Joe Colangelo, Eric Misic, and Emily Larson (McKinley Advisors)
Description
This week we welcome Emily Larson, of McKinley Advisors, to talk through the benefits of having a sound attendee acquisition strategy. By charting a focused course, event organizers can see a stronger than anticipated bounce back for their events.
In this session, we'll uncover:
Steps to evaluate your current marketing strategy
Popular and proven strategic initiatives for growth
The value of focus in today’s marketing environment
Main Takeaways:
Things have really changed over the last couple of years. There is no standard playbook but there are definitely a few things that we’re seeing across the board with all of our events... And that is:
A major shift into digital, so make sure that you are meeting your attendees where they are. People are not in their office like they used to be. They’re traveling more, they’re working from all over the world so you need to make sure that you’re reaching them. Which typically means no more postal -- which shakes the boots of a lot of associations. It’s not converting like they used to anymore so why not take that budget and put it in other places.
Email is still king but there's a shift with the way that people engage with email. So really focusing on how can we be most effective through emails knowing that those metrics we used to look at, like open rate, are not accurate anymore…So you need to make sure that you have tracking on the backend, you’re using an analytics platform.
In today’s world, growing your list and adding new audiences is just as important as getting folks in the door because people are waiting to register.
The Google grants program for nonprofits allows associations to get free money for search advertising. If you’re a 501(c)(3), you can get up to $12,000 of free advertising through Google every month. There are restrictions on what you can use it for but if you’re sharing content related to a conference, you’re allowed to.
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