Most branding efforts are scattered because too many people are using too many platforms.
No matter how sophisticated your event marketing strategy is, there’s usually a common thread amongst companies who struggle: most branding efforts are scattered because too many people are using too many platforms. There’s no consistency in event marketing, which means there’s no consistency in event branding either.
You can think of your pre-event landing pages, website content, emails, reminders, registration pages, and social media posts like brand ambassadors — they do the heavy lifting of spreading your brand far and wide. You have no problem creating brand awareness through some form of advertising, so why not generate event awareness with your content too?
That’s where event branding helps.
What is Event Branding?
To answer that, you have to be clear about branding in general. Some might say your brand is your je ne sais quoi – that hard to explain thing that makes you, you. At the same time, it’s also specific. It’s the combination of your organization’s colors, fonts, logo, and overall design aesthetic.
But it’s also the tone of your messaging, an attitude, your company values, employee behaviors, and corporate policies. It all creates a specific look, feel, and style that customers can instantly identify.
Jeff Bezos once that brand is “what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”
Carry that idea to your live and virtual events and event branding is the distillation of your brand in your event content (and, of course, in the event itself).
This isn’t a surprise. You probably have teams in charge of things like swag and signage for the day of your event, clever ways to slip your logo and colors into any and everything.
But who’s in charge of making sure all of your communications are branded too? And how can you make sure it’s being done consistently across platforms and channels?
Why does consistent Event Branding matter?
Events are the most powerful ways to build loyalty, so you must attend to every detail, even the emails and social media posts.
Consistent branding in your pre-event content helps create awareness, not just about your events, but about your brand as a whole.
Knowing that the look and feel of your brand oozes out of every email, every word on your landing page, every design element in your events calendar, and in every social media post makes your organization look more professional. And this is true whether you host 100 or 1000 events per year.
When everything is consistently branded — from the reminder emails to the registration table — it creates a better attendee experience from the jump, eliminating any chance for confusion. There are a lot of companies hosting similar events. You want to make sure people are attending the right one.
Basically, consistent event branding is an opportunity to amplify awareness by making events discoverable to more people and earn you some new customers in the process.
3 elements of conveying a strong Event Brand
Website & landing page branding
No matter how many live and virtual events you host each year, you’ll need some kind of landing page to promote them. And that page needs to be discoverable by search engines, fully branded, and white-labeled.
There are lots of landing page builders out there (you may just spin one up on your existing site), but it’s critically important to make sure you’re paying attention to the details when it comes to spinning up new pages. If your branding isn’t apparent right away, people could leave before registering.
Things like page rank and domain authority will also be helpful in getting your events found by search engines, while consistent branding from your site, promotions, and ads to your event page will help create a seamless user experience that reduces bounce rates.
Email branding & templates
From pre-event notifications to post-event follow-ups, most events involve a lot of emails.
Without consistent formats and templates, the multiple people who are working to plan, promote, and manage your events are probably sending out inconsistent emails — different formats, inconsistent fonts and pictures, possibly broken links.
Sure, some platforms automate these emails for you, but even then they’re often generic, lacking your brand altogether. This confuses as many attendees as it helps.
At the very least, have someone create an event template, complete with your brand colors, fonts, and logo and send it around to the team or save it in your email platform. Better yet, choose an event marketing platform that makes it dead-simple not to mess up formatting in the first place.
Social media posts
“When a brand’s message is shared by a friend, a family member, or a colleague, it becomes more credible, more authentic, and more impactful.” That’s what Dan Hirsch, Founder and CEO of On Board Experiential told us when we talked to him back in 2017.
And it’s just as true today as it was then.
Social media can be a powerful tool in your event marketing arsenal when used correctly. And it can be a disaster when it’s not.
With lots of channels to manage, accounts to log into, and platform formats to learn, it can be hard to create consistency in your event branding on social media — especially if you have multiple people posting on your behalf.
Try to create messaging and formatting that can be consistent across all channels. Clearly communicate your expectations to team members and make sure your best practices are well documented.
And if you’re still having trouble, look for a platform that centralizes your social media posts into one place, baking the template, scheduling, and formatting into the message itself.
What are the long terms benefits of Event Branding?
Making sure every email, every landing page, every social media post, and every calendar invite is consistently branded will drive your brand home for visitors and customers and, ultimately, make your events more memorable.
You’ll present your events as a cohesive, united customer experience — even if multiple people are running around behind the scenes like crazy.
The good news is that Localist Events takes away your branding headaches. Things likes inconsistent formatting and brand inconsistencies will be a thing of the past. Our platform completely adopts your site’s brand, ensuring a seamless user experience that reduces landing page bounce rate significantly while helping your build consistency and event awareness across every live and virtual event.
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