Understanding the impact of event branding is crucial for the success of your business in the modern landscape. Create an immersive event that brings ideas to fruition, captivating your audience with a sense of exhilaration. Transport your attendees to a world where they will be spellbound by the visual, auditory, and interactive wonders that lie in store. Event branding can help you enhance the credibility and visibility of your business. Effective event branding can establish a strong brand identity and build long-term relationships with stakeholders significant for your success.
What is Event Branding?
Event branding is a process of creating a unique and memorable identity for an event that communicates the purpose and personality of the event. Event branding involves creating compelling cohesive messages that resonate well with the target audience.
Event branding can help differentiate the event from others and create a recognizable brand identity. The goal is to humanize the event branding and develop an emotional connection with the audience, conveying a clear and concise message that inspires engagement.
The Difference between event branding and event marketing
Both event branding and event marketing are essential for businesses and serve as key differentiators to stand out in the market. Whereas, both serve different purposes.
Event branding is focused more on incorporating brand elements such as brand name, logo, and visual elements that reflect their audience and goals.
Event marketing on the other hand is a process of promoting the event to the target audience through different channels such as social media, e-mail marketing, and advertising. Event marketing strategies focus on establishing a sense of excitement, and anticipation among attendees about the happenings in the event.
Why is Event Branding Important?
Event branding is important for garnering the attention of your target audience and developing a stronger connection that makes it a more rewarding, and memorable experience for them.
According to a report from The Event Marketing Institute, 74% of the target audience is more likely to buy the product from a brand that delivered a mesmerizing event experience.
Event brand identity seamlessly integrates the positive emotions to a product or service, shapes how attendees, stakeholders, and sponsors perceive your event, and help you establish a long-term appeal of your event that results in repeat sale, new customers, or brand advocates.
Benefits of Event Branding
An effective event branding strategy incorporates all elements of your brand identity into a cohesive framework and creates an exciting experience for the audience. Let me repeat, brand experience is essential for your target audience. Thus, event branding benefits go beyond sales and increase business revenue.
How Event Branding Helps in Increasing Event Registration?
A strong event brand can attract more audiences as it creates high engagement and a sense of excitement. Effective event branding creates a positive impression in the minds of the audience, increasing the likelihood of them registering for the event.
Also, it is important to ensure that your event branding strategy reflects your brand’s objective, and vision and conveys the right message that attracts the right audience. Utilizing social media platforms and other digital marketing tools can help in amplifying the event branding strategy.
How Event Branding Helps in Creating a Lasting Impression on Attendees
A well-executed event branding strategy is the key to creating a lasting impression on attendees. Event branding must incorporate your distinctive logo, brand theme, consistent message, and brand voice through all promotional collaterals and platforms.
When attendees experience a well-thought campaign, they are more likely to develop a sense of connection which can influence their future decisions regarding the brand’s product or service.
Core Elements of Events Branding
Core elements of event branding include brand identity, creative visual content, and consistent messaging. Where other event touch-points such as pre-event marketing, on-site attendee experience, and soliciting feedback can help brand professionals refine the event further.
Effective event branding requires a cohesive strategy that tells your story to the world through visuals and appealing materials.
This section explores the essential key elements and tips that you can utilize for impactful event branding.
Key Elements and Tips of Impactful Digital Event Branding
Branding an event with a consistent brand identity, appealing visuals, and engaging targeted messages will enhance the brand’s impact. The key elements of impactful digital event branding discussed below can help you create a memorable experience for attendees.
Website Design and Content
Website design and content are the most crucial element when it comes to event branding, as they can drive attendee engagement, and develop their perception. Content for events provides the insight to the visitors about the event theme, objectives, and vision of the business.
You need to address four key components when branding a website for your event:
- Colors
- Font
- Logos
- Theme
Social Media Presence and Marketing
Social media event marketing can generate a lot of buzz for your event. You can easily run a campaign before, during, and after the event to strengthen your presence and develop interest among others for future events.
Social media is a powerful tool to create visibility and show presence for your event. Particularly Facebook events create engagement, drive interaction, and help you build a community around the event.
Email Marketing and Communications
Email marketing can drive the attention of your target audience toward your brand for any good reason. It gives you the ability to reach out to your prospective attendees directly and have them registered through your channel for all important announcements and updates.
Email marketing design for an event must include brand-relevant elements such as color, fonts, logos, and theme. For thoughtful event branding, you can team up email and communications strategies together.
Post-Event Follow-Up and Engagement
As you get to build the buzz with all the key event branding components, then this is your time to nurture your attendees down the funnel with an impactful follow-up that allows you to measure the connection that has been developed during the process.
Some of the best event branding strategies include post-follow-up and feedback components. Here are some tips to follow up with the attendees:
- Personalized thank you email
- Post-event survey
- Posts photos from the event
- Invite them to attend your next event
Key Elements of Impactful Onsite Event Branding
Onsite event branding is the main pillar for your business’s success. You can incorporate a mix of branding ideas for events to create a pleasant experience with eye-catching visuals. Make sure you stay consistent with brand design elements when conducting onsite event branding.
Let’s explore some smart ways to leverage onsite event branding for a lifelong impression.
Signage and Banners
You might think to neglect small details like signage and banners, but they add a whole new dimension to improve the attendee’s experience. Signs are important to help attendees find the place and relevant information, as confusion can lead to tarnish their experience and make anyone feel annoyed.
Sponsorship and Partnership Displays
When considering corporate branding ideas, do not miss out on displaying logos of your sponsors and partners, as they add value to your event. Publicizing your event and bringing more people to attend can only become possible through wider outreach, and that is possible through sponsorship and partnership. Their association with your business instantly upsurges the market value of your event and boosts media coverage.
Decor and Theming
Onsite event décor and theme create the event brand identity, communicate the message and build a perception in the mind of attendees. Also, the right décor and theme sets the mood and creates an atmosphere that you want your attendees to experience.
Marketing Materials and Giveaways
Event giveaways always strike a chord, resulting in significant results like boosted sales, increased brand awareness, and enhanced brand recognition. Keep them functional and valuable that get attendees talking about your event. Marketing materials encourage engagement and add to your event environment.
Attendee Engagement and Interactions
Attendee engagement and interactions can be enhanced in several ways such as through games, contests, and polls. Also, create networking opportunities through roundtable discussions, Q&A sessions, and networking lounges within your event venue.
Additionally, social media props and media walls can add enhancement to your event, as attendees will click pictures, or record videos to upload on their social networks, giving your event an instant boost.
Staff and Volunteer Attire
Maintain utmost professionalism, and make sure your staff and volunteer wear branded t-shirts or uniforms, to help attendees identify easily. We recommend closed-toe shoes for the safety of your staff and volunteers. Keep up a cohesive appearance that represents the event and your business.
Photography and Video Production
With the dawn of the digital era, photography and video production have become imperative for any business event. Capture significant events and moments of celebration at your event. Make sure you have a video production made for your event, as you can use it for your future marketing materials. Whether it’s a product launch or a charity event, a professional video can generate interest and excitement.
How to Maintain Consistency in Your Event Branding
For successful event branding, it is important to maintain consistency to create a strong and recognizable brand identity. For brand consistency, make sure the following brand elements remain the same:
- Name
- Logo
- Color
- Slogan
- Graphics
- Typography
Moreover, ensure your event is aligned with the branding guidelines to create a memorable and impactful event experience for your attendees.
How to Measure the Success of Your Event Branding
Measuring the success of your event won’t be possible without having a clear understanding of your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Also, you can measure the success through website traffic, analyzing the data through Google Analytics. The number of registration and the number of attendees at the event can also give a measure of successful event branding. You can even conduct social media polls post-event to get feedback and utilize it for improvement in the next event. By analyzing these metrics, you can enhance the opportunities for future event branding, and evaluate cross-channel branding activities.
To Sum Up
Event branding plays a crucial role in connecting businesses with their audience on a deeper level, creating experiences that go beyond just the brand itself. This immersive branding experience not only leads to increased recognition and value for the business but also helps to establish credibility in the competitive marketplace. Having a comprehensive events marketing checklist in place is essential for ensuring that every aspect of event branding is meticulously planned and executed, ultimately leading to a successful and impactful event.
As the marketplaces are evolving, businesses need to understand that event branding can be a key differentiator as it creates a unique identity, and makes it stand out. For additional ideas on some themes for your next event take a look at our whitepaper “Visual Marketing – Making your Exhibit Stand Out”.
Guest Blogger: Rayed Chaudhry - Mr. Rayed Chaudhry is a Co-Founder & Owner and serves as Chief Operating Officer at Think Orion. Rayed is passionate about marketing and interested in learning new ways to hack (legally) marketing platforms to help businesses achieve growth in attendance using unconventional methods. Prior to starting Orion, Rayed has worked in various marketing positions and spent millions of dollars across different ad platforms.
