Hosting a meet and greet is the perfect way to get up close and personal with your clients. If you want to drum up publicity for your company, drive awareness, and get to know your customers, a meet and greet is the perfect opportunity to accomplish all three.
Don’t know where to start? Here are some tips that can make your meet and greet a successful and well-attended occasion.
8 Tried and Tested Tips for Promoting Your Meet and Greet
Create a Hashtag
Create a unique hashtag — one that won’t get lost in the sea of hashtags on social media. Use it to promote your event extensively across platforms.
Hashtags can be tricky. Piling them on in one post doesn’t qualify you for automatic success. In fact, it can have the opposite effect.
A study conducted by Buddy Media showed that when you use more than two hashtags, your engagement actually drops by an average of 17 percent. Make sure you’re being mindful of the number of hashtags you use to promote your event.
Create Content
Content rules. Use content marketing to generate publicity for your marketing event. You can solicit the help of guest bloggers and independent writers or write guest posts on popular websites to generate traffic to your website.
Posting content on LinkedIn, informative posts on Facebook, creative pictures and captions on Instagram, and starting a Reddit thread can also help market your event.
Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
Most businesses fail in their meet and greet campaigns by sticking to popular platforms for promotional activities. Avoid making the same mistake by basing your publicity strategy on websites and apps that your audience frequently visits.
Ask yourself: Why would people want to attend the meet and greet? What are they hoping to get out of it? Try to discern the answer from your interactions. You can then use your insights to develop an effective promotional strategy. While communicating with your audience, be subtle and not overly enthusiastic.
Start Publicizing Your Event Early
You should start promoting your event at least 2 to 4 weeks from the date of the event. This will help build hype, pique the interest of your targeted attendees, and give people enough time to slot the event in their schedules.
If you want to retain the interest of your targeted audience, try using aesthetically appealing posters. You don’t have to spend a lot either. You can make posters through an online poster maker to reflect your branding without hiring professional graphic designers.
Market the Meet and Greet Through Fan Favorites
Have influencers, celebrities, and other famous personalities spread the word. This may come at a cost, but if you have a good barter system in place, including them in your promotional strategies won’t stretch your budget by much. You just have to do your research.
If you can’t afford to bring in the big guns, give the event an exclusive look to encourage participation. Create a scarcity mindset by offering limited slots to encourage people to take action immediately. It’s a surefire way of turning a maybe into a convincing yes.
Make Sign-In Easy
If you’re selling tickets for the meet and greet, do so through your official website or a third-party website to streamline the process. If you have people sign in for your meet and greet, make sure to ask them for details like email addresses and phone numbers.
Doing so can give you a rough estimate of potential attendees so you can book an appropriate venue to accommodate them. It will also give you the information you need to follow up with people. Think of all the marketing possibilities it may hold for you.
Get Your Head in the Game With Email Marketing
Email marketing has its fair share of naysayers. Don’t let it discourage you from reaping its benefits. As soon as people sign in, you can give them updates about your event by email. This way, you’ll be able to hold people’s interest and maintain a direct line of communication with your attendees.
Once your event is over, continue the relationship by sending a follow-up email. Personalization is key to generating a positive follow-up response. Think it’s time-consuming? This stat will change your mind: 88% of email recipients are more likely to respond favorably to emails that have been tailored to their needs.
Use different content for different audiences. If you don’t have the manpower to send targeted messages, use services like Emma and MailChimp.
Host Giveaways and Competitions
One way to promote your meet and greet without shelling out big bucks is to host competitions and giveaways. For example, you can ask people to like a post about your giveaway, mention three or more friends, and share the post on their status with your hashtag to be eligible for entry.
If you’re looking for templates to get you started, PosterMyWall has an impressive range of personal branding templates you can use for free. Go ahead and customize your posts to reach new audiences and get people talking about your business.
Wrapping Up
Knowing how to promote your meet and greet can help you achieve great response rates and a good turnout. Incorporating these tips into your planning can help you grow your business and generate leads.
If you’re a business that doesn’t have a budget set aside for marketing, take a look at tools like PosterMyWall. The site provides hundreds of thousands of templates that you can easily choose from and customize for your event. Social media downloads are free, while its paid services are priced reasonably from $9.95 to $29.95.
With resources like these, managing and marketing your next meet and greet should be a breeze while being light on the pocket.
