Digital marketing is a broad term that commonly refers to all marketing efforts that occur online. Before you decide the elements to include in your marketing strategy, we invite you to learn more about each tactic.
Email Marketing
Is email marketing dead? Heck no! Overall, 84.3% of Pathwire survey respondents check their email at least once a day, with 25.4% interacting with their personal email five times a day or more.
While email marketing continues to be one of the most effective and cost-efficient ways to reach eventgoers, it’s critical to have a strategy that’s more mature than ‘spray and pray’ or your messages won’t be seen. In addition to focusing on details like thoughtful sender names and subject lines to earn an open, the body of the email must be designed well, mobile-friendly and include a bold CTA that drives a desired action.
4 Essential Email Marketing KPIs for Live Events Organizations
Display Advertising
Display ads are a type of online advertisement that appear on third-party websites, apps and videos. These online ads feature text, image and other multimedia elements to market events, services or products. Leveraged by both brand and demand marketers, they have become a cost-effective way for businesses to reach and acquire new customers.
With increasing operational costs and tightened marketing budgets, a positive return on ad spend (ROAS) for all your campaigns is more critical than ever. As a publisher that offers online advertising opportunities, we’re in a unique position to share the elements that must be attended to when developing a great online ad.
Beginner’s Guide to Online Advertising: Display Ad Units
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to promote brands, products, events and services. The most successful organizations consistently post interesting and useful content to engage with their followers daily.
Arguably the most dynamic marketing environment, social media allows brands to easily connect with customers, generate awareness and increase sales. It’s imperative, though, to have a strategy for every platform with specific goals to properly gauge your success and the return on investment of your time, effort and energy.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is an umbrella term that includes both paid search and search engine optimization. Most effectively done in tandem, this digital marketing strategy is crucial for live events organizations to stand out from the crowd on Google and other top search engines.
Paid search is used to ensure that your organization’s events and services are visible on search engine results pages (SERPs). When people type keyphrases (keyword phrases) into search engines, these paid campaigns enable your business to appear as a result for that search query.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process used to improve the positioning and visibility of web pages in organic search results. Developing authority on a topic that is recognized by search engines is a long-term investment that requires technical skills and thoughtful content development.
By ranking highly on search engines (both paid and organic), you raise awareness of your brand, venue and events with the ultimate goal of converting this better-quality traffic into ticket sales revenue.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing valuable content to engage your target audience. This content can take on many forms – articles, news, podcast episodes, newsletters, emails, videos and more – but must be relevant and useful for the end consumer.
Effective content marketing doesn’t replace other marketing tactics – it supports and improves the performance of these tactics.
Micro-Moments: A Guide to Engaging Customers and Filling Seats
Influencer Marketing
At a fundamental level, influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing that uses endorsements and product mentions from influencers–individuals who have a dedicated social following and are viewed as experts within their niche (source).
It’s unlikely that you can afford a celebrity endorsement – it’s hard to keep up with the Kardashians – so you should focus on local influencers that have a more geo-targeted audience. With a little effort, you should be able to find a great fit for your brand in the form of a mommy blogger, sports podcaster or musical theater TikToker. Once you discover the right influencer, collaborate with them on a promotion or campaign that builds your brand and sells tickets.
Learn More
Download our Guide to Marketing Theatre and Live Events