Your Members are Your Best (and least expensive) Form of Media
Promoting and marketing Trade Shows, Parades and other “open to the public” events can get really expensive. By the time you pay for newspaper, radio, TV and direct mail advertising your event marketing budget can go through the roof.
One of the least utilized forms of media tends to be your own members and their huge sphere of influence.
Kate and I have produced all kinds of Association events including Business EXPO’s Home Shows, Tours (Parades), Golf Events and Membership Drives. Typically, there wasn’t a pile of cash just waiting to be spent on event advertising and marketing so we had to put on our “Renegade Direct Marketing Hats” and find inexpensive ways to get the word out about the events.
The number one tool that has been the most effective and inexpensive is using the association members as a media. The real key to the success of this type of marketing is to make it very easy for your members to help. Most of your members will be happy to participate in the marketing of your event if you just give them the tools they need and tell them what to do.
Here are just a couple ways we were able to take advantage of the vast network of connections the members have access to:
1.) All of your members send out some type of mail every day. This mail includes invoices, statements, vendor payments, sales letters and the list goes on and on. They are already paying for postage so there is no additional cost to add a “statement stuffer” (a small 1/3 of a page flyer about your event) or “Dollar Off admission coupon” to their existing mail. All you have to do is make it easy for them. At the membership meeting or committee meeting prior to your big event just create bundles of flyers or coupons and ask your members to take as many as they need and add them to their own mail when appropriate. Guess what? They will be happy to help and the reality is in many cases that your member’s sphere of influence is exactly the target market you are looking for. We have used and tested the response using this process and the results are amazing.
2.) Nearly all of your members have huge email contact lists that they will happily send promotional information about your event to – if you make it easy. Remember, you can’t just email to their lists for them – that’s spam. But, if they send the information for you to their friends and business associates it’s perfectly appropriate.
For your next event create a simple promotional letter in “Word” with the key points about your event. Do not make it a PDF. Send the “Word” document along with a sample note your members can send with your promotional letter to their contact list.
It might look something like this:
“The Association that I belong to is hosting their 25th Annual Trade Show on October 15th an 16th. It’s a great event and they have asked me to invite everyone I know. The information below will give you all the details. I hope you can attend”.
Pretty simple, I know. Send the sample “note” and the “Word” document and ask them to “cut and paste” the text from it into their email and send it to their list (attachments tend to get stuck in spam filters). It’s that simple.
If you ask your members to help and give them the tools they need, most are more than willing to promote your event for you for free. Imagine if just 10% of your members promoted your event to their “lists” for you. The numbers really can be staggering!
Just give it a try!