Social Event Marketing - Green Event Transportation

There's a new trend in the event planning arena.  You might have noticed that more and more event marketers are doing whatever they can to make their trade shows environmentally friendly or "green" if you will.

new study, “The Green Event Imperative” by the Event Marketing Institute, outlines best practices for marketers to make their shows more environmentally friendly and shows that green event marketing is here to stay.

The study finds that investment in green event marketing could double over the next 18 months. The study also found that companies claiming to be active in green initiatives have a significant gap between their participation and their level of commitment.

The push to be 'green' has of course spilled over into every aspect of the event, from the event invitations to the event transportation.

event marketing, event transportation, event planning

Getting A Bigger Budget for Event Marketing

Given the current state of the economy, the near drowning credit industry, and the financial crisis ensuing, you'll probably have to work harder to get funding for your projects in the upcoming year.  Conveniently, I've come across a very informative article to assist you in securing an adequate budget for your event marketing.

1. Prove Your Success
"Looking to get more money for an event program is like asking for more allowance before you've done your chores," says Allison Saget, author of The Event Marketing Handbook: Beyond Logistics & Planning (Kaplan Publishing, 2006). But presenting compelling data that shows an event's return on investment can help you make your argument. Just ask CareerBuilder.com. Last year, the Chicago company worked with Swivel Media to produce a six-month, 43-city mobile marketing tour so successful that the company is not only doing it again this year, but expanding it. Company executives created several different ways to track Web activity that originated from the tour, including taking photos of event attendees at each stop and giving them a code that allowed them to retrieve the photo from the Web site; Careerbuilder.com then tracked how many people entered their code. "Presenting the data was the best way for us to increase our resources and make our case," says Andrea Winitsky, the company's event marketing manager.

2. Tell a Story

event marketing, event planning

Event Marketing With Social Media

You've probably noticed that there's a lot of event marketing taking place on social media sites.  Given the recent surge in popularity of websites like Myspace, Facebook and Twitter, the question of whether or not you should try to market events this way is kind of a no-brainer.

I found a helpful article on the clickz.com website about how to use social media for event marketing purposes:

Events, conferences, and trade shows are an established means to help employees learn from area experts, build personal networks; meet with customers, suppliers, and distributors; generate new business; and see new products. But with the current economic climate, escalating travel costs, and reduced headcount, businesses are cutting back on conference attendance. Event marketers are having a tough time maintaining attendance levels and augmenting revenues. One way they can overcome these challenges is by adding social media to their marketing mix.

Social media is a natural for achieving event marketers' major objectives. It can:

• Build your house file by attracting new prospects, generating leads for later business development, and reactivating former customers.
  
  
• Drive revenues by converting prospects to paying customers, bringing in exhibitors, attracting sponsorships, and creating or cross-selling related products.

When using social media to achieve these goals, consider event marketing's three phases. Here are some recommendations for each aspect of your event:

event marketing

Event Marketing and the Importance of Building Relationships

Here is a useful article with practical advice on how to make the most of a business event. To maximize your Event Marketing potential, you need to create an impression face to face.
Read the full article for more information:

clipped from www.bizcommunity.com Events - building relationships, not just collecting cards In today's highly competitive business environment, companies are aware of the fact that they have to work hard to find new clients, and harder to retain their existing ones. One of the most powerful ways to connect with an increasingly selective consumer audience is to interact with them at events. Nothing can replace engaging with current and potential consumers in person. The need for face-to-face communication remains as strong today as it has ever been. It used to be that you went to events to collect leads. Nowadays it's not about leads and exchanging as many business cards as possible; it is rather about relationship building and experiential marketing, whereby a consumer is immersed directly in a brand experience.

Exhaustive List of Promotion Strategies

A lot of the ways to do event promotion mirror how one would promote a business.

Follow the link below to a very thorough list, albeit in need of formatting, which should provide some new ideas, some oldies but goodies, and at the very least a central repository you can refer to time and time again when looking to promote your next event.

clipped from competitivecreativity.com Ways to promote your business ... A way to attract attention to your business is to choose an advertising or promotional medium that is unusual for your industry. Here are some ideas ... Advertorials, attention getters, balloons, billboards, blog marketing, brochures and pamphlets, bulletin board signs, bumper stickers, bus and taxi ads, bus bench/shelter signs, business breakfasts/lunches, business cards, business networking, buttons, calendars, charitable contributions,

SecondLife and Social Games for Marketing?

Online gaming is HUGE - really huge, and social games are for anyone - not just geeks and teens. SecondLife has MILLIONS of users and is ideally suited for marketing products and services, but there are lots of other opportunities for event marketing with online gaming in particular because demographic information is available as well as communities centered around certain interests.

A podcast with internet gaming expert Roman Nouzareth is available for listening on line - read the full article and listen to the audio podcast to get the full story...

clipped from buzzmarketingfortech.blogspot.com Social Games: Useful for B2B Marketers? It should come as no surprise that the online gaming market is exploding. In fact, last year online gaming attracted 28 percent of the total worldwide online population -- almost 217 million people! Opportunities for product placement as well as experiential branded games are close at hand for us as marketers. Now that games are becoming so prevalent, we’re beginning to see specialized ad networks focused on in-game advertising as an untapped channel. Microsoft and Google have already made acquisitions in the space and start-ups are chomping at the bit.