The process of setting up an event is full of fiddly details, many of which are important for improving visibility and brand awareness. For example, one of the first impressions that your customers and attendees will get of your event is what they will see when they buy tickets. Doubtlessly, you’ve happened across event pages many times in your life when you’ve wanted to attend an important event. Well, these are created through event registration services. If you engage with these effectively, you will integrate excellent brand management into your marketing efforts. Through it, new customers learn about your mission, USP, and become aware of your brand. Therefore, your online event sign-up process needs to bear all this in mind and more. This article will give you some definitive answers to your questions.
Your Event, Your Choice
Like many other aspects of setting up an event, there are no rules cast in stone for event registration. This is your event, and it is personal to you. This means that you are bringing your idea to life, and the personal touches will make it unique. Fortunately, there are many customizable options when it comes to the registration for an event. We believe that the way to make the best impact is to take each decision as it comes and make them all personal.
The first question is of course, what type of event is it? In the context of event registration, this could be likened to music genres. Is the event designed to encourage team-building? Or business development? Or a showcase of entrepreneurial success? Is it rock, jazz, or metal? Knowing the genre determines your registration content, and how you customize it.
An Evolution In The Business?
Virtual registration is the future of event invitations, promotions, and overall branding. The chart below is a great example of the predominant desire to eliminate paperwork as a whole. According to this data, 52% of entrepreneurs wish to eliminate manual data entry altogether.
Because let’s face it. We all depend on virtual mediums nowadays. Yes, paper is great and has its pragmatic uses, but many virtual forms are more user-friendly, convenient, and practical than manual alternatives. There are many reasons why this is the case. Firstly, most people have smartphones – 78.9% of the population, as it happens. Smartphones are more useful for virtual forms because of the many replacements they have for items like diaries and calendars. Customers can use them to remind themselves of upcoming seminars and how to organize their busy lives. Furthermore, virtual mediums can automate many processes for them.
In layman’s terms, it is in your interest as a business owner to make your events easy to sign up for, and to follow.
Virtual mediums provide benefits for organizers too. For instance, when attendees sign up for your event virtually you collect their data, informing demographics. You can learn all about your target audience, refine promotional efforts and over time, keep track of your evolving insights. All within minutes.
Not to mention the addition of apps. Many businesses have them. They have useful mechanics – one of which is the ability to notify your most loyal visitors of your event. Promotional tools such as these are effective, and when you integrate social media marketing into the bargain too, you can create one Hell of an awareness of what’s going down in your world.
You can plan, create and optimize your virtual event through Everytale, which specializes in broadcasting your genius internationally. So if you are looking for a place to do so, check it out and see if it suits your goals.
The Best Platform For The Job
All industry speculation aside, the first step of the process is to pick the best platform for your event registration system. There are a great number of them out there. In fact, there are so many that picking one out and weighing its features against your business goals can seem like a bit of a minefield. Just remember to break it down into a few simple steps and this will provide you with all that you need.
Key Features
Each event registration platform provides fundamental features such as the ability to price your tickets as you see fit, and choose how they are deducted from your subscription fee, but every platform is different to an extent.
So it is a good idea to get a grasp of the popular mechanics and based upon that, pick the platform that best suits your needs. Once again, it comes directly down to your event registration goals.
Reputation
Each and every piece of online events registration software has a reputation and knowing it is essential to your research. But you have to look deeper than the initial Google search. If you go to a platform’s website and look at their testimonials, you will rapidly discover that they are all positive. Great, right? Not exactly, because a website is not likely to share its negative reviews on its home turf. For the objective truth, you have to look at forums, community discussion boards, and the like. You can find these on review aggregator sites such as Sitejabber and GetApp which collate reviews and give the reader an average. That gets you closer to the truth, which will help you to make an informed decision. That’s one of the key tips.
Unique Tools
Question it further. Every platform has key features, but what are its unique tools? The closer you inspect a platform, the more intricate details you will discover, and the right one can provide solutions to pragmatic issues.
Eventbrite, for instance, offers separate packages for different endeavors. They offer a professional package and an essentials package, which lead to different features. It differs from platform to platform, so be thorough in your search.
Cost
Finally, budget requirements. Most platforms operate per number of tickets sold. A registration fee for a $500 ticket sold through Eventbrite, for instance, is $19.09 and a registration fee for a $1,000 ticket is $36.09. Once you select a platform, you can work out the cost of your events registration system as a whole.
Marketing Matter
So, you’ve picked a platform and ran with it. Great. Once all of your customizable elements are taken care of, then what? Well, then comes promotion. Now, no matter whether you are a budding, seasoned or experienced business owner/entrepreneur, it’s possible that you are aware of all of these options already, but it’s always best to have all bases covered for your event. A full-throttle marketing effort is more effective than a half-baked one.
1: PR Campaigns
PR campaigns are the age-old way to spread the news of your event – and of course, one of the key parts of the copy is to plug where to buy tickets. Make sure that your links are clear, engaging, and drive the reader to the heart of the information. The best way to ensure an increase in the online event sign-ups is to make the path to the forms easy for any person browsing the content. And yes, many of these people will arrive as a result of your campaign.
2: SEO & Blogging
That brings us nicely to SEO blogging. Firstly, you will need copy for your PR campaigns anyway, so why not extend that to blogs? Perhaps you don’t have a blog for your business website. In that case, consider getting one, because they are a great way to drive traffic to your website. By extension, they can be used for the same purpose for your events. If you write a series of engaging blogs that are SEO optimized, make sure you plug the event and where to sign up. Even if one extra person signs up, as a result, you will have made gains.
3: Exclusive Offers
If you have loyal customers/partners/clients, consider making them an exclusive offer. But what kind? There are many options and your imagination is the limit. How about a special reserve for them? Or a discounted ticket price? Doing so demonstrates good faith, which in the best case scenario improves your reputation amongst your employees and staff.
Moreover, it is utterly important to offer the event at a discount to your staff. Or some other method of showing them that they are valued, important members of the team. Consistency breeds loyalty and adds to morale.
4: Social Media Marketing
Don’t forget the prevalence of social media channels. It’s likely that you have one or two of these, seeing as how the vast majority of businesses use them today. If so, and they are in persistent use and have a few followers, great. Use them to plug the event. And make sure that the link to the registration pages gets a separate post, if necessary. Even if your social media methods are sparse, you will be surprised at how SM posts increase your visibility.
5: Have a Long Term Strategy
Also, think of the long term. If there is one thing the internet has proven, it is that the promotional efforts put into a single event can show up down the line. All in all, your work now will benefit you later, no matter how successful the current event is.
Everytale has integrated marketing services, and if you want a simple, convenient way to achieve all described above, consider using it to create, promote and optimize your event.
The Verdict
Event registration is one of the keys to promotion. It creates a simple, practical way for your audience to connect with and stay abreast of your event. Not to mention a practical way to sell tickets. More important than all, is the way that it increases visibility. This will lead to an increased brand awareness which will make your company look shiny and productive if nothing else. But what else? What else can be anything? If you do everything in your power to optimize your event strategy, the sky’s the limit.