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Why Event Marketing?
Have you ever wondered why so many of the world’s most influential brands spend their time and budget engaging with their audience through event marketing?
In this article we will explain the 3 key reasons why we believe event marketing is so powerful in 2022.
1. The Power of Interactions
With the rise of technology and social media, digital marketing is a top priority for many businesses. But even in an increasingly digital world, the ability to meet potential customers face-to-face is still extremely valuable for generating leads, increasing sales and improving brand awareness.
At events, brands can demonstrate what their product does, interact with the attendees and have the ability to offer a deeper level of worth to consumers than other content because they combine value with experience. Face-to-face marketing can also provide valuable insights into the needs of your target customers. Listening to their questions, reactions and objections can help to shape your future marketing and sales strategies.
Face-to-face interactions, particularly through taste, smell, sound, or touch, are extremely memorable, and lead to far greater brand recognition. Customers feel more secure when they recognise a brand and are able to speak to someone in person, and this is how long-term customers are formed.
2. Social media engagement and UGC
Another advantage of event marketing is how it can drive engagement online. Data suggests over 90% of event attendees now share some form of the event online, whether through a photo, review, video chat, or social media story. User generated content is extremely powerful, leading to a much greater return on investment than traditional branded marketing.
At Freshers Festival London last year, we received over 200 Instagram story shares, and over 1 million views from user-generated social content. Events are no longer confined to their physical attendees, and now have the power to reach so many more people through online sharing and content.
3. Brand Image and experience
Brand image is one of the most important reasons why a brand will be successful or not, particularly amongst the student audience. Being associated with a fun, exciting, and lively event can help reflect these values onto your brand, a process often known as ‘festivalisation’.
Festivalisation is the notion through which companies and groups try to create a powerful, social, and integrated experience for their customers. In the event industry, this involves creating a fun ‘festival-like’ atmosphere at events in order for customers to have positive feelings about the brands which attend them. This is due to the process of ‘affect transfer’, where a customer will ‘transfer’ the feelings of fun and excitement that they are experiencing at an event towards the brands that are attending it. It’s simple psychology: A customer is happy, a customer sees a brand, a customer relates the feeling of being happy with the brand.
Many brands have created an extremely strong and powerful brand image around the notion of festivalisation, and if you want to improve brand image or experience, event marketing is undeniably the best way to do this.
