Events are an important part of your brand identity, and they help drive customers through your doors. In the retail industry alone, more than one third of companies host events in-store, ranging from courses to exclusive sales previews, and an additional 19% plan to start doing so in the next three years.
Why do events matter to your brand?
- Events build trust.
91% of consumers have more positive feelings about brands after attending in-person events or experiences. But trust starts well before your customers ever walk through your door — or into your event.
- Events are an opportunity to engage with your customers.
85% of consumers are likely to purchase from a brand after participating in its events and experiences.
Brands that have physical locations invest significantly in making sure their hours, phone numbers, and driving directions are accurate across the web. But managing the facts about your events online (including start and end times, descriptions, photos, and more) presents a significant challenge — especially because events are ephemeral. Many brands find it so hard that they choose not to promote their events online at all.
But if customers miss an opportunity to learn about your event online, they're probably going to stay home. If they see different hours on Facebook than on Eventbrite, you risk eroding their trust. With the right strategy, though, it is possible to prevent these negative experiences, and promote your events in a scalable way.
Here are a few tips to help you power successful local events:
- Empower local managers and teams.
Give your local managers the opportunity to identify events they'd like to highlight, or tailor your brand's national events to their local markets. Encourage your local teams to include relevant imagery, and to update event descriptions with a few personal touches — like parking information, for example — that would be helpful to their attendees.
- Create repeatable processes.
Local teams should always know what's needed or expected when they decide to create or update an event for their location. Provide standard forms or checklists that provide all the fields they'll need to submit (e.g., event titles, times, details, photos, and more) so that corporate can easily create the event pages, or list to event sites, without having to go back and forth about missing details.
- Automate, automate, automate.
Identify a solution that can help you build out a workflow for event creation and approval, and that enables you to promote your events across the many channels customers use to find out about events (like Facebook, Eventbrite, local community boards, and more). A platform like this will save both your local and corporate teams the trouble of having to manually create these personalized listings — so they can focus their time and energy on hosting a great event!
