Isn't it nice to feel a touch of normality and meeting up with people without heavy restrictions? In the UK, the last set of COVID rules are expected to be removed by 19th July. This certainly makes organising and running physical events a lot easier than it has been in the last 18 months.
The events industry as a whole is a huge ally to businesses of all sizes and sorts. There are numerous ways you can boost your sales by organising or participating in a face-to-face event.
Why face-to-face, though? Because we are all a little fatigued from the constant online interaction with family, friends, colleagues and business clients. Although hybrid events will be a permanent part of our future, the ability to meet people and look at products physically still brings excitement to most of us. Especially because we have been prevented from doing so for such a long time.
Here are some great ideas how you can incorporate physical events in your marketing and promotional strategy.
Workshops
Workshops can be applied to almost any type of business. Whether you are a dance teacher or a business consultant, you can create and run a training event or regular classes for your target market. For some people this is the main source of income, while for others it could be a fantastic and very smart additional stream.
Business workshops continue to be in high demand, especially on topics where practical skills are developed. These could be social media, website development, working with advertising platforms. While all these are perfectly fine to be taught online, different types of learners assimilate information in different ways and at different speed. Sometimes human face-to-face interaction in a teaching environment does wonders.
The element of networking and interacting with other like-minded individuals in those workshops is not to be overlooked either.
Speaking from experience, when we ran physical workshops with Teach Me How to Biz in London, we had triple the sign ups than for online events on the same topics.
Workshops are also great for accountants, cleaning businesses, beauticians, crafters, artists, fitness instructors, bakers and the list goes on forever.
Pop-up Shops
Selling products online? Great strategy, especially in our new world, which will never fully return to what it used to be in pre-COVID times.
However, people will always be people and they will always crave face-to-face communication with each other.
Furthermore, we can't escape our human need and desire to use all of our 5 senses. Online shopping is extremely convenient and new technologies make it ever more exciting. Sadly, no technology yet allows us to use our sense of smell or touch while we browse online shops.
Provide a great hybrid experience for your customers by organising pop-shops in different locations. Summer and pre-festive season are fantastic times to do just that. It will have a significant positive impact on your sales and boost your branding image too!
Outdoor Party & Merchandise
Throw a party for your market, they will surely appreciate it! Summertime is great to do something a little out of the ordinary and attract new customers with giving them a fun, memorable experience.
If you want to just boost your branding run a free entry event, where you provide entertainment and give out some merchandise. Sales will come later on in your regular channels.
If you want to make some extra cash, create a ticketed event, while you sell your products or applicable B2C services.
Either way you will be leaving a notable trace in your potential and new customers' memory and even if they didn't buy anything on the day, they will come back later.
Make sure you have plenty of promotional materials and prominent branding displays.
Summer Contests
Who doesn't like a little bit of a competitive spirit? You can organise a variety of contests in parks, shopping malls or other public places to raise awareness of your business and offering.
Of course, if such an activity doesn't quite tie with your brand or nature of business, you can simply appear as a sponsor, instead of organiser.
You can supply part or all of the prizes for the winners of the contest, meet and speak to people who can become your potential customers.
From such an event, you can expect both immediate and future sales.
Charity & Community Wellbeing Activities
What if you organise a local action in support of a charity or simply to better the community? That's a brilliant idea and an excellent branding exercise for absolutely any business.
If you sell products or services during the event you can choose to donate all or part of the profit to the selected charity. Alternatively, you can opt for non-sales activity such as a marathon, local park cleaning up action, baking workshop for the disadvantaged members of the community, hair cut and grooming for the homeless and so on.
The good you do is remembered and rewarded in the future.
Summer Fairs
Summer fairs are extremely popular events and can be a massive source of income if done smart.
As the organiser, you can charge both exhibitors for a stall and the customers who attend. At the same time you have the opportunity to establish your brand as a reliable B2C and B2B provider. That opens up double the avenues for success in the future.
Good summer fairs require quality entertainment, impeccable organisation and a lot of planning. It is a major project, which is best undertaken by experienced events organisers or a professional even production agency.
Conferences & Networking Events
Autumn is the best time to run conferences and physical networking events. People feel more energised after a summer break and they are motivated to fulfil their yearly goals by the end of the fourth quarter.
Everyone is looking for solutions, ideas for the next stage and reliable partners. If you have a B2B model, organising a conference or a networking event for the people in your industry is a fantastic way to increase your revenue and even push your business to the next level.
Those events can include onsite sales, or they could simply promote your brand. That will depend on your current goals and vision for the future.
Planning, organising, selling and managing an event of any scale is tough job. If you are a big company that has its own internal events team it should be fairly easy to pull any one of these ideas. However, if you are smaller business, your best bet would be to find an experienced professional events partner.
As a marketing and business development consultancy firm, we have built connections with some amazing even production contractors in the UK. We will be more than happy to put you through if you are ready to include physical, online or hybrid events in your marketing mix. Just contact us and we'll take it from there.
