Event Branding: Creating a Memorable Experience
Planning an event for a company or organization takes a lot of work, given the vast number of details that must be sorted out. Unfortunately, in the midst of all that logistical planning, it can be easy to lose sight of an equally important aspect of your event: branding. Branding is what ensures that your event lingers in the minds of attendees for a long time to come.
Moreover, good event branding also plays into the core values of your organization, thus moving forward your long-term goals. If that sounds like a difficult balance to achieve, don't worry. This article outlines five easy tips for successful event branding.
Stay Consistent
Brand inconsistency is perhaps the single biggest mistake people make when it comes to event planning. In other words, the branding of the event moves too far away from the brand built over time by your organization. As a refresher, that brand includes a variety of different elements, including:
Logos
Fonts
Tone of voice
Color combinations
Imagery
Persona
Your event branding must remain consistent with the core brand of your organization. Otherwise you will end up sending a mixed message, making it more difficult to build engagement and increase long-term awareness.
Be Creative
Now that you appreciate the importance about maintaining consistency, you can start to get creative. While your event branding needs to remain consistent with your core branding, that doesn't mean that the two have to be exactly the same. Think of your core branding as the main ingredient in your event branding — but not the entire dish.
Remember that, in addition to furthering your organizations key goals, your event branding also has to prove enticing and memorable. Find creative ways to work in elements from your core branding without merely regurgitating them.
Embrace Social Media
In the 21st century, social media represents one of the most important — and effective — ways to brand your upcoming event. Focus especially on creating strong visual content for your social media accounts. Visual content has been well proven to generate more engagement than text content alone.
A well-planned social media campaign should never proceed haphazardly. Instead, you must organize a process mapping sheet, identifying the various stages of the campaign. Common processes include things like announcing performers, promoting early-bird ticket sales, providing information about locations, etc. A successful social media campaign will utilize a variety of social media networks, from blogs, to Facebook, to Twitter, and YouTube.
Coin a Good Hashtag
The beautiful thing about using social media for event branding is that, at a certain point, other people begin to do the work for you. As excitement and awareness of your event increases, more and more people will begin sharing information about it. Yet in order to capitalize on this natural process, you must come up with an effective hashtag.
Ideally, your primary hashtag should simply be the name of the event itself. Simpler is always better here; try to keep it to one or two words if possible. Puns or clever plays on common phrases tend to be memorable. You may also create additional hashtags that emphasize location and other aspects of your event.
Use Promotions to Generate Engagement
Another great event marketing strategy involves using promotions, competitions, and giveaways in order to gain more exposure. Giving people the opportunity to win things like event-related merchandise, VIP tickets, or travel packages will ensure that your event generates more buzz. The higher the stakes of the promotion, the more likely the information will receive the kinds of social media attention that will benefit you the most.
Good branding is an essential part of any event. For more information about how to nail the branding for your next event, contact the marketing experts at Media Hounds.