Ever heard of FOMO?
It’s an acronym for ‘Fear of missing out’ and in my humble opinion, it’s one of the best tactics you can use for marketing your event, especially if you have access to video.
When marketing your event you not only need to grab your potential attendees attention, you want them to take action right away, whether it’s booking their tickets prior to the event, waking up on the day of the event and deciding to go (because they saw your awesome video in their social media feed), or they’ve seen your wrap up video post event and vow they won’t miss out next year.
These days it’s all about visuals so by investing in good video coverage of your event, you’ll have the ultimate content suite that you can re-purpose for every aspect of your marketing. There are so many benefits to having great video footage which you’ll be able to use over and over again and for a multitude of different things.
Pre-Event Promotion
If you have footage from a prior event, use it to create small social media snippets that can be drip fed on social media leading up to your event. Tease people with what they can expect to experience and get that FOMO rolling. Releasing regular short videos with create excitement and awareness of your event.
Make sure the videos not only show the event performers, speakers or entertainment, but most importantly the people attending the event. Nothing causes FOMO more than seeing other people enjoying themselves. It’s crucial to have a good mix of both in your videos.
Sunshine Coast Horizon Festival 2019 – Promotional video.
Other ideas
- Ask performers, speakers or exhibitors that will be at your event to record short vlogs talking about what they will be doing at your event or what they are excited about. It’ll be like a personal invitation from them. You could post a series of these individual vlogs daily in the lead up to your event. It can’t hurt to ask them to post on their own social media as well.
- Behind the scenes vlogging of the set up and lead up to the event. Create excitement by giving viewers a sneak peak into what goes on behind the scenes. Instagram Stories is a great platform for this.
Live Event Videos
Sharing videos during your event can give your attendees cool content to share on their own platforms, showing their friends what they are doing and expanding your reach even further. If you’re encouraging attendees to use a hashtag for your event, keep your eye on what other people are posting so that you can share their content as well (making sure you give them credit). You could even incorporate (with their permission) some of their footage in your pre-event videos for your next event.
Hints and Tips
- Grab attendees and ask them how they are enjoying the event, these short video snippets can then be used as testimonials on social media during your current event or for pre-promotion of your next event.
- You will of course film performers, speakers etc, but make sure you capture the emotion of the people in the audience attending and enjoying the event. Capturing that few seconds of emotion is gold when promoting your event.
- Include footage of any sponsors or partner logos or overall presence at the event.
Post Event Videos
A wrap up video has so many benefits. It’s essentially a beautifully packaged show-reel showcasing the success and hard work of everyone involved in the event. It can be used for a number of highly beneficial reasons.
- Performers, speakers or entertainers can use it on their own platforms to showcase their involvement in your event. This will help spread awareness even further.
- You can use your video to show potential sponsors or future partners.
- It’ll create FOMO for people who didn’t get to go to the event and they won’t want to miss out next time!
Sunshine Coast Horizon Festival 2019 – Wrap up video.
Flinton Races, Western Downs
Hints and Tips
- Keep your videos short and punchy. They key is to leave viewers wanting more.
- Make sure to have a call-to-action at the end of your video, whether it’s booking tickets, using a #hashtag or sharing the video. Make sure you know what the goal of your video is and your CTA should align with this.
- Once you’ve put your wrap up video on YouTube, contact speakers, performers or entertainers from the event to let them know the video is online and that they are welcome to share the video across their own networks.
- Cover all bases and make sure you format videos for all platforms including IGTV and IG Stories.
- Invite some influencers to your event and ask them to post videos or vlogs. Influencers could be anyone from the performers or speakers at your event to your sponsors and partners. If they are filming themselves at your event and using your hashtag then your reach will extend even further.
- Use social media advertising with your videos. Allocate some of your budget for sponsored and promoted video posts.
At the end of the day, when you are investing in video for an event or business, you should have clear goals of what you are wanting to achieve. Make sure you list your goals and then structure your video production plan around that.