As the working world is inundated by technology and data, professionals are buried in a sea of email messaging, mobile messaging, advertising, social media, content, and more to stay connected with industry news and prospective clients. To cut through the noise, marketers have been shifting more and more dollars to investing in offline events.
One trend that is quickly evolving into a fully-fledged event marketing strategy is “Moment Marketing.”
Google first introduced micro-moments in 2015: “They’re the moments when we turn to a device — often a smartphone — to take action on whatever we need or want right now. These I-want-to- know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-buy and I-want-to-do moments are loaded with intent, context, and immediacy.”
Today, we now turn to our mobile devices to take immediate actions on the products and experiences we want. Google argues that we are not loyal to brands, but in fact to moments. A moment when we strongly want something has more weight than any type of influence brands try to exercise with traditional marketing campaigns.
Moment Marketing capitalizes on having just the right message at just the right moment. While it appears to be magically spontaneous, and sometimes it is, most often it’s planned by marketers well in advance. This “magic” and “spontaneity” yield great viral potential that drives activations and other desired actions among our audiences.
Here’s how moment marketing is shaping professional event planning this year:
Making Events “Moment” Ready
Executing on moment-ready events involves a great deal of agility and flexibility in your team:
- Take Advantage of ‘Today’ and ‘Tonight’ Searches: over the past two years, travel-related searches for “tonight” and “today” have grown over 150% on mobile. Events happening at a destination today or tonight can appeal to these last-minute event seekers.
- The Art of Newsjacking and How It Can Grow Your Event: it’s all about getting noticed at the right time and context. Newsjacking is the perfect combination of a timely occurrence, a branded opportunity, and the right social media platform to get your event noticed. Be ready monitoring social media 24/7 and able to respond a concise message. Any delay in posting and the optimum moment may already have passed.
Using Moment Marketing During an Event
Inflating fear of missing out (FOMO) to epic proportions for those attending and not attending the event will provide a more engaging experience:
- Social-Media-Worthy Moments: use props, interesting backdrops, special effects, confetti – anything that will get your audience excited.
- Feature Special Guests: create exclusive content by giving sneak peeks and previews from the backstage areas. Showing glimpses only accessible with VIP passes can capture the imagination of your guests.
- Make Your Event Unforgettable: the most unforgettable moments are not always the biggest budget. One stand out moment from a corporate retreat was when the company C-suite was there to shake their hands and bid them farewell at the airport before their flight. It cost nothing and makes a big impression on each attendee, showing them how valuable they are to senior management.
After the Event, Leveraging Moment Marketing to Make Them Come Back
Even after the event is over, Moment Marketing will keep your attendees loyal and eager to return for the next event:
- Take Advantage of Binge Attending: the new way to consume content is to binge. This is a familiar concept with TV shows and movies but the same behavior is emerging as a trend in events too. Impatience, immediate action, instant gratification, impulsiveness – behavior we can identify today. Constant FOMO, combined with an ever-growing all you can eat buffet of desirable content are two of the main drivers of this behavior.
- The Art of Follow Up: you want the hype to continue after the event, and to keep conversations and positive feelings on a high. This can be a great opportunity for early ticket sales for next year’s event to generate some early cash flow based on attendee trust and excitement, even before the program and finer details have been released. Share a short highlights video capturing the best bits of the event, publish pictures of the speakers with key quotes from their presentations, and encourage attendees to share their best memories and learnings.
Conclusion
Moment Marketing is challenging traditional marketing boundaries to move the attention directly into the moment when our prospective attendees will feel the need to attend, and capitalizes on the need and the drive to satisfy that need immediately. It uses offline experience to drive and trigger online interaction, and connects an audience to a brand as if they were all sitting together in the same room. Yet, to do it successfully, events must perfectly align the content and the context, and be ready with lightning quick reactions, which is not always an easy thing to do.
We are just at the beginning of the Moment Marketing revolution. As tech giants further integrate technology capable of instantly satisfying many of our needs and wants, creating impactful moments will become more and more important. It’s time to explore and embrace this trend as you look towards the future of your events and marketing strategy going forward.
About the Author
Alon Alroy is the Co-founder of Bizzabo, the world’s fastest growing event technology platform. Bizzabo is helping marketers and event organizers from leading brands to promote, manage and maximize their professional events, to create memorable and impactful experiences. Alon has built Bizzabo’s business operations from the ground up and is now spearheading its marketing and customer success teams. Alon began his career at the Israeli Air Force, where was served as a team commander for six years.
