Public Relations or PR is a field dedicated to promoting your company and your events and creating a positive brand image – it has to do with how the public perceives and interacts with your brand. The good news is, you have the opportunity to direct the narrative through your outreach and PR efforts.
In this day and age, with so much information available online and through social media, PR is more important than ever for companies looking to engage with customers and boost interest in upcoming events. What you might not realize, however, is that PR is a much more expansive field. In addition to paving the way to your event, PR efforts can help to create a positive experience during and after your event, as well.
Corporate event planning companies can help you to develop overarching marketing and PR strategies to shape the perception of your event before it even happens, and to deliver on attendee expectations once guests arrive.
Says Todd Bludworth, President and Principal at AMI “Creating the right impression, and leaving a lasting impression with event attendees, is just as important as the speakers and activities that comprise the bulk of the event. This is why your PR strategy is so important.”
How can you and your event management services partner make PR work for your company and your event? Here are a few things you’ll want to consider.
More than Just Press Releases
If you don’t know a lot about PR, you might mistakenly assume it’s little more than penning press releases that put a beneficial spin on whatever information you want to get out to the public. This is only a small part of what PR professionals actually do.
Corporate event planning companies that help you to create marketing and PR strategies leading up to your event can come up with a plan that incorporates content marketing, for example. They can create stories that make your brand relatable, speak to your audience, enhance relationships with customers, and elevate the esteem in which your brand is held.
These professionals can also tap into existing networks to ensure that your PR efforts gain traction with reputable channels such as leading industry blogs or relevant social influencers. While companies can do this on their own to an extent, it’s better to tap into an established network to promote upcoming events, even if you’re working to cultivate your own for the future.
Ask Corporate Event Planning Companies about Drip Marketing
Creating PR campaigns is a lot of work, but once you have your assets in place, you can sit back and enjoy the ride. Right? Not if you want to provide fence-sitters with new reasons to pay attention. A drip marketing campaign releases new tidbits over time to create a trail of breadcrumbs that continues to entice leading up to your event. These campaigns are a little more complex than the average PR strategy, but they could help to sway holdouts unsure about attending your event.
PR from Inside Your Event
PR isn’t just a preparatory art – it’s also designed to clean up messes when they occur. Suppose, for example, you had a Starbucks moment at your event, where a racially insensitive event staffer said something rude and of course, it was captured on camera and broadcast to the internet at large.
What can you do to slow the roll of negative press and get a handle on the situation? PR professionals have got you covered with crisis management techniques designed to show your awareness of the situation and take steps to make reparations, regaining control of the narrative and using the unfortunate event as a gateway to showcase your ideas and prove you’re part of the solution, not the problem.
Barring such catastrophes, however, you can also use PR efforts during your event to promote through on-the-fly blogging and social media posts that highlight activities and speakers, as well as the positive experience event attendees are having. With proper planning, your event management services team can segue seamlessly from pre-event promotions to live PR as your event unfolds.
Working with Event Management Services on Experiential Marketing
In a world governed more and more by virtual interactions, people are looking for new ways to feel connected, and experiential marketing allows event attendees to participate and contribute in engaging and personally gratifying ways. Experienced corporate event planning companies like American Meetings, Inc. (AMI) can capitalize on the urge to participate in order to create situations in which attendees drive innovation and create PR fodder that speaks to peer groups.
This, in turn, can create a sense of FOMO, fuel interest in your brand and in future events, and encourage a collaborative atmosphere that sparks innovation and leads to successful outcomes during and after events.
