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