When it comes to marketing your business at an event, it takes a few tools and strategies to create the right amount of attention. Your main goal at the event is most likely to attract new business. But what exactly is your strategy to do so? Do you even have a strategy in place? And more importantly, how effective will you be at attracting your target audience?

Start with a Strategy

Whether your business is hosting an event, sponsoring a conference, or something in between, you want to ensure you have the right marketing strategy in place. To achieve your goal of attracting new business, you must strategize to create a brand impression that lasts. Placing a few pens and cups on the table and having your business cards in hand isn’t nearly enough anymore. With the recent advances in event marketing, your business needs to cut through the clutter. Consider developing a multi-faceted approach, including both in-person and digital strategies.

There is an infinite number of ways you could market your business at an event, but the key is knowing what approach is best suited for your business and target audience specifically. To figure that out, there are a couple of questions that are helpful to ask yourself.

Make a Visual Impact

First, how will you want to aesthetically present your business? If your business has a booth at a conference in an exhibitor hall, you may need a table throw, a pop-up banner on either side, and a large backdrop behind the table to attract attendees from far away. If you’re just an attendee, you may want to wear a branded shirt and have a stack of sales sheets or rack cards available to hand out.

Understand Your Audience

Second, and equally as important, what are the attributes of those you are trying to reach? Understanding the answer to this question is crucial to being able to tailor your marketing to accommodate this audience. Try identifying what promotional items they would like to grab from your table, or maybe if they would be more interested in engaging with an interactive product like a tablet or raffle spinning wheel. If you have more of a general audience, consider investing in providing higher-end merchandise to diversify your brand against the usual chip clips and notepad offerings.

Think Beyond the Event

In addition to in-person tactics, think about how your business can reach your audience in other ways outside of the event itself. Experiment with sending an email to the attendees before the event, letting them know your anticipation for connecting with them, or sending an email after the event, inquiring about meeting again and diving deeper into your business’s services.

If you’re marketing your business at an event, you’re one step closer to making an impression on your audience. However, successful event marketing takes your business from just making an impression to a lasting impression that converts the event’s guests into dedicated customers.