Introduction
Organizing outdoor sports events to market your business can be challenging but rewarding. And each event organizer, participant, or sponsor’s dream goal? A memorable customer experience.
To deliver a positive customer experience, event professionals face many challenges.
Today, we provide helpful strategies and event promotion ideas you can use in your future events to further promote your event or business.
We’ll also share valuable event marketing and branding insights based on our recent interview with the outdoor sports brand giant – Salomon.
The Power of Outdoor Sporting Events
Over the years, outdoor sporting events have been a company’s favored option to strengthen its brand presence.
Here are some reasons why they are good to use in promoting your business:
Massive Audience Reach
Outdoor events draw large crowds of participants and spectators. Enough to provide businesses with a well-targeted audience.
This diverse audience creates opportunities to build brand awareness and connect with various potential customers and stakeholders.
Brand Exposure
Sponsoring or participating in events offers a high-visibility platform to showcase a brand.
Logos, banners, and promotional displays can enhance brand recognition and recall.
Engagement and Interaction
Outdoor sporting events promote direct engagement with participants and spectators.
Businesses can interact one-on-one with their target audience. They can gain valuable insights, build relationships, and get valuable feedback.
Local Community Support
Supporting local sports events can enhance a business’s reputation within the community.
It promotes a commitment to community well-being, increasing brand loyalty among community members, local businesses and residents.
Market Research Opportunities
Events serve as an ideal place for conducting market research.
Businesses can gather information about consumer preferences and behaviors through surveys and interactions.
Networking Possibilities
These events attract diverse groups of participants, sponsors, and stakeholders.
This makes outdoor events an excellent platform for businesses to connect with people. This can be with potential attendees, partners, collaborators, and industry professionals.
Cause Marketing
Several outdoor sporting events support charitable causes.
Aligning their business with these causes shows how connected you are with consumers.
Product Promotion
Outdoor events offer a platform to showcase products or services to potential attendees.
Businesses can conduct product demos, distribute samples, and conduct sales for higher chances of conversions.
Positive Associations
Associating your business with the energy of the event influences the attendees.
It can transfer positive associations to your brand, building its image and credibility.
Outdoor Sports Event Challenges
Organizers, business owners, and event sponsors often prefer to showcase their products at outdoor events.
Yet, they also face several challenges in organizing and executing the event.
Understanding these challenges is essential to successful event planning and participant satisfaction.
Here are some of the unique challenges encountered by event professionals:
Tight Deadlines
Organizing an outdoor sports event means racing against the clock.
Event organizers must coordinate every aspect to meet event goals and deadlines. Ensuring everything runs great on the big day.
Unpredictable Weather Conditions
Think of the weather as a wild card in the game.
Event planners must prepare for unexpected weather conditions. Be flexible to adjust plans to keep participants and spectators safe and comfortable.
Budget Management
Carefully allocating your budget throughout the event planning and execution process is vital. This will help you to cover all necessary aspects of the event while staying within the budget.
Organizers and sponsors work on wisely allocating funds to cover expenses. These include venue rental, permits, equipment, and marketing while staying within budget.
Safety and Community Engagement
Safety measures and community engagement go hand in hand.
Oganizers must work hand-in-hand with the local community. Ensuring events are safe, well-received, and contribute to the area.
Sponsor’s Scorecard
Sponsors are like teammates in the event. These companies invest in events to gain visibility and engage with the audience.
Evaluating your sponsor’s ROI is crucial. Like tracking your team’s performance to ensure they get the desired results.
Ensuring a Positive Event Experience
Event organizers strive to create a memorable experience for participants.
This includes course safety, hydration, medical support, and post-event amenities.
Real-Time Communication
Communication during the event is like passing the baton in a relay race.
Organizers must update participants on changes in real-time to ensure a smooth race.
Resource Allocation and Team Coordination
Efficiently allocating resources makes a well-coordinated team effort. These include volunteers, medical staff, and sports or equipment.
Every resource plays an essential role in the success of the event.
Sports Venue Rules
Check the venue regulations to ensure they adhere to permits and guidelines for a successful event.
Only then can you ensure participants are happy, sponsors get a return on their investment, and contribute to the sports community.
All these, with the help of an effective event marketing strategy.
What is Event Marketing?
Event marketing refers to planning, organizing, and executing an event to promote a brand, product, or service.
They can be an online event or in person events by attending as an exhibitor, an organizer, or by being a sponsor.
Event marketing can be a powerful tool for your marketing team. It also offers a range of benefits that can contribute to brand growth, customer acquisition, and long-term success.
Benefits of Event Marketing
Event marketing offers a range of benefits and can be a powerful tool to add to your company’s marketing arsenal.
Now more than ever, businesses will make use of event strategies.
Customer experience is essential to make companies stand out from the crowd.
This method also helps those businesses still adjusting to online marketing.
Event Marketing Drives Business Growth
Event marketing helps showcase your products or services to a diverse group of prospective customers in an event.
It allows you to generate leads. It also helps you convert prospects into customers and nurture existing customers.
Through marketing events, companies can show the value of their product or service offers. Also, it highlights competitive advantages and increases their sales and revenue.
Event Marketing Enhances Brand Visibility
Event marketing is a powerful tool for building brand awareness and recognition.
Participating in events increases your chance of being visible to a laser-targeted audience. Establishing brand authority and resulting in increased market share.
Successful event marketing makes a brand’s name, logo, and values more recognizable and memorable.
Event Marketing Fosters Personalized Engagement
Events provide a unique opportunity for one-on-one engagement with customers.
Unlike traditional advertising, event marketing allows businesses to interact with potential clients.
Events help them understand their needs and tailor their messaging based on their preferences.
Using this approach fosters stronger customer relationships and brand loyalty.
This strategy will make people feel valued and heard, which may lead to long-term partnerships.
Event Marketing Promotes Product and Industry Knowledge
Businesses often use events to share knowledge about their products or services.
They can do this through workshops and presentations. Event marketing enables potential customers to gain valuable insights. Also, it helps them learn about new offerings and stay updated on industry events and developments.
While this approach can benefit customers, it positions the business holding these as industry leaders.
How Salomon Used Customer Experience and Unified Branding to Achieve Event Success
As an established business for several years, Salomon focuses on customer experience.
Organizing and doing events made them aware of its many challenges. This also gave them the advantage of knowing more about planning and implementing them.
Salomon chose to work with partners and vendors with an in-depth understanding of their industry. Helping them overcome any challenges and make their next event seamless and successful.
Through Stephanie Gardner, Salomon has partnered with Strike for several years. The company has helped them build a consistent visual representation across many touchpoints.
They decided to do a hard reset on their event assets. That also includes kits for their field employees across North America. Enabling their customers to recall their brand better.
What is Customer Experience?
Customer experience plays a huge role in event marketing. It affects the success of your event and influences how attendees perceive your brand.
It’s all about how your new clients and customers feel about your business with every interaction.
The Role of Customer Experience in Event Marketing
Customer experience refers to your customer’s entire buying journey. From when they found your business to when they buy and continue doing business with you.
Paying close attention to your customers will help you determine the steps that would either make or break your business with them.
Customer experience plays a huge role in your event marketing plan. It impacts the success of your event and how others perceive your brand.
Here’s how customer experience influences event marketing:
First Impressions Matter
Your attendee’s initial touchpoint of your event sets the tone for their experience.
Create a positive first impression to establish better engagement and satisfaction.
Starting from the arrival to the registration process to the event’s ambiance.
Engagement and Interaction
A memorable customer experience inspires attendees to actively take part in your event.
Interactive games, networking opportunities, and engaging content keep attendees involved and interested.
Emotional Connection
Events can create powerful emotional connections with your brand.
A positive and resonating experience helps them form a lasting bond with your brand. It converts spectators and existing clients into loyal customers and brand advocates.
Word of Mouth Marketing and Social Sharing
Attendees who had a great experience may share their positive experiences on social media and with their loved ones and friends.
This can extend the reach and impact of your own event promotion and marketing efforts.
Repeat Attendance
One positive customer experience increases the chance of them going back for another event.
Repeat attendees play a big part in your succeeding events’ success and represent a stable and loyal customer base.
Feedback and Improvement
Customer feedback gathered during and after events can provide valuable insights for improvement.
Listening to their opinions on previous events allows you to refine your own event and marketing tactics. Ensuring that each event becomes better than the last.
Brand Perception
How attendees see your business during the event impacts their perception of your brand.
When they have a seamless, enjoyable experience, it can lead to a positive view of your brand.
Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty
A great customer experience leads to a high customer satisfaction level and loyalty.
Satisfied customers are more likely to be your repeat customers and brand advocates.
How Event Branding Strengthens Brand Awareness
Event branding is a dynamic strategy to boost brand awareness.
Here, we leverage events as platforms to showcase your brand’s identity. To help you create unforgettable experiences and engage with your target audience.
When done correctly, they can leave a lasting and positive impression on event attendees everywhere. Strengthening their brand awareness and recognition.
How Consistent Branding Helps Your Business
Consistent branding plays a huge role in building brand recognition and customer trust.
You can use the same branding elements like colors, logos, fonts, and messaging across other platforms and interactions.
This helps you create a professional and trustworthy image. Which will make your business stand out in a competitive market.
Consistent branding builds an emotional connection with your audience. And enables your customers to easily recall your business.
Branding serves as a bridge to build an emotional connection with your audience.
Simple Tips to Build Your Brand During Trade Shows Events
Trade shows and events are perfect to promote your products and services to your potential customers.
These events help build customer relationships and strengthen your brand’s presence.
Here are a few ideas and some simple yet effective tips to help you build your brand and make a lasting impact:
Define Your Brand Identity
Ensure a clear understanding of your brand’s identity, values, and messaging before the first event begins.
Gaining clarity on this will help you better communicate your own brand value.
Consistent Branding
Maintain consistent branding throughout your promotional materials and trade show displays.
Use your brand colors, logo, and fonts to create a cohesive look that customers can easily recall.
Engaging Booth Design
Use eye-catching visuals and visually appealing booth design that resonates with your brand.
Ensure your booth reflects your brand’s personality to help draw prospective attendees in.
Interactive Experiences
Offer interactive activities that align with your brand.
Doing a product demo or fun games can help leave a lasting impression on attendees.
Compelling Giveaway
Provide memorable but valuable branded giveaways to attendees.
Choose giveaways that could make them remember your brand even after the event.
Knowledgeable Staff
Have a staff knowledgeable enough about your brand’s offerings and messaging.
They should be able to answer questions related to your products and services.
Engage on Social Media
Leverage your social media platforms to create and attract interest before, during, and after the event.
Use event hashtag, social media contests, and branded graphic designs. You can also share behind-the-scenes content and encourage attendees to visit your booth.
How to Make Your Customers Happy
Putting your customer at the center of every business decision is vital. It helps you create happy customers and help your business thrive by sharing its purpose.
Doing this helps them realize that you understand their challenges and desires. And will deliver beyond expectations.
Here are some strategies for creating happier customers and building lasting relationships:
Create Customer Experience Goals
Setting customer experience goals helps you measure the level of service you aim to provide your customers. This also includes the standards you want to uphold.
This ensures that everyone aims to deliver a positive customer experience.
When employees know what’s expected of them, they work towards a common goal and focus on customer satisfaction.
Go the Extra Mile
Exceed customer expectations in ways that will happily surprise them.
It can be as simple as offering discounts for the next product they buy. Give them free samples. Or providing help beyond what’s required (especially in unusual situations).
Making these extra efforts helps them realize how you value their business. They’ll know how invested you are in making their experience one-of-a-kind.
It leaves a lasting impression on them, which can turn a regular customer into a loyal brand advocate.
Treat Each Customer As They Are
Learn about your ideal customer’s buying history and communication preferences with your business.
When you do this, you’re making things extraordinary for each customer. Call them by their names when communicating. Give suggestions they might like based on the last item they bought.
It’s like giving them a personal touch that makes their time with your brand exceptional.
Provide Many Touchpoints
When you offer many ways for them to connect, you make your brand more accessible to more customers.
Some customers prefer talking by phone, while the rest might prefer email or live chat.
This way, you allow customers to reach out in a way that suits them best. Providing this kind of option improves customer satisfaction. You give them many ways to get in touch and still receive help.
Conclusion
An outdoor event is a dynamic platform used to promote products and services. Yet, they come with unique challenges.
Engagement, exceptional customer experience, consistent branding, and making customers happy. These factors make an outdoor sports event a perfect sales and lead-generation source.
It could be sponsoring, hosting a booth, or organizing an event. You can use these strategies as a guide and achieve lasting business growth.
