Use These 5 Tips to Develop Your Event Brand

Provide value over a long period of time

The events that have been running for a long period of time all have one thing in common – consistency. 

They’ve been running high-quality events in fantastic venues for several years. It’s simple and unglamorous, but one way to develop an event brand is to nail this time and time again. 

Take Funkademia and HomoElectric, for example. They are two events in Manchester which have been operating for over 20 years. Bar a few breaks, they’ve been in their chosen venue either monthly or weekly, building a reputation as events you’re bound to have a good night at. 

If you can consistently create a positive atmosphere at your event, people will come back. Mix this with an on-point booking policy and a dose of passion? You’ll build up a reputation and be known for quality events. 

Create a movement around your event

Building a movement around your event can help you keep your event running for a long time. 

You can create this with merchandise. Rather than slapping your logo on a black or white t-shirt, think about who your audience is and what they would like to wear. 

Grime artist Manga Saint Hilare has done this well. His merch is inspired by streetwear and art, something he and his audience are passionate about. Take a look here. 

Limited merch runs can help, too. It creates a feeling of exclusivity for the people buying, and when the next run of merch comes around, people who missed out last time have that extra incentive to buy. 

Extra content on top of your event can help build exclusivity. Instagram has a feature called Broadcast Channels, which lets you set up groups for your audience to join and interact with you. 

In this Broadcast Channel, you can share exclusive behind the scenes content and even include them in booking decisions. For example, if you have a shortlist of four acts to appear at your event, why not hold a vote on your Broadcast Channel and book the act your fans want to see most?

The dream outcome is that your attendees turn up to your events in your merch and create relationships based on a shared love for what you’re doing. In the long run, you’ll create an engaged fanbase who follow your event brand. 

Reward loyal attendees

If you’ve been running an event for a while, you’ll likely have a few attendees who’ve been with you from the start. One way to keep them coming back is by rewarding them for supporting your event. 

You can do this through exclusive discounts on tickets, free merch or drinks deals. To make it work, it has to be something of value. You could keep some merch back from one of your runs to give away as a gift. 

The Promotion Centre is equipped to help you carry out initiatives like this. The ticket sale analysis tool lets you see who has been buying, letting you look at the data over custom time periods. 

The Discount Codes feature lets you create single, multi and limited-use discount codes, which you can then distribute to the attendees who’ve attended several times over a year. 

Rewarding your customers in this way will encourage people to come back to your event. Let’s face it: a discounted ticket to an event you love is hard to pass up, and people remember the times their favourite event brands offer them a perk.  

Carry out surveys

Surveys can help you get feedback on your event. 

Understanding what your attendees thought worked and didn’t work can help you improve future events. Plus, surveys are free to create and there are several websites out there where you can put one together. 

Before creating your survey, think about the questions you want to ask attendees. Maybe you’ve added something new to the event or changed the running order. 

Then, ensure you include Yes/No and open-ended questions. This way, you’ll have a mix of questions that can give you a base of feedback to work from. 

Surveys can help for conference and corporate-style events. When your event is taking place, speak to your attendees, get a feel for what they think and ask them to take the survey. Analyse the results later and take steps to improve your event. 

Be social media savvy

We touched on social media earlier in the article with Instagram’s Broadcast Channel feature.

However, there are other ways you can use social media to help you build a long-running event brand. Before your event, encourage attendees to take photos, videos, document your event and post them to their social media channels with your handle tagged. 

If you’re on Instagram, for example, repost all of the tagged photos and videos to your story. You could also ask your attendees to send their content to you and use it in an after-movie of your event. 

On its own, reposting and sharing user-generated content won’t help your event run for 20 years. However, it’s about the bigger picture. By interacting with your attendees in this way, you’re involving attendees in your brand past the event. Plus, people notice when you interact with their content and they’ll be encouraged to keep attending and taking photos.