Events are, in themselves, promotional. Whether marketers are creating their own events or sponsoring pre-existing ones, ultimately events are about getting a brand in front of an audience.
2014 vs. 2015 Offline Marketing Budget Plans Among Client-Side Marketers Worldwide, by Channel (% of respondents)
But as with so many types of marketing, events must also be marketed. Just as an app created for marketing purposes must be marketed to get anyone to download it, and content created for marketing purposes must be marketed for anyone to consume it, if you want to get your brand in front of an audience at an event, first you need to get people to the event.
According to research from Maximillion Events, social media may be one of the best ways to do just that.
Maximillion surveyed event organizers about how they use social media for their jobs, and 75% said it was “very important” to use social for event promotion. Facebook was the most popular channel for doing so, at 78%, followed by Twitter (56%) and LinkedIn (49%).
Event marketers most commonly used social media to increase event awareness, with 58% of respondents choosing that answer. Nearly half used social to increase awareness of their brand more generally, and 20% used it to increase ticket sales for the event.
Social media appears to work well for event promotion: 44% of respondents said it was effective in increasing event awareness. It was less effective as a direct-response channel, with just 10% saying it helped increase ticket sales.
According to 2015 research from Econsultancy, events and conferences are the No. 1 offline marketing tactic client-side marketers are planning to increase budget for this year—for the second year running. It’s also the offline marketing tactic respondents were least likely to say they were decreasing budgets for—again for the second year running. This suggests most marketers are happy with their event efforts. If they’re promoting those events via social, they might be even happier.