend your event, they get updated about your business in a very transparent manner and they can get an understanding of how good the backings are.
This is one place where all questions and queries are also answered and a very good platform for stakeholders and partnerships to start and bloom.
Due to all this interaction and engagement, the most direct outcome is lead generation.
4. End Note
People walk down for all sorts of queries even if they are slightly aware or they are just fascinated about your product.
This bulk database helps companies to build solid leads. Thus, event marketing also lays a very good ground for cross-promotions, which in turn generates more customers.