What Comes Next? Building Momentum After Special Events

As Min­neso­ta basks in the after­glow of Super Bowl LII, the mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions com­mu­ni­ty gath­ered to debrief on all things acti­va­tion at MIMA’s recent event: “How’d we do? Scor­ing Min­neso­ta mar­keters on the big game.” I attend­ed the pan­el with my col­league Jen Bell­mont. As two of the team mem­bers on the ground dur­ing much of our own clients’ Super Bowl acti­va­tions, we appre­ci­at­ed the insight from the par­tic­i­pants, who rep­re­sent­ed Polaris, Land O’ Lakes, U.S. Bank and the Super Bowl Host Com­mit­tee. These four pan­elists offered a peek behind the cur­tain for what their stel­lar acti­va­tions required, and although their events were very dif­fer­ent, their advice for tack­ling projects of this scale was sim­i­lar: Be cre­ative, be nim­ble and build relationships.

These are things we also found to be true while work­ing on Super Bowl projects, and in addi­tion, attend­ing the pan­el sparked even more dis­cus­sions about how to lever­age spe­cial event acti­va­tions well after they have come and gone. Here are a few of our strate­gies for the answer to “What comes next?” fol­low­ing a big event:

• A com­mon goal of spe­cial event acti­va­tions is to raise aware­ness, but an impact­ful expe­ri­ence and prompt fol­low-up can turn aware­ness into con­sid­er­a­tion. Inter­act­ing with posts on social media is a great, effi­cient way to devel­op a deep­er con­nec­tion with prospects. Did you col­lect data from guests who vis­it­ed your acti­va­tion? If so, now’s the time to reach out while your brand is still top-of-mind. Con­sid­er adding your social media links to any com­mu­ni­ca­tion going to these prospec­tive cus­tomers, and you just might find your fol­low­ers and sales will increase.
• Event acti­va­tions are an oppor­tu­ni­ty to not just get in front of a new audi­ence but also to con­nect with your exist­ing cus­tomers and recon­nect with past clients. After all’s said and done, fol­low up with these indi­vid­u­als to thank them for par­tic­i­pat­ing and make sure they feel appre­ci­at­ed. Think about pro­vid­ing a spe­cial offer to this group as a thank-you and to help devel­op brand loy­al­ty fol­low­ing a pos­i­tive inter­ac­tion at the event.
• There will always be peo­ple who aren’t able to attend your acti­va­tion, whether it’s due to tim­ing, loca­tion or oth­er cir­cum­stances. To help share your mes­sages and unique expe­ri­ence with this audi­ence, use social media to bring the acti­va­tion to them. Using pho­tos and videos col­lect­ed through­out the event, cre­ate a con­tent cal­en­dar that cap­tures the essence of the fes­tiv­i­ties, and share it to reach those who weren’t able to attend while also enhanc­ing the con­nec­tion with those were able to participate.

With large events come large oppor­tu­ni­ties, and the big game was no excep­tion, allow­ing local brands to flex their event acti­va­tion skills on a world-wide stage. Thanks to cre­ativ­i­ty, plan­ning and, now, the fol­low-up, these orga­ni­za­tions will ben­e­fit from what they learned and the con­nec­tions they made for years to come.