Attention spans are seemingly decreasing every year.
Today, it takes people just 17 milliseconds to decide if they’re going to stick around on your website. That includes your event website.
Your event website is one of the first touchpoints people see. If you can’t engage your audience there, you won’t get the opportunity to engage them later.
Keeping audience engagement high, especially pre-event, is a big challenge. Even if you engage them enough to register for your event, how will you keep them excited enough to actually attend the event and keep the conversation going?
Before we dive into 10 pre-event audience engagement examples, let’s revisit what audience engagement is.
Audience engagement is how active and happy your attendees are with your events. Are they commenting on your event’s social posts, participating in the virtual chat, and submitting feedback? Those interactions are all examples of audience engagement.
But it’s not just about attendee interaction. It’s also about how much time they’re spending with you, where they’re connecting with you, and how inclined they are to spend even more time with you in the future.
How connected are your event attendees (to you and their fellow attendees) before, during, and after the event? This is an important question to gauge attendee engagement levels. This article will focus on how to increase audience engagement before the event.
Too many people think that the event starts at the published start time. But if you wait until then to prioritize audience engagement, you’ll never get anyone in the door.
Creating buzz before your event is what will bring registrations in and encourage strong engagement and connections during the event.
Here are 10 ways to increase audience engagement before your event:
Create a compelling event website. At first glance, the event website might seem like just a place for your event details and FAQs. But it’s so much more than that. It’s one of the first touchpoints for your attendees. It’s where you get to convince them to attend. And it’s where you can start immersing attendees with your content.
That’s why basic, unbranded event websites are a huge no-no. It’s not the time to pick a random template, but to make sure your pages have powerful images, a clear call to action, and easy navigation.
Check out some of the best and brightest event websites on Made in Splash, a collection of event page inspiration.
Capture attendee insights early. Your registration form can be a powerful tool. For your next event, try including a custom question that gets your attendees thinking about the topic.
For example, let’s say you’re running an event at the beginning of the year about trends to watch in your industry for that year. Custom questions you could include may be:
This can also give you material for the event and the ability to tailor the content to your audience.
Give attendees something to do after registration. Success! You have tons of registrations flowing in for your next event. Are you redirecting those people to a thank you page?
If you’re not, stop everything right now and bake that into your process.
If you are, what’s on that thank you page? If you’re not including social sharing options, related content they’d find interesting, or a next call to action, you’re missing out on added audience engagement opportunities.
Share pre-event content on social media. What gets people excited for events? Seeing what they’re in store for.
If you have the resources, sharing an event video on your social channels is a great way to fuel engagement. If you’re hosting a large event, you may have a sophisticated promo video to share. For smaller events, even short, minimally produced video content can be more engaging than your typical social post.
If you don’t have the ability to create a video, other things you can post are
Promote your speakers. They should be huge promoters of the event, since it’s a chance for them to show thought leadership too. Tag your speakers (and their companies) in your social posts for maximum exposure.
Additionally, give your speakers a promo package they can use to share on their own channels. Doing the work for them saves them time and often makes them more inclined to share.
Another idea is to ask your speakers to record short video clips previewing what they’ll talk about. This takes video creation off your plate, and your audience can get an authentic view of what’ll happen on event day.
Create an event hashtag. In a way, hashtags seem so 2010, but they’re still an effective way to reach people interested in certain topics. Make it easy for people to join the conversation before the event (and throughout the entire journey) by creating a hashtag specific to your event.
Generally, it’s best practice to use an event hashtag with hashtags that already exist in the industry. This helps you reach the most people who follow certain topics.
Gamify your social content. Gamifying your content is an effective way to get people interacting and encourage registrations. It doesn’t have to be anything intense or elaborate.
One idea: Place event-related easter eggs across your website. Share some posts on LinkedIn (or your social channel of choice) with clues and tell your audience that the first five people to find all easter eggs will get a free ticket to your event.
Hosting a free event, but still want to use an idea like this? Give the winners an exclusive experience at the event, a special piece of swag, or bragging rights.
Get your partners involved. They’re your partners for a reason: promoting each other is mutually beneficial. Even if they’re not speaking at this particular event, they may be willing to help you promote it, especially if they’re attending themselves.
And if they are speaking? Refer back a few tips.
Host a pre-event webinar on a tangential topic. This can be an easy way to generate interest for your main event. Promote event registration to everyone attending your webinar: as a next step on the webinar registration thank you page, in your email reminders, and during the webinar.
And if you’re feeling extra bold, you could offer a raffle: anyone who registers by the time the webinar is over will get a chance to win a gift card, some special swag, or whatever else you choose.
Encourage early app downloads. If you’re using an event app to support audience engagement, this should be part of your pre-event strategy. Configure the app as early as you can to give people plenty of time to download it.
It’s a great way to start making connections early, build their agendas, and get excited about new speakers and content.
Even though it’s increasingly more difficult to capture (and hold) people’s attention, it’s something you must prioritize as an event marketing professional.
If you don’t prioritize it, your audience will slip away before learning anything about you — and they’ll likely never look back.
The good news is that there are so many ways you can generate pre-event buzz, as evidenced by all the examples here. First step: Make these part of your event playbook, and prioritizing pre-event engagement will become second nature.
Second step: Make sure you have event technology that lets you create fully branded, compelling event websites that convert.
