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This article is part of an ongoing series of posts, which is based on the book 'Top 21 Marketing methods for membership websites published by the Subscription Coach Amanda Northcutt.

 Download the whole series as an ebook

There are many opportunities for creative marketing at trade shows and industry conference: purchase booth space, buy a sponsorship through the event's organizer, hold an event that spins off with the show/conference as well as many other.

If you're lucky enough to find that someone else from your industry is organizing an annual event in which your audience is all together, you must attend.

In relation to hosting an event of your own, taking part in an event which someone else is putting on is like clicking the "easy" button. But, if you simply attend without a plan, you might as well stay in your 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 for an event of someone else's is being a speaker. Speaking engagements will be discussed in a moment and, however uncomfortable it may be initially, public speaking in front of your target group is as powerful as gold. It's a fast path to credibility and confidence, provided your presentation is entertaining, valuable, and relatable.

Consider sponsorship opportunities similar ways to what you would in any advertising paid for. It should be measurable, and the responsibility lies with you with an event sponsorship. The presence you make at the event, brand experiences you build, as well as your call to action will likely decide the success of your event or lack thereof. Your strategy for your event should be pre-planned, with an on-site plan, and a follow up sequence. It doesn't matter the event regardless of an official sponsorship. However, it will likely be significantly easier if you have one.

Preparation: If you can have access to the list of attendees before the event, it will allow you to get them through the sales pipeline faster. If you're a corporate sponsor you can ask the event organizers for ways to maximize the value of your sponsorship. Request more than is included within the sponsorship deal If you find a approach to give worth to the participants and make the organizer look good.

If you don't have sponsorship and you're not an influencer within your field You're not likely to attract the attention of the people who are organizing the event in any important manner. You can overcome this issue by joining Twitter as well as Instagram and using the appropriate hashtags to locate others attending. Get to know these folks and then consider hosting a social hour, lunch, or off site mini-workshop on the days or hours in the days and hours leading up to the main event.

The day of: Sponsor or not find a method to capture leads. You can definitely do this in a one-to-one manner by providing a relevant resource or offering the prospect you are interested in exchange for contact information or permission to follow their social media accounts. Be attentive and avoid being pushy or salesy. If you're able to assist anyone, inform them that they can help and request permission to contact them. A moment to make a quick note about every person in order to make a personal follow-up email is going to set your self apart from the ones who send generic follow-up messages without personal details.

Track the event hashtag on social media during and after the event, and then use it for your personal hashtag. This is a great opportunity to boost your profile and increase your visibility to the attendees. It's also an excellent opportunity to identify potential clients as well as influencers both during and after the event.

If you're planning to exhibit at a conference, you need a way to be noticed. It's not my expertise so get yourself on Pinterest and browse for ideas for your creative process. Get noticed and if your business is a good fit for some fun and lighthearted entertainment make sure to play with it. Another way to make this happen is to set up a themed booth and have employees or helpers dress according to a specific fashion.

One thing I've seen done successfully is to have employees walking around and asking people would they like to be invited to an exclusive bar/restaurant to enjoy cocktails at the end of the evening. They then have to go into your booth and learn more about your offering and then sign up (lead capture) to receive an invitation. If you're doing this, then you must be a friendly group running your booth - people whom your customers would actually like to spend time having drinks with. You can rent the most popular room or bar at a local restaurant and then pay for the bill after the evening. This kind of thing can create a buzz (no pun intended) at the event, allows prospects to have a positive experience of your company which in turn acts as a lead-generating event in person.

Follow up Your entire preparation and preparation on site will go to waste when you fail to follow-up in the follow-up plan. Remember, lead capture during the event is essential because otherwise, you'll not have enough people to follow up with. Oops.

The day after the event, write an individual email including the personal details you made notes of your time with them (you have done that, didn't you?) Make a connection to them via their preferred social media platform for that two-in-one punch. Don't put it off for too long. You need to profit from the hype surrounding your event as well as momentum. If you delay this for a week, you've likely missed the boat. After the personalized email, trigger the automated drip sequence that you created prior to the event, from your email provider (you have permission to send emails to them, too, right?) And then, move them through your sales pipeline just as you would someone who visited your site. However, you've seen this person in the flesh therefore your calls to actions (CTAs) must have more significance (attend an informative webinar, start the trial, purchase) as opposed to someone who only beginning your drip process after picking up the lead magnet on your site.

If you are only allowed to distribute cards, but you are not able to collect names and contact info due to some reason, you can create your own landing page and include a special lead magnet offer exclusively for conference attendees. Have a special collection of business cards made with the web address of the landing page and brief descriptions of the awesome free resource you've created just for them. Make sure you have an contact form available on the landing page in exchange for downloading and start an automated nurture sequence for them to adhere to.

 There's a hundred ways to work this, but the main takeaway is that you need an prior, during, and post-event plan that is measurable.

Webinars

A webinar is a 45-90 minutes of value-added online seminars that is live on the internet to an audience or pre-recorded and consumed upon demand. Webinars make excellent top-of-the-line source and build email lists tools, but can also be used toward the final stage of a sales funnel to solicit a sales.

Webinars can be produced yourself as a one-off, produced in a set of events called an event, either with or without guests or even as a guest on someone else's. Whatever the case, they are a great way to display your expertise and build authority and trust in your industry space. You can use them for a single time, or you can create permanent webinars with the same content that should apply to the next 12-24 months.

If you operate in a closed-model membership (meaning it is only possible to open the site to new members few times in the year) A single conference or webinar can serve as a fantastic closing strategy. I'd suggest offering such a webcast live, and then mentioning an extremely exclusive and time-sensitive offer within the marketing materials you use. It can only be made available to those who attend live at the end of the webinar - not viewers who view the replay. You can still send the replay for those who did not attend live. However, you may be able to boost your live participation and closing percentage if your audience knows there's something very special happening in the closing.

Hosting a summit is one of the best moves you can make to become an authority/influencer. It is essential to have an extensive email list to attract expert guests from other industries and if you manage to pull this off it will surely be rewarded. This is a lot of work. I wouldn't recommend doing it unless you can commit enough time to ensure that your tech, your summit marketing guests, guest list, content plans schedule, follow-up, and more done.

As a guest at someone who is hosting a webinar and inviting their audience to attend can be a fantastic opportunity to test your hand into the water and to get familiar with the camera, without having to put into the work hosting your own. If you are working with others on cross-promotions and have an organic influencer strategy implemented, you're likely to be top in the guest list for those who are hosting webinars and summits.

Similar to fully exploiting the power of a conference or an meeting, having a pre-webinar promotional strategy and follow-up plan is crucial. Since webinars and summits are an excellent source of information for your intended audience (not to mention the hefty amount of work on your part) be sure that you reuse the information from the webinar: turn it into a blog series, ebook podcast, or videos on YouTube, podcasts, a lead magnet, and so on.

 The most crucial thing to keep in mind whether you're hosting or a guest is to provide an inordinate quantity of value for participants of your webinar. Don't be tempted to hold back your secret sauce - it's the moment to show that you've got the secret sauce and that there's plenty more where that came from behind your paywall.

Meetups or events in person

Meetups and events in person may include one of these: organizing happy hours, live lessons, classes, workshops, sponsoring of in-person events in cities where a critical mass of your members reside or any other way you can get people together in person. These events could be for unpaid or free and educational in nature or just good fun for community-building.

The majority of membership websites we work with offer an online community component in the membership. After all, a community is the biggest differentiators between a membership and a class. If you can gather your group in person and host an event that your members (and future members) enjoy and then talk about on social media it will increase sales, cLTV, rate of conversion, as well as the power of your online members.

These kinds of events are a great place for members, both current and future to mingle and chat. Let your current members do your "selling" to you to prospective members through casual chat. If a handful of your members are happy with your membership enough to show up somewhere physically speaking about your membership can be an easy topic of the conversation.

For industry events and trade shows You must plan ahead of time, make the actual event live up to the expectations, and plan the ability to follow-up. How you plan and conduct follow-up depends on the kind of event you're holding.

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). The follow-up should consist of the survey that attendees completed, bonus materials, and an offer to buy other items. If you've met someone in person and earned their trust, use that momentum into relevant potential upsells.

If you're planning to host an evening of happy hour, a little planning is needed. Focus on choosing a great location, serving food and maybe drinks, and getting people to the event. When you're there, interact with all attendees and make sure you don't have anyone awkwardly excluded. The idea of inviting current members to bring a like-minded friend with them is an effective way to grow your membership as well.

A Happy Hour isn't the best opportunity to make sales If you're hosting prospective members to join, you should have a clever strategy to ensure that you follow-up with the people you invite. The lead-capture strategy could include participation in a contest that offers an unrestricted membership, merchandise, etc. It could also be some other method that is more subtle, such as handing people cards that have the promo code that is specifically with a special promo code.

Regardless of the type of event, ensure you have an approach to lead collection and follow-up with prospects that are in attendance. In the same way that your membership marketing materials must match what the paying members receive behind the paywall, the event's promotion will need to be in line with the content you're capable of delivering on the spot or you're at risk of being branded a bad name on the internet. Create raving fans of your event, not naysayers so you can successfully hold future events. This is the ideal time to make use of the underpromise overdeliver rule.

Speaking engagements

It's possible that this could be scarier than direct sales for some of us However, it's incredibly effective in the right way as well, documented, and used. If you're new to public speaking, it's fine. Things like blogging, guest podcasting hosting or even being a guest on webinars, making videos as well as. These are all excellent preparation to speak in public.

There's no need to aim at the stars as you're starting out. Join a local business group to give a speech there or teach an in person workshop to some of your peers. There is even the option of going to a nearby town where you don't know anyone to make a presentation If you're looking to ease the burden. Beginning with a small amount, and then as your experience and proficiency improves, up level to a bigger job.

Offer to lead breaks at conferences or hold an unofficial breakout event either prior or in the aftermath of someone else's occasion (in an ethical manner, naturally). 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 suitable speaking opportunities since you have a strong network and have put in the time to build the social capital of that network, then you're much more likely to be invited to be a candidate for a speaking slot even if your name isn't popular yet.

Speaking gigs with a higher profile have the same value as writing your own book, hosting a conference, or perhaps a summit alongside others in the industry, both with respect to the reach and impact. However big your speaking engagement, you should take advantage of your talk by repurposing it for different media. First make sure you're able to take a quality video of your talk or talk. After that, you can upload your video to your website, both behind and in front of the paywall. Upload it to YouTube, use the content to create a series of blog posts as well as a podcast, or to spark discussion in your communities, both paid and free as well as embed the video under the "About" or "Resources" tab on your website.

 Additionally, you can use the video recording to apply to other speaking opportunities. When you've established yourself as an excellent speaker and promoted your presentation accordingly, using a recorded videos of your talk as well as some proof of social evidence (positive comments from attendees), your public speaking experience will be more easy.