As with any brand activation, preparing your brand for an event requires a lot of little pieces coming together. Making sure brand ambassadors are prepared, creating beautiful displays, purchasing event merchandise are just a few. Here is a complete event checklist for activating your brand and making sure those pieces fit together seamlessly.
Understand your buyer persona
Your buyer persona needs to be at the center of any marketing efforts your company is investing in. However, your buyer personas are especially important in brand activations. That is why it is the number one point on our events checklist.
Why is it so important? In order to prepare your brand for an event, you need to know who exactly you’re targeting. What are their pain points? Challenges? Why are they at the event? How is your brand going to solve their problem? Knowing your target audience before going to an event will help you tremendously in resonating with potential customers at an event.
Don’t know how to define your buyer persona? Check out our helpful guide to buyer personas here.
Keep your brand consistent throughout all mediums
Second on our events checklist is brand consistency. This doesn’t just mean making sure your colors are the same in the images you post on Facebook and on Twitter. Brand consistency means having consistent messages, tone, solutions, look, feel, and yes, colors and logos, throughout all mediums – on and offline.
Checking off brand consistency on your events checklist is essential for your brand activation. It makes sure your potential customer won’t get confused. All elements of your brand, including tone, messaging, look and feel, should be the same on your website as they are at an event. You want a lead from an event to turn into a customer post-event. How will that happen if they go to your website and the messaging is different than what your employees expressed to them in person at an event?
Don’t forget to refer to your brand style guide!
Sharing your company’s brand style guide with your events team will ensure that company ambassadors portray your brand consistently throughout all mediums.
When your entire team has a copy of the branding guidelines, it’s more likely that your company will be communicated in a consistent manner across all channels. People who received your company business card at an event will see the same branding on the website they visit when they’re back in the office.
Make sure your signage displays a clear message
Who is your target audience at this event and what issue are you trying to solve for them? Those are the two most important items that should be communicated by your event space. Your company’s signage should be easy to read, consistent with your brand, resonate with your buyer persona, and answer those two questions.
Have consistent uniforms that tell your brand story
Your brand ambassadors uniforms will contribute to brand consistency and will aid in telling your brand’s story to potential customers. This takes us back to the buyer personas (we told you they’d be at the center our events checklist!).
What type of uniform will connect best with your buyer persona? A more professional uniform? A playful, laid back uniform? Does your target client work in a startup and prefer a more Zuckerburg-grey-tee-and-blue-jean look?
Hand out giveaways that keep your brand top-of-mind long after the event ends
Customers that receive a branded gift from a company are more than 85% percent likely to do business with that same company. Handing out a promotional product at an event brings your brand home. A giveaway that is relevant, useful, and timely is more likely to turn a lead into a customer.
Not sure how to pick out the right promotional product to giveaway at your next brand activation? Check out this blog post on using promotional merchandise at events to attract clients to get started!
