Did you realize that of all the small businesses launched in 2014, only half of them made it to their fifth year in business? Small Business Trends reports that the failure rate for startups is 44%. The top reasons those startups failed were:

• Too much competition
• Cash reserves ran out
• Customers felt ignored
• Marketing team failed in their goals or lacked the experience

Event marketing is essential if you want your startup to flourish. A solid marketing strategy isn’t just thrown together. You need to know how to best market your startup to grab attention, prove your startup meets a need, and continually interact with your customers. All of that starts with your event marketing plan.

Write Out Your Goals

Before you even start planning your events or pop-ups, sit down and brainstorm. You need to get a list of what you hope to accomplish. As a startup, you want to get your name known. You want to draw customers/clients to your business. What comes next?

Are revenue and sales more important to you than generating additional leads? Do you want to wow potential investors first and then focus on building sales or vice versa? Do you want to focus solely on money for now and work on investors later? Where do your customers come in?

One of the best ways to prioritize your goals is by looking at the areas where other companies have failed. The competition is fierce, so you need to market your startup in a way that you’ll stand out. This means jumping out there and driving sales and building a strong customer list by proving you offer something that no one else does.

Money is another area where startups fail. You need to get leads going and bring in revenue. That means you’ll need a sales team that delivers results during any events you host or participate in.

Finally, customers who feel ignored may not continue to support you. Your event marketing plan needs to ensure that your customers’ reactions are monitored and responded to on a regular basis. If negative feedback is left, you want to get out there and apologize and find out what you did wrong. Social media marketing is going to be important for your marketing campaign.

Toss Out Old Ideas

For the past couple of decades, all eyes turned to the internet. People started rapidly marketing products and ideas on websites, emails, and social media. People are so bombarded with ads everywhere they turn that they started putting up ad blockers and pop-up blockers to get rid of that bombardment.

Another thing happened in the middle of that, some companies started paying people to leave glowing reviews. While online consumers relied heavily on reviews, they started to lose trust. When one product has a dozen glowing 5-star reviews and a solo 1-star review, how can you tell which review is really genuine?

With these shifts, people started wanting to see products and services up close and personal. This is where event marketing is ideal. In-person events allow consumers to see, touch, taste, smell, and experience what you have to offer. They don’t need a reviewer telling them what they might experience, they get to experience it first-hand without anyone’s honest, or possibly dishonest, advice.

Deliver an Experience Unlike Any Other

As you think about the best way to offer that first-hand experience, what venue would best suit your product or service? A building contractor could create a virtual walkthrough of projects they’ve completed and set up a booth at a trade show. A hairdresser could think outside the box and set up a pop-up in the middle of an outdoor multi-day festival where people won’t be looking their best.

Ultimately, the event you choose has to match the size of the crowd you expect. If you plan for a crowd of a couple of dozen and hundreds show up, you’ve missed the mark and will only anger those who felt displaced or had to wait in lines much longer than expected. You can put out event notifications on sites like Facebook to see how many are interested and how many people plan to attend. Email invitations are another handy way to gauge interest.

Trust in an expert to help you plan, host, and follow-up with your audience after your event. Factory 360 excels in every step of an event marketing strategy that hones in on the things consumers want. We’ll help you create a memorable moment that pushes your startup into the front of people’s minds. Trust in us to help you brainstorm ideas, plan the event, see it through, and integrate every step on social media.