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This blog post is part the series, and is based off the book "Top 21 marketing methods for membership websites Written by the Subscription Coach Amanda Northcutt.

 Download the whole series in a book

Creative marketing opportunities abound in trade shows and conference: purchase booth space, buy sponsors through the organizer, host an event that spins off with the conference or show or conference, and many more.

If you are lucky enough that someone else in your industry is organizing an annual event in which your audience is together, it is your responsibility to be present.

When it comes to organizing your own event, going to an event that another is putting on is like hitting the easy button. However, if all you do is show up, sans strategy it's best to remain at at home.

There are often conference/event/trade show sponsorships available for purchase, booths, and other opportunities to get amplified exposure to attendees over what you can accomplish on a one-to-one basis. One of the Holy Grail of event engagement at someone else's event is to be a speaker. I'll address speaking engagements in the future, but as uncomfortable as it might be at first the public speaking experience before your intended group is as powerful as gold. It's an easy way to build trust and authority, provided the speech you give is compelling relevant, informative, and memorable.

Consider sponsorship opportunities similar ways to what you would in any advertising paid for. It should be measurable, which is a lot on your shoulders with an event sponsorship. The presence you make during the event, your brand experiences you build, as well as your the call to action you make will determine your success or lack of it. Your event strategy needs to include pre-event prep, an on-site plan, and the follow-up process. This is true regardless of the event regardless of a paid sponsorship, though this will be much more straightforward if you've got one.

Preparation: If you can get access and exposure to the attendance list before the event, you will be able to move people through the sales pipeline faster. If you're a corporate sponsor and organizer, inquire with the organizers on how you can make the most of the sponsorship. Ask for more than what is included in the package of sponsorship if you can find a way to provide worth to the participants and make the organizer look nice.

If you don't have sponsorship and you're not an influential person in your area, you're unlikely to get the attention of people who are organizing the event in any meaningful way. Get yourself on Twitter as well as Instagram and then using the hashtag to find others who are coming. Get to know these folks and then consider hosting a social hour, meal, or a mini-workshop offsite during the hours and days surrounding the main occasion.

The day to: Sponsor or not Find a way to get leads. This can be done on a one-to-one basis with a pertinent resource or offering to a potential customer who is interested to exchange contact details or the permission to interact with the person on social media. Be attentive and be respectful, not pushy, or salesy. If you're able to assist somebody, let them know you think you can and request permission to contact them. A moment to make a quick note about every person in order to send a contextual follow-up is going to set you head and shoulders above the ones who send generic follow-up messages completely lacking personal details.

Find the hashtag used for the event via social media throughout as well as after the event and then use it for yourself. This is a great method to increase your visibility and make you more visible to guests. It's also an excellent way to track down prospects as well as influencers both during and after the occasion.

If you're planning to have a booth in a conference, then you need a way to be noticed. I'm no expert here however, you can go to Pinterest and search for innovative ideas. Get noticed and if your sector is conducive to some fun and lighthearted entertainment and entertainment, you should play it up. A good way to achieve this is to create an event that is themed and where workers or assistants dress in a certain way.

One thing I've seen done successfully is to have employees wandering around asking guests if they'd prefer to join an exclusive bar/restaurant to enjoy cocktails at the end of the evening. After that, they must go to your booth to hear more about what you have to offer and then sign up (lead capture) to receive an invitation. If you do this, it is essential to ensure that you have an enjoyable group of people at your booth, people who your potential customers actually want to spend time having drinks with. Rent out an area or bar that is popular at a local restaurant and make the payment at the end of the evening. Something like this creates a little buzz (no pun intended) at the event, lets potential customers have an enjoyable experience when they interact with your brand, and essentially serves as a direct lead magnet.

Follow-up: All your prep and preparation on site is wasted when you fail to follow-up on the follow-up strategy. Keep in mind that lead-capture during the event is crucial, otherwise you won't have plenty of people to follow-up with. Oops.

The day after the party, send them an individual email with your contact information that you made a note of the time you saw them (you did that, right?) Make a connection with them through their most popular social media site for the one-two punch. Don't wait around on this. It is imperative to profit from the hype surrounding your event and momentum and if you postpone this step for a week, you've likely been missing the mark. After you've sent the customized email is sent, activate the automatic drip sequence you created before the event, from your email provider (you have permission to send emails to your customers, didn't you?) and move them through the sales funnel the same way you would any other person who visits your website. You've actually met them in person and your calls to take (CTAs) must have more significance (attend an engaging webinar, start your trial, or buy) rather than someone who just starting your drip sequence after picking up your lead magnet site.

If you are only able to hand out cards but not collect names and contact info due to some reason, you can create your own landing page and include an offer for leads specifically for attendees of conferences. Create a unique set of business cards created that include the landing page URL and brief descriptions of the awesome free resource that you've designed just for them on it. Then have your email capture form on that landing page , in exchange for downloading and start an automated nurture sequence to be followed.

 There's an infinite number of possibilities to use this but the key point is that you must have an prior event, post-event, and during plan that is measurable.

Webinars

A webinar is a 45-90 minutes of value-added online seminars which can be broadcast live on the internet to an audience or recorded and played on demand. Webinars make excellent top-of-the-line sources and email list building instruments. They could also be utilized towards the end of a marketing funnel to solicit a purchase.

Webinars can be produced yourself in a single event, or in a set of events called the summit, with or without guests, or as an invited guest at someone else's. Whatever the case, they can and should be leveraged for demonstrating your expertise, as well as establish credibility and confidence in your industry space. They can be used one time or produce evergreen webinars, the content of that should apply to the next 12-24 months.

If you operate a closed model with your membership (meaning that you open your site to new members couple of times in the year) A single webinar or summit can be an excellent closing tactic. I would recommend offering this kind of webinar live and hinting at an extremely exclusive limited-time offer on the marketing materials you use. It will only be offered only to attendees who attended live after the session, and not for people who are watching the replay. You can still send the replay to those who don't attend the live event, however you could increase your live attendance and closing percentage when your viewers know something special is happening in the closing.

Hosting a summit is one of the best moves you can make to become an authority/influencer. There must be a substantial email list to get expert guests from other industries, but if you can succeed you will definitely be well-rewarded. This can be a significant amount of work. I wouldn't recommend doing it unless you can commit the time necessary to get your tech, your summit marketing guests, guest list, content plans as well as scheduling and follow-up done.

Participating as a guest speaker on other's webinar and inviting your viewers to join is the perfect chance to get your feet into the water and become at ease on the camera without putting in the time and effort required hosting your own. If you are working with other companies on cross-promotions, and you have an organic influencer strategy implemented, you're likely to be at the top of mind on the list of guests for those who are hosting webinars or summits.

Like fully harnessing the power of an industry conference or meeting, having a pre-webinar marketing strategy and a plan for follow-up is essential. As webinars and summits offer such a wealth of information for your intended audience (not to mention the hefty amount of effort on your behalf) ensure that you reuse the information that you learned from the event: transform the webinar into a blog post collection, an ebook podcast, or podcast series, YouTube videos, a lead magnet, etc.

 One of the most important things to consider whether you're hosting or guesting is that you provide an unimaginable quantity of value for webinar attendees. Don't be tempted to keep your secrets sauce - it's the moment to show that you've got the recipe that works and there's plenty more where it came from under your paywall.

In-person events or meetups

In-person events and meetups may include anything from holding happy hour, in-person lessons, classes, workshops, sponsoring of in-person events in cities in which a significant portion of your participants reside as well as any other place it is possible to bring people together in real life. These events could be for unpaid or free and educational in nature or simply fun to participate in gatherings that build community.

Most membership sites we work with include an online community element within the membership. After all, a community is the most important differences between a membership and a class. If you are able to gather your group in person and put on an event that your members (and future members) are excited about and later praise on the internet it will improve sales, cLTV and convert rates and also the strength of your online group.

These types of gatherings are a great place for current and prospective members to meet and talk. Let your current members do their "selling" for you prospects through casual conversation. If you have a few members of your current membership value the benefits of your membership to make it clear that they will show up somewhere in person, talking about your membership is likely to be a natural part of the conversation.

For industry events and trade fairs it is essential to plan prior to the event, and make your occasion live up to its hype, and have an action plan for following up. The way you prepare and the follow-up depends on the kind of event that you are hosting.

If it's a workshop, you're likely charging people to attend, and will need to prepare marketing materials, and then the workshop details themselves (workbooks, handouts, a slide deck, your presentation, guest speakers/instructors). Follow-up materials should comprise a survey of attendees, bonus materials, and an offer to buy something else. If you've just met with people in person, and earned the trust of them, turn this trust into profitable potential upsells.

If you are hosting an event like a happy hour, only a small amount of prep work should be necessary. Make sure you choose a good venue, providing appetizers or drinks, as well as getting people there. Once you're there, engage with the people in attendance, and make sure there's no one absent. The idea of inviting current members to bring a similar-minded person along is an easy method to increase the number of people who attend.

While a happy hour is not the ideal place to be salesy If you're hosting prospective members to join, you should have a clever way of making sure you follow-up with them. Lead capture might be entry into a contest for an unrestricted membership, items. It could also be something more subtle like handing the prospect cards with the promo code that is specifically in them.

No matter what the event, ensure you have the right plan to capture leads and follow-up for potential customers who are attending. And just as your marketing materials for memberships have to match the materials that paying members actually get behind the paywall, your promotion for the event must match what you're able to deliver in person or else you're at risk of being branded a bad name online. Make sure you have raving supporters of your events rather than naysayers to ensure that you are able to successfully host future events. This is the ideal time to take advantage of the underpromise overdeliver concept.

Speaking engagements

Perhaps this is even scarier than direct sales for some, but it's enormously impactful when it's done right as well, documented, and utilized. If you're still new to public speaking, don't worry about it. Activities like blogging, guest podcasting hosting or even appearing as a guest speaker on webinars, making videos, etc., are all great preparation to speak in public.

It's not necessary to aim for the moon as you're starting out. Look for a local association of business and make a presentation at the event or conduct the workshop in-person to tiny groups. There is even the option of going to the town nearby in which you're not familiar with anyone and present a talk if you really want to ease the burden. Start small, and when your confidence and proficiency improves, you can move to a higher level job.

Offer to lead the breakout session at conferences, or host an unofficial breakout session either prior or in the aftermath of someone else's conference or event (in an ethical manner, obviously). Once you've done those things successfully, start to harness your organic influencer, guest blogging/podcasting/webinar hosting strategies to move further up the speaking ladder. If you're able to access pertinent speaking opportunities due to the fact that you have a strong network and you've put in the time to build social capital within that group, you'll be much more likely to be invited for a speaker slot, even if your name isn't famous at the moment.

Speaking gigs with a higher profile can be as lucrative as writing your own book, hosting a conference, or even a summit with other experts from the field with respect to impact and reach. No matter the size of the speaking gig, make sure you maximize your presentation through repurposing it to various other media. First make sure you're able to capture a high-quality video footage of your talk or talk. After that, you can upload your video to your website, both before and behind the paywall. Put it up on YouTube and use the video as a blog series or podcast subject, and use it to spark discussion in your paid and free communities Include an embedded video under your website's "About" and "Resources" tab on your site.

 Not to mention, use the recording of your video to be eligible to speak at other events. When you've established yourself as a valuable speaker and market your presentation accordingly, using a recorded videos of your talk as well as some proof of social proof (positive reviews you got from attendees), your public speaking experience will be more easy.