Promotion plays a crucial role in determining the success of your event. The right advertising can attract a crowd of eager attendees who feel passionate about your function and recommend it to their friends.
Today, there are a variety of platforms and strategies that you can use to market your events, such as blog posts, email campaigns, and physical flyers. With so many options available, though, it can be challenging to decide which methods will work best for your event.
Affiliate marketing is one particularly effective form of advertising. This method involves forming partnerships with other people who help promote your event. A strong affiliate marketing campaign can broaden your audience and help you develop relationships with important influencers in your industry.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketers endorse and review products through their blog posts, social media accounts, and websites. They include links in their content that interested audience members can use to purchase classes, event tickets, or merchandise.
In exchange for promoting events or merchandise, affiliate marketers generally receive compensation for each referred sale. For instance, a creator may earn a percentage of every purchase that people make after clicking the affiliate links on their website. They can also receive other perks, like free products or VIP event tickets.
Affiliate marketing is a highly effective promotional tool because consumers often trust creators who produce quality content about the types of products and events that interest them. In fact, a 2022 survey by Statista found that a brand was considered more trustworthy by 84% of consumers when it included user-generated content relevant to its services and/or products.
Because this marketing method can influence consumers, it offers significant advantages for event planners. Affiliate marketing can help you attract fresh audiences. Additionally, the glowing endorsement of an important influencer can give your function more legitimacy.
Affiliate Marketing Strategies To Help You Increase Event Attendance
Are you interested in trying affiliate marketing for your next event? Or have you already experimented with affiliate marketing and want to hone your techniques? Here are a few simple affiliate marketing strategies that you can use to advertise your function and increase event attendance.
Start an Associate Program
Creating an associate program is one efficient way that you can use affiliate marketing. These initiatives allow you to partner with multiple influencers to advertise your function.
What do these programs look like in practice? Picture this: You are organizing a pet product convention that will feature training demonstrations and vendors. You can use affiliate marketing by following these simple steps:
- Approach relevant industry experts and ask them to become an affiliate of the convention. For instance, you may collaborate with dog trainers and veterinarians who have large social media followings.
- Negotiate a commission with each affiliate or offer a set rate for all affiliates. This commission could include financial incentives or other perks, like free advertising at the convention.
- Use event management tools to generate unique affiliate links to distribute to each of your new affiliates.
- Your affiliate network will use these links to advertise your pet product convention in their social media posts.
- When your partners refer followers to your website to purchase a convention ticket, they will receive a payment.
Associate programs are effective promotion tools because they allow you to easily develop a large network of partners who can advertise your event to diverse audiences. You can even create an application process for potential affiliates. This strategy allows interested promoters to approach you and reduces your workload.
Consider Partnering With an Affiliate Marketing Platform
If the thought of seeking out your own affiliates seems daunting or too time-consuming, you could also partner with an existing affiliate marketing platform. These programs allow content creators to apply for an account and advertise a range of products and services.
For instance, social media influencers can join the Instagram affiliate program. They will create posts that promote particular products and include tags that their followers can use to make purchases.
Partnering with an established affiliate marketing platform offers several advantages, including:
- You gain access to affiliates who have been prescreened by the platform to ensure that they meet certain criteria, like an established network of followers.
- The platform will handle payments.
- You can reach many new audiences quickly
- You can tap into a large network of experienced digital marketers.
This strategy can help you quickly advertise your event while avoiding much of the legwork required if you seek out affiliates on your own.
Place Affiliate Ads on Relevant Websites
In addition to working with individual content creators and large affiliate marketing platforms, you can create affiliate advertisements to place on websites related to your function. Website visitors can click the ads to visit your website and purchase event tickets. You will then pay a referral fee to the website for each affiliate sale.
Here are a few easy ways to leverage your affiliate ads into increased event attendance:
- Aim for a simple, streamlined design that doesn’t include an overwhelming amount of information.
- Include a clear call to action that invites viewers to click on the ad and learn more about your event.
- Incorporate stylish images that represent your event. If you’re organizing a music performance, for example, you can include logos from featured bands.
- Place your advertisements on websites that directly relate to your event. For instance, if you’re organizing a race, you can place ads on popular running blogs.
- Use basic graphic design principles, such as alignment and white space, to create an attractive advertisement. If you aren’t confident in your artistic abilities, you can outsource the project to an experienced graphic designer.
By creating concise but enticing affiliate advertisements, you can generate engagement without relying on other creators to produce content for your event.
Build Your Affiliate Marketing Network
Once you have secured a few affiliate partners, you may be tempted to shift your focus back to other aspects of event management. However, you should continue to expand your affiliate network to ensure that you will reach new audiences on a regular basis.
One simple way to build this network is to incorporate referral incentives into your existing associate program. For instance, you could invite your current affiliates to refer their colleagues and friends. In return, you can provide extra financial compensation or other rewards for each new affiliate who joins your network.
By continually expanding your network, you can gain new attendees. You will also have pre-existing affiliate partnerships to draw on when coordinating future events.
Reach Out to Influencers and Provide Them With Affiliate Links
Finally, you can also reach out directly to popular influencers who create content related to your event. In your introductory message, you can include affiliate links and invite them to share with their audience.
Some influencers may ignore or reject your invitation, especially if you have never contacted them before. However, if you approach creators strategically, this method can be an easy way to gain a few new affiliate partners.
You should carefully select target influencers and write polished messages to avoid seeming like you are spamming accounts at random. Your message should clearly and concisely explain how the influencers’ interests relate to your event. You could also prioritize influencers who have previously engaged in affiliate marketing and may be more open to partnering with you.
Many influencers will be eager to develop an affiliate partnership with you because this marketing method can help them generate passive income. Through this system, a creator can continue to earn affiliate revenue long after they make a social media post about a product or share a link to an online business. These commissions can add up fast. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that Advertising, Promotions, and Marketing Managers can earn an average of $127,150 a year.
In other words, if you want a particular influencer to advertise your event, don’t be shy about reaching out. If you develop a partnership, you both can benefit.
How To Measure Success of Your Affiliate Campaigns
Once you have incorporated strategies for affiliate marketing into your event promotion, you may be wondering how you can tell whether or not your efforts have paid off. Fortunately, there are a few easy ways that you can measure the success of your affiliate marketing campaign.
First, you should determine what key performance indicators (KPIs) to look for. KPIs can include criteria such as:
- Audience demographics. Did you attract new kinds of attendees after implementing affiliate marketing?
- Attendee happiness. Did the majority of attendees respond positively in a post-event survey?
- Conversion rates. What percentage of clicks on affiliate links translated into ticket or merchandise sales?
- Registration rates. What percentage of your intended audience signed up for your event?
You can use registration forms or post-event surveys to gather information about your attendees. Additionally, tools like Event.com’s event management software can provide data and analytics about conversion rates and other aspects of marketing.
Promote Your Event With the Right Digital Marketing Tools
By using the right digital marketing tools, you can boost your event’s profile and grow your audience base. Additionally, the networks that you develop through affiliate marketing will help you make new connections and expand your influence.
With the Events.com affiliate program, you can incentivize your affiliates to promote your event to their networks by rewarding them for their successes. Not only that, but you can also view and download detailed data regarding each affiliate’s activity. Events.com provides affordable digital marketing services that can generate powerful analytics to streamline event promotion. Visit our website today to learn about how we can help optimize your digital marketing.
