4 great ways to increase brand awareness at your next event

If you’re attending a promotional event to give your product a boost, you may be wondering how to increase your effectiveness of doing so. Below, we’ve put together four ways of ensuring your brand stands out when you’re sitting amongst others at a promotional event.

  1. Find brand ambassadors

Investing in an expensive advertising campaign to get people to find out about your brand is one way of marketing, but another is much more effective. Enter brand ambassadors – people who will reflect the ethos and brand values of your company wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. Ambassadors are particularly useful because they can speak to your potential customers on a one-to-one basis, whether that’s at a conference, event, exhibition or stall – and, a live experience is often more memorable than an online campaign.

We recommend that, if you’re looking to implement a marketing strategy like this one, you should consider finding a brand ambassador agency such as KruLive, who has staff that have been trained to understand campaign objectives and help to deliver results. What’s more, brand ambassadors can be selected from a wide range of candidates, meaning that you can find the exact people for your business, whether that’s fitness fanatics or environmentalists.

  1. Pull a stunt

You’re not always going to be able to have an impact at your next event – especially if you’re promoting a particularly dry product or service. You can, however, cause some excitement by pulling a stunt or arranging for something to happen during the event so that all eyes are put on your brand. Magnify Digital has put together a great guide to using a flash mob to create brand awareness, but that’s only one option that you should consider.

You could, for example, find a celebrity to attend the event and be photographed using your products. In doing so, you’ll not only drum up interest at the event itself, but you may be able to enjoy nationwide press coverage that directly references your brand. Other options include having a live musician to play music featuring your brand logo on their microphone, bringing novelty acts such as stilt walkers and circus performers to your stall, and organising an hourly dance-off or short show. You could even use a Promotional event marketing company to create a branded foodtruck to help advertise your product. The possibilities are, quite literally, endless when it comes to pulling a stunt to promote your brand – just remember to be respectful and ensure you’ve chosen something that is at least partially relevant to what your brand does.

  1. Hand out freebies

Everyone loves a freebie. In fact, it’s one of the most common forms of offline marketing, especially when it relates to new products like make-up, food and drink. As Martha C White writes in TIME Magazine, companies can win by giving things away. Science notes that, if you’re handed something for free, you feel obligated to buy more, a feeling that “can occur despite the fact that we may never have requested the favour in the first place.” Because of this, customers can feel loyal to your brand simply because you handed them something for free, and will be more likely to buy and recommend your products when they see them.

It’s this social marketing that’s the most effective. As TIME Magazine goes on to say, the rise of social media means that ‘word of mouth’ marketing is on the top. If you can give away gifts to users of social networks like Facebook and Twitter (and, let’s face it, we’re all on those apps nowadays), and get them to post about it, you’ll be able to enjoy free digital marketing as well as offline face-to-face marketing. According to the Journal of Marketing, people who received a free product talked about it 20% more than they would if they had paid for it, so it makes sense to hand things out if you can!

  1. Speak to people

It sounds obvious, but so many business owners overlook it. Instead of standing in a stall waiting for people to check out your products, get out there and speak to people. The more engaging you can be, the more engagement you’ll get back from potential customers. Tell stories about your brand – why you launched it, what you wanted to solve, how people are using your products and why they should invest in it, too. People don’t just buy a product or service – they buy into people and the history of brands.

We’ve rounded up four great ways to increase brand awareness at your next event, but that’s only the beginning. Be sure to experiment with different techniques to see what works for you, and don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Whatever you’re promoting and wherever you’re headed, good luck and have fun!