Web : How to Use Events to Effectively Reach Your Customers

Event marketing is a personalized form of marketing, which is also referred to as EBM (Event Based Marketing). As the name suggests, the strategy behind EBM is to offer various events in a customer's life that give you the opportunity to interact with them on a more personal basis. As compared to direct marketing where businesses contact customers through emails, messages, ads, commercials, promotional letters and more, EBM is a much different form. With EBM, businesses form more personal relationships with their customers. In addition, the EBM strategy lets the businesses respond to their customer's needs at the right time and in the expected manner. Here, we are going to give you the right tips on how using event based marketing can work for the good of your business.

1. Think out of the box

There are many events that can connect you to your customers, but the most common events used by businesses are the holidays and sales. If you want to achieve more with your customers then you need to do something beyond the norm. Try to think out of the box by looking at different times and occasions where you can have an event other than these pre-defined ones that everyone expects. Some examples of events from which you can take advantage are birthdays, marriage, change of season, graduations, app downloads, store visits, inbound calls and any other event in your customer's lives or in their relationship with your business which can be celebrated. You just need to bring your creativity out.

2. Know your customers using cloud ERP

Knowing your customer is very important in knowing which event to respond to and how should you respond. You need to gather data about your customers - such as when they are most expected to buy, what events in their life will trigger a purchase and more. It will help you to have an idea about what triggers your customers will respond to. You can use cloud ERP to keep this information about your customers. Cloud ERP is fully mobile, global and social. And it enables you to stay connected to your global network of customers.

3. Manage time properly

In event based marketing, time holds a great place. Depending on the event, it may take some time to yield the positive behavior of your customers. For instance, some events may cue customers to make instant purchases while some won't respond by making a purchase for months. So, you need to flexible, prepared and patient. You need to observe the market and search for the event triggers.

4. Know in advance how will you respond

It is an absolute must to know what your response will be for a particular type of event well in advance. How you will do marketing for that event? Will it be a blog post, a contest, an email, sale or other strategy? Try using your customer base data to know what will be the best way to respond to the particular event.

5. Follow and maintain the track

Once you are done coming up with strategies, you need to analyze it constantly and make adjustments where necessary. Once you come to know which strategy will work better for the particular type of event, you will have eliminated guesswork from the equation.

If you're including event based marketing in your overall marketing strategy for your business, you can expect to have five times the response rate, at minimum, than what you'd get from direct marketing. This isn't just a drop in the hat - it's a measurable result. In fact, aside from social media marketing, event based marketing is one of the most effective marketing tools to have in your arsenal. By employing this strategy, you'll be able to reach your customers in a more personal and interesting way.

This article was written by AJ Agrawal from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.