Use long tail keywords to promote your events

Did you know that almost half of the world’s population (and over 75% of the population from Europe and North America) has internet access? And that on a daily basis Google and Bing gather more than 5 billion online queries? If so many people use online searches for information (and to actually buy products/services) what can we do to get a slice of this big pie? The short answer would be Search Engine Marketing; SEM has different areas to focus on but today I would like to tell you more about long tail keywords and how they could lift up your business.

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What is Search Engine Marketing? 

SEM is the form of internet marketing that has the purpose of increasing a site’s visibility in search engines results pages.

The two main components of SEM are Search Engine Optimization  and Pay Per Click, both of which I’m sure you have heard of, so I’ll just mention how each work (as a short reminder):

Search Engine Optimization- the process of increasing your site’s visibility in the search engine machines by:

  • Selecting  good keywords and focusing on them
  • Creating good and unique content
  • Creating a good structure for your website
  • Building links (internal and external)
  • Including the selected keywords in your site’s title, pages, articles, Meta Tag Title, meta description etc
  • Providing best possible user experience (speed, cross-device compatibility etc.);
  • and more.

Pay Per Click: or cost-per-click (such as Google AdWords or Bing Ads), paid search advertising where you select the keywords for which you want to be listed (when someone searches for them) and pay when someone clicks your ad. For the search engine to determine which ad appears where the process includes an auction (you select how much you’re willing to pay for every click) and a quality score (how useful is your ad for the user: relevance, landing page etc.).

What are keywords? We use the term keywords for words or phrases that people search for online, through search engines. So what you type in the text box when you use Google, Bing or other search engines falls into this category.

The generic term keywords has 2  categories:

Head (or short tail) keywords:

Keywords that are most frequently searched for (usually the “head” has 1 or 2 words)

and

Long tail keywords:

more specific keyword phrases (usually the long tail phrase has more than 3 words)

But if head keywords have hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of searches each month why would anyone concentrate on anything else, right? Well, here are some advantages of using long-tail keywords, especially if you have a smaller event planning business.

75% of the search queries use long tail keywords 

This means that there are some keywords that can be found in hundreds of thousands of searches each month but most of the searches contain more specific long-tail keywords. So while the main focus is on one-quarter of the pie, there are still 3 quarters left for us to work with. There are tens of variations of a long tail keyword and each of them can bring you tens or hundreds of visitors that are further along in the buying cycle.

Search Engine Marketing is a very competitive field

SEM is a process that takes time and involves a lot of work if you want to make it in the “big league”. If you construct your keyword strategy based on a very popular head keyword you will be in direct competition with all the big event planners all over the world, even if they are not your direct business competitors.

SEO – bigger companies have more resources to invest in their websites and it is easier for them to generate more content (and search engines love sites that have more pages). 

PPC – an important part of PPC is the auction for keywords and a very popular one can become extremely expensive.

If I search for “event planner” there are 28,700,000 relevant results on Google…it is hard to compete with all of them.

Let’s say that you organize leadership conferences and work in the UK. And you want people to find more about what you do, when is your next event and other useful information. If you focus on “event planner” as keywords you will enter a ferocious competition with companies all over the world for a keyword that surely is more relevant for others than for you.

Long tail keywords have a better conversion rate 

Using the same example as above think that someone uses “event planner” for an online search. That person may look for information on how to become an event planner, or he/she may look for someone to plan a wedding in Japan, a business summit in India or an Indie concert in Kansas City.  It’s true, there are tons of searches for “event planner” each month, but this is because “event planner” can mean different things in online search terms. On the other hand, if someone uses  “leadership conference in England” or “leadership summit 2017 Merseyside” for a search he has a real interest in your type of event.

Using long-tail keywords you can focus on what really makes you stand out from the crowd. For example we, at Oveit, know that our feature that allows you to use cashless payments at your events represents our advantage; so we tend to use it more than the classic “online tickets”. Use your strengths when you communicate your message and you will have the perfect match for your customers.

June 8, 2017 event marketing, Events 4 comments

Best practices when advertising your event online

“Online advertising doesn’t have to be a “wild west.” – Benjamin Edelman

Camping

The two cornerstones of an online advertising mix are search ads and display ads. Even if you are promoting your business, a product or an event, these two should always be used together.

Search ads help you find new customers with the aid of search engines. When somebody is searching for an answer or product those displayed at the top of the search engine’s page represent the search ads.

The most popular among search ads is Google Search Network which handles more than 40,000 search queries every second, a total of more than 1.2 trillion web searches every single year.

The most popular among search ads is Google Search Network

When it comes to display ads,  these are the ads which appear alongside the original content on a website, social media channels, youtube, etc.

The leader is Facebook with more than 1.55 BILLION monthly display ads; however the true strength of Facebook’s immense audience stands in the potential granularity with which advertisers can target Facebook’s users.

But which one is best or more appropriate to advertise an event?

Many are arguing one practice against each other, but the truth is that both are good advertising tools and they outshine at their best when used together, since the two have different attributes; Search ads helps you find new customers and Display ads helps new customers find you.

We are going to talk about the most used paid advertising channels which are Google and Facebook and how you can maximize their use  in order to promote your event.

Managing these advertising campaigns is not that easy as it might seem, especially when having to use bidding techniques.

Google Advertising

The advertisement on Google is made through Google AdWords which is divided in two major categories: Google Search Network and Google Display Network.

Google Search Network, as explained above, are the ads which help you find new customers and if used in the right way, your ads will be displayed within the top searches.

One of the major misconceptions is that whomever has the largest advertising budget wins – False!

On top of the money, what Google stands for is delivering the most appropriate content to it’s users. For this to be possible all ads have to pass through a process which is know as ad auction and only the ads with the highest Ad Rank will be placed in the top searches. Yes, a larger advertising budget can help you, especially when bidding for competitive keywords, but another important factor which can help you spend less money is the Quality Score.

AdRank = Maximum Bid * Quality Score

Maximum Bid is the maximum amount of money you are willing to pay for a click.

Quality Score is calculated considering the overall quality of the advertisement and the factors that are constituting the quality score, are:

  • Relevance of each keyword to its ad group
  • The click-through rate
  • Relevance of your ad-text
  • Landing page quality and relevance
  • Your historical AdWords account performance

The one characteristic which “weights” the most from the above mentioned is the click-through rate (CTR). It tells Google how many people saw your ad and actually clicked on it. This allows Google to understand that your ad is relevant and helpful and will increase your quality rank through a high CTR.

Google Display Network

Through Google Display Network you will be able to show your ads on specific targeted sites and to the desired audience, based on your prefered keywords and targeting factors, with the main purpose of helping new customers find you.

The GDN spans over two million websites that reach over 90% of people on the Internet and can help you reach people while they’re browsing websites, watching YouTube videos, checking their Gmail, or using mobile sites and apps.

“The Google Display Network will comprise all of the sites where advertisers can buy ads through Google, including the over one million AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange partners as well as YouTube and Google properties such as Google Finance, Gmail, Google Maps, and Blogger.”

The display ads can be shown in different formats: Text Ads, Picture Ads, Video Ads or Rich Media Ads; and they can be personalized in different sizes, shapes and customized to be displayed on different devices.

Facebook Advertising

Facebook Advertising also known as paid social, has mostly the same use as Google Display Network. Its main purpose helping new customers find your business.

The Facebook ads are divided in two categories: Promoted Posts and Boosted Posts

Promoted Posts are the ones which look the same as the ones from your newsfeed posts only that they  will be displayed in the targeted audience newsfeed only, showing “sponsored” underneath. The main purpose of these ads is to promote your brand to new and potential leads.

Promoted Posts are used to bring awareness of your brand to new potential leads

Boosted Post are the ones that you post on your newsfeed and by boosting them your campaign will try to reach as many people as possible from your existing followers.

Boosted Posts are used to reach as many followers as possible

Before advertising on Facebook you have to set up a few goals, such as your objective;

Do you want to bring more visitors on your website, receive likes on your Facebook page or perhaps get app downloads; It is important to know what result you are aiming for in order to know how to promote it best, since the promote and boost post deliver different results.

Another handy function is that under each Facebook campaign there can be created different ad sets (through which you can create separate audience based on different targeting characteristics) and under those different ads you can create different images and copy.

As an advertiser with this special feature you get the opportunity to target different categories of audience under the same campaign.

Remarketing is the tool which revolutionized online advertising

Remarketing is done by allowing the advertiser to deposit a cookie of their website on the visitor’s computer. Afterwards Google will continue to display ads to those people whenever they will be visiting sites from the Google Display Network. The same practice is used on other channels as Facebook, YouTube, Mobile Apps, etc.

Through traditional advertising your event will receive awareness and acknowledgment within a limited amount of people. Digital advertising increases substantially the span of advertising through not only a bigger crowd of possible leads but as well allows the event to be discovered for those who are seeking it. The mix of both search and display ads is essential in order to cover a higher surface of possible leads. On top of that, you might want to consider an event registration software. Most of the time, these softwares come with embed features, allowing users to advertise their events on their most relevant channels.

June 7, 2017 Business events, Event management, event marketing, Event professionals 1 comment

How to successfully market an event

Marketing an event is neither innately or self conspicuous; a lot of patience and knowledge is required in order to properly promote it.

-POP

How do you make sure that your consumer keeps bonding with your brand?

Many businesses have the possibility to immerse their consumers in whole physical experiences through their products, promotions, show-rooms, shops, etc.

What about the brands that have no physical product to wow their consumer with, or stay hidden behind a blog and the social media channels. How do they engage with their customers?

The answer is events. The creation of promotional events through which brands can bring awareness and bond with your customers is definitely the success key.

Even knowing how important events are, many businesses don’t take full advantage and fail in delivering a good event. It is impractical to organize a surpassing event and offer top quality products and services if you are failing to promote it. Who will know or attend your event if you don’t sell it properly?

Event marketing is essential in order to attract the right audience

Event marketing is the best opportunity to bring your community together and spread the word. Best of all, the most effective forms of event marketing will get people talking, writing, and reading – all about your brand, products or services.

The best way of understanding your most effective forms of marketing is putting yourself in your attendee’s shoes. So let’s imagine you are your future event’s attendee.

What are the steps you undergo from the moment you hear about the event till you get to participate:

  1. Ways you could find out about the event:
  • A friend – word of mouth
  • A poster/ flyer/ TV/ Radio – Traditional Marketing
  • Social Media/ Email – Digital Marketing

It is important that both Traditional and Digital marketing channels are used properly. Sometimes first impression is the last impression and this is the time you can attract your future attendees with perhaps just a glance of a look.

Depending on the type of your event and audience segmentation you will decide which marketing mix will be appropriate.

With a poster or a flyer your purpose is to create eye-catching print that will attract people to participate in your event and offer the necessary information about it. If you are interested in finding more about how to create an attractive poster here are some tips & tricks how to do that, offered by Venngage.

Email marketing has the same purpose as the print material; catch the eye in a short time frame, inform and redirect to your digital channels.

TV and Radio Advertising are most of the time effective though they are pricey. If you are creating an event for tens of thousands of people big media spending is definitely worth it. Otherwise – maybe stick to something more cost effective.

Social Media is the most effective and affordable slew of tools you can use to market your event

The purpose of Social Media is not only to advertise your event before but also create an online community that will help maintain the interest in your event in between happenings.

It is important to know how to keep your attendees engaged before, during and after your event. According to a study conducted by Buffer in 2014 nearly as many attendees are talking about the events as during the event.

Therefore, it is important to create the excitement before the event, during and after:

Pre-event

The objective is to create excitement of the up-coming event, engagement on the Social Platforms and enroll those who are not decided yet if to participate or not.

How to do that?

  • Through posts that include questions, information, tutorials, etc.
  • Create an unified hashtag to use across all social channels –  even if it doesn’t seem important, using it well in advance to your event and on all Social Platforms can result in a successful tool in order to centralize all of the posts regarding your event
  • Don’t forget to add your hashtag in all your Social Media’s bio – once you have a link to your event, update your Bio section, and then people have a very simple way to find out more
  • Distribute your events on discovery sites across the web in order to reach a more targeted audience
  • Use Facebook, Instagram ads to re-market to prospects – show ads to people who have already visited your website.

During the event

The main objective is to make your attendees talk about and share your event :

  • Engage in live streaming with the peaks of your event
  • Encourage people to check-in, like your Social Media pages and post photos from the event

“In this fast-paced, noisy online world, visual content is the best way to not only capture the attention of fans, but also to have them take action on your content.” – Donna Moritz of Socially Sorted

Post-Event

The target here: keep them coming back next year. It is still important to continue promoting the event but the marketing will come from a place of knowledge and top of mind recognition, rather than having to refresh their memories.

  • Keep engaging with customers and create new possible leads for your future events by posting regularly and keeping the community updated
  • Harness the Power of Visual Testimonials – show the excitement and vibe of your speakers, attendees or the event in general
  • Share and leverage the user generated content since this will bring more authenticity and credibility to your posts.
  • Make use of all content produced during the event and post regularly

  1. When looking up for the event, your search engine will hopefully display the following:
  • Event’s website
  • Discovery sites
  • Social Media Pages

Search engines are making people’s life easier by guiding them in their search. But getting your websites to appear at the top of the search result is no easy thing. Your website needs to have a high ranking in order to be displayed at the top and this is possible only through Search Engine Marketing.

Another important aspect is the reliability of your website because it represents the portal to your event and the first step in your attendees’ immersion. This experience has to be appealing, concise, user friendly, up-to-date and synchronized to all of your pages.

Lastly, don’t forget to create a mobile website too, since many web users are doing their research from their smart phones.

  1.   While doing the research you will be looking to find out:
  • More information about the event
  • Who else from your friends are attending the event
  • Other people’s impressions and reviews

Your attendees are searching for more information because they want to rest assure that your event is what they are looking for. It’s a good opportunity not only to offer them all the information they are seeking but as well connect with them and make them feel part of the community.

Some of the information that you can offer them:

Insides (e.g., special contests during the event, special photo or autograph sessions, sweepstakes etc.)

Details (who else is attending the event, weather, location map, etc.)

Assurance (other people’s testimonials and comments)

  1. Decision time:
  • If happy – attend the event and ask friends to join
  • If not happy – don’t go, and even more, persuade others in not going

At this point your only hope is that your attendees are happy and desire to participate along with their friends and family. The only way to get here is by following the previous steps.

  1. Final step – Register online and buy the ticket
  • If 100% sure + flawless registration = ticket is bought
  • If 100% sure + unfriendly registration = there is a small chance that the ticket will not be bought
  • If 50% sure + unfriendly registration = big chances that the ticket will not be bought

And when you thought that might be all, guess what? – it’s not!

A registration process that it is complicated and slow it’s the worst turn out for your future attendees. The payment process has to be the easiest step from the whole journey.

Ticketing and event registration software comes in handy when in need for an efficient payment process. Using our event management and access management platform, Oveit, will not only significantly simplify the payment process but can help you bring more added value to your overall planning, such as:

  • Registration forms enable you to collect data in the form of text (name, company, position) dates (birth date, arrival date), emails, files (PDFs, PPTs, images and more)
  • Personalized badge design – just use data attendees filled in, drag and drop, add graphics and your personalized badges are ready to send by email or print
  • Mobile apps for ticket scanning, available on iOS and Android.
  • Support for Smart badges, NFC bracelets, access cards, and NFC tickets
  • Seating design for seat-based events

In order to sell tickets and achieve a successful consumer journey, attendees need to be kept engaged at every stage of the process. Providing a memorable pre, live, and post-event experience will make your attendees more connected to your brand and will become, if not already, loyal. Consequently, by trusting you, they will innately recommend and share their experience with others both online but as well direct; word of mouth is still the most valuable marketing tool that has the highest conversion rate.

May 26, 2017 Event management, event marketing, Event professionals, Events, Oveit Features No comments yet