Energise Enterprise

Energise Enterprise is a month long festival featuring events aimed to inspire, educate and help small business's in Victoria. LMFF held one such event titled "Event marketing: connecting with your customer" at one of the private screening rooms at Hoyts in Melbourne last week.

With so many markets, festivals, sponsorship opportunities and pop up exhibitions and events these days, brands are inundated with opportunities to showcase their product/service. Event marketing can be a costly exercise, however when maximised and executed well, the PR value and brand exposure can be priceless.

As L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival have been working with brands from a variety of industries for many years now, the team discussed how to really maximise your involvement with Event Marketing.

The event covered topics like:
1. Why would you consider an event as a marketing tool?
2. How do you prepare before you commit to an event?
3. How do you ensure the event is the right fit for your brand?
4. How can you ensure you are showcased effectively?
5. How do you engage?
6. How will you leverage your participation?

Some of the key points iSpyStyle picked up are listed below:

1. By associating yourself with a larger event, you will most likely have access to suppliers at a discounted price through the partnership.

2. For every $1 spent on sponsorship you need to spend $3 on making the event look amazing and executed to a high standard. e.g. If you spent $10,000 on sponsorship, you need to spend $30,000 on the actual event, marketing, promotional material, ambassadors, gift bags etc.

3. Before committing to an event, research which brands have long term relationships with that event and if they are a brand you'd like to network with or partner with, you can ask to be introduced as a result of being involved.

4. Be honest about how you will assess the success or failure of this event with the event team so they can try and help you achieve your goals as its in their best interests for you to continue to be involved with the event in the future.

5. Use the social media platforms of the event to your advantage. Offer prizes, gifts and special offers to the event's facebook or twitter followers in order to reach new audience and build awareness.

6. It's recommended to commit to a festival or event for a minimum of 3 years, so that you can build on your exposure, branding and association each year and really tap into that event's audience. Longevity helps reiterated your association.

7. Once you're involved, promote your association on your email signature, online, through you social media, in your retail store, in your newsletter etc. The more you leverage off the event, the more you'll get in return.