8 Common Event Marketing Challenges & How to Overcome Them

event marketing challenges valoso

Finding yourself in an event marketing rut? You’re not alone. Most businesses and event planners experience event marketing challenges that they simply do not know how to overcome. These event marketing obstacles can occur once or they can be recurring.

Either way, experiential marketing is worth every effort to overcome and move forward. If you find yourself facing any of the following challenges, keep reading and don’t forget to share your thoughts in the comment section!

1. Low Budget

Low budget is perhaps one of the most disconcerting event marketing challenges. Without a sizable budget, how can you participate in event marketing? The key is to work with what you have.

Some sort of event marketing, even if it’s not big and flashy, is better than none. And keep in mind, most event marketing is organic. Paid advertising is certainly effective, but if your event intrigues your target audience, they will naturally want to attend and share with others.

When considering your budget for an event, always consider your ROI. If you plan to generate revenue from your event, then your investment may be worth it.

Participating in event marketing for free is also an option. Your business can host live streams and webinars instead of in-person events and focus on free social media marketing. Whatever you sacrifice in quality, though, be sure to make up in content.

2. Few Registrations

If there is an obvious lack of interest in your event, your market is speaking to you. A dearth of event registrations or ticket sales typically occurs for a few reasons:

  1. Insufficient marketing
  2. Uninteresting or irrelevant event
  3. Poor target marketing

Identify and solve the root of your problem by reevaluating your event marketing strategy with an objective standpoint. Event marketing certainly entails a lot of experimenting to determine what works for your brand. Consider the following tips to increase your number of event registrations:

10 Clever Ways to Increase Event Attendance

3. Poor Brand Loyalty

Securing brand loyalty is among the most frustrating event marketing challenges to overcome. How do you make your audience love you? The best answer is to stand out, which we will discuss further in #7.

To increase brand loyalty, you must be striving continuously to develop a personal relationship with each of your customers and followers. Respond to their comments, messages, and emails quickly, personally, and cheerfully.

Furthermore, brand loyalty comes from making your brand unique from your competitors. What incentives can you offer that will encourage your followers to stick around?

4. Interpreting Analytics

No matter where you stand in your event marketing strategy, analytics are a must to move forward. Event analytics are best collected through social media, search engines, polls and surveys, and other marketing services such as Valoso.

The types of analytics to look for include demographics, CTR, social sharing, conversions, feedback, and more. These analytics can give you the following clues to alter your marketing strategy:

  • Who likes your events
  • Where to promote your events
  • How to promote your events
  • What is going well in your strategy
  • What is failing in your strategy

Interpreting these analytics requires further research, but you can start by reading this chapter about event video analytics.

5. Staying Organized

A lack of organization can cripple an event marketing strategy. Without organization, how will you know the effects, the successes, and the failures of your plan? How will you know what works and what doesn’t?

You may consider hiring an event organizer to tackle your events. Always keep checklists and spreadsheets to keep your events in line. Furthermore, you can make use of automation services that will streamline your event marketing. To stay organized and efficient, follow the tips in this article:

17 Event Planning Tips to Increase Productivity [Infographic]

6. Generating Revenue

Conversions are required to generate revenue. You must convert a viewer to a follower. A follower to an attendee. An attendee to a lead. A lead to a sale. Hopefully, your marketing strategy gets into more specifics as to what your conversion goals are.

If your events do not generate revenue, identify why. Did you sell enough tickets? What efforts did you take to sell at your event? At events, sales are best accomplished with face-to-face interaction. Providing handouts, catering, and other fun bonuses will also open up your customers to what you have to say.

Of course, make sure what you are selling is interesting to your target audience. Host surveys as needed to collect more insight. Remember to experiment with different revenue techniques to find where your audience is most receptive. Some ideas include:

  • Host a free event and generate revenue through sales.
  • Host a paid event and focus more on branding than sales.
  • Sell to your event audience via sales reps and booths.
  • Sell to your event audience via a promotional speaker.
  • Focus on influencer marketing instead of self-promotion.

7. Standing Out

event marketing challenges

You want to stand out, but you also want to offer your customers something relevant. Where do you find the balance? Participating in upcoming trends is one way to balance the scales. Avoid fading trends but instead find fresh, incipient ones to make your business stand out.

For example, live streams have been popular for years. However, live streaming on drones is a fresher trend to make your event stand out. You can discover new trends in your niche by researching on Google, YouTube, and social media. Generally keeping up in the event community is also a great way to find new ideas.

Above all, get your team together to brainstorm some creative ideas on how to create and promote the best event. Nothing beats human collaboration.

8. Last-Minute Changes

Last-minute changes can throw your event plan for a loop. These changes can include drop outs (from featured guests to caterers to speakers), technical difficulties, unexpected venue cancellations, and more.

For instance, if the power goes out at your event, make it a “fun” experience for the guests. Encourage them to have fun without technology and get to know their neighbor despite the power outage. You could also use this time as a break and provide snacks to guests. Pounce on the opportunity to come out as a hero.

No matter what unexpected event marketing challenges you face, they can be overcome with proper preparation. Create a Plan B for every scenario and train yourself to think on the fly as needed.

To prepare for the worst, follow the event disaster preparation tips below:

Event Technology: Disaster Preparation 101

Takeaway

If you experience any of these event marketing challenges, don’t give up. Consider the tips above and take action to improve your marketing campaign and move forward with experiential marketing.

Valoso can help you discover the unprecedented benefits of event marketing. If you need a team to tackle your greatest event marketing challenges, simply fill out the contact form below to get started!

We'd love to hear from you