Event Management
August 3, 2016 • by Sean Burke
4 Ways To Use Influencer Marketing For Your Event
You’ve reached out to event blogs to create listings for your event, you’ve done our checklist and even done some Google AdWords and retargeting and you’ve totally got the social media marketing thing down. What do you do? Well, you need to reach more people. It’s a law of averages: the more people who know about your event, the more tickets you’re likely to sell. While skywriting may be an interesting way to capture attention, and potentially some viral-ity, just blanket targeting anyone isn’t the best way.
Loosely defined, influencer marketing is using a single person in an industry to promote something through word-of-mouth marketing. An influencer’s relationship to their audience allows them to promote something authentically and produce a much higher conversion rate than traditional marketing. Additionally, it cuts on time and cost to you as it only requires reaching out to a small number of people who can, in turn, reach a much wider audience.
So you need a way to target people specifically interested in beauty products, locally made products, and/or all natural products and you need it to reach a lot of people. And quickly.
This is where influencer marketing comes in. “Sounds great!” I can already hear all of you saying. “But how does it work for events?” Well, there are multiple ways you can have it work for you and your next event:-
Look to the talent and entertainment that you’ve hired for the event. Many of them have likely already have an audience on social media and you know if people like them enough to follow them on social media, they would be interested enough to purchase tickets to something that your entertainers will be at. Reach out to them and discuss them talking about and promoting your event. They’ll be there and it is just as good for them to have a full event as it is for you!
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Reach out to influencers that are in the same industry. Look within your industry to people who have large audiences on social media platforms. They may not be attending your event but likely they will be interested in it. Just, reach out to them email or even via social media and provide a bit of background on you, your event and what you are looking for.
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Choose your influencers wisely based on their industry.
The biggest and most important thing with influencer marketing is choosing your influencers. This can boost sales immensely or it can make your event look inauthentic and lazy. The more closely aligned your event theme and the industry for your key influencer, the better your ROI. I’m going to repeat that last part for the people in the back because it bears repeating: the more closely aligned your event theme and the industry for your key influencer, the better your ROI. There are thousands of influencers on social media, make sure that the people you are reaching out to fit within your event and industry. If you’re throwing that beauty product launch, don’t reach out to influencers in the music industry or in the video game industry. Focus on influencers in the beauty industry (makes sense, right?). But you can drill down even further. A quick Google search found a ton of results for beauty bloggers and beauty influencers who deal specifically with all natural products. Remember, the more closely aligned your event industry and your influencers industry, the more receptive and interested their audience will be.
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Choose your influencers based on your size
You may get super excited about using influencers and immediately want to rush out and email PewDiePie about promoting your next Video Game Seminar but hold up again. Yes you’ve definitely targeted and found someone specific to your industry and you may be totally willing to offer Pewd’s a ticket for free but be aware of your size and be aware of their size. (For those not aware, PewDiePie is an active gamer who has a YouTube channel of him playing and talking video games with 47 million subscribers. Yes. Million.)If you are a small event be realistic with your strategy and the influencers you are reaching out to. Yeah, using someone with 47 million subscribers would be awesome but the chances are slim to none (not to mention, if you were somehow able to secure an influencer with this many followers and fans, are you capable of meeting the demand and size requirements that this would entail?). Reach out to influencers who are around the same size as you are. As a rule of thumb, look at influencers that are between 5-10x the size you are in terms of audience size and followers. If you go too small, they will not be able to really offer you much of a boost in reach but if you go too large, you risk being dismissed or potentially over run with ticket sales you can’t handle (sounds awesome in theory but oh no, no it’s not. Trust us.)
As previously mentioned, your influencers are putting in their own time and effort to promote your event so don’t expect them to do so for free. Some require monetary retribution and some are more flexible as to repayment. “That sounds expensive and time consuming!” Well, yes and no. Yes, it can be expensive if you are attempting to secure an influencer that has a huge reach and you are a small event. This is one of the reasons why you should keep your influencer marketing to scale. But the best way to repay your influencer is by offering free admission to your event. If you are targeting influencers in the industry your event is in, you already know they’d be interested in what you’ve got going on. You’re not out any additional expense and you are able to encourage them to tweet and post photos of themselves at the event. Nothing makes people buy tickets to next year’s event faster than a bad case of FOMO this year.
- Compensate your influencers
This is perhaps the hardest part of all of these: trust your influencers. If you’ve done your research and selected people you know will be an asset to your event, then trust them to do what you’re hiring them. This is what they do. Giving your influencer points that you’d love them to focus on or suggestions is great. This let’s them know what about your upcoming event you are looking to push people towards (your make-over area using professional artists? Locally sourced products? Cheap food trucks all around?) but do not write out what you want them to say. The most important thing about influencer marketing, the thing that makes it work is that an audience trusts the influencer. If you tell them exactly what to say it comes off as inauthentic. This hurts the influencers relationship with their audience and makes people think negatively about you and your event. So hire them, give suggestions and focus points, examples and ideas but at the end of the day, trust them to do what you are hiring them to do.
- Trust your influencers
Influencer marketing is a fantastic way to reach new audiences and gain exposure in shoulder niche industries. By implementing and using targeted people, your event can increase attendee’s and ticket sales exponentially. So go forth and influence new audiences.
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