Monetizing once the event is over should be on every event organizers list. Your fans and customers already came to your event, spent money and hopefully had a good time. This is the perfect opportunity to harness their positive feelings towards your event and brand and generate more revenues. It could be selling tickets for the next event, generating new followers on your social media channels, growing your mailing lists subscribers, or even offering premium services and products for your die hard fans.
But just trying to implement post-match monetization activities isn't enough. Some event organizers invest time and resources in post-match activities that don't justify the hassle neither for themselves or their fans.
Here are some does and don'ts that will help your post-match activities create real value for your events and your target audience:
Do's
1. Create unique content and update it fast.
Once your fans know that the best and first place to get post event content is through your channels, you will have them fully engaged and open to receive your messages. Upload photos and videos during the event or immediately when it ends. Also make sure your fans know about it!!
2. Put in place pre-planned promotional campaigns.
Think one step ahead of your target audience and identify keywords that they are likely to search after the event. Run google adwords campaigns around these keywords and catch your fans when they are searching for content related to your events.
3. Focus on your affluent fans.
Your time and resources for online marketing are limited. You have even less for post-event activities, so you should make the most out of it. Targeting affluent fans and ticket buyers will maximize your post event monetization ROI. In comparison to teenagers or lower price ticket category buyers, they are more likely to spend money after the event.
Don'ts
1. Expect too much from your post event activities
Post-event monetization sounds great in meetings and looks good on your Gant charts. However there is still no proven formula to make it work perfectly since it is one of the new and evolving areas of online marketing. If you hit your targets - fantastic! If not - don't give up on post-event monetization; figure out what didn't work and make it better next time.
2. Lose interest in your event to media channels.
Your fans consume content, that's a facts. The question is where do they consume content related to your event? If they go immediately to media channels where you have no presence then you will lose opportunities to monetize.
3. Create one time campaigns or event specific apps
Planning a big post-event campaign for a specific event is always exciting. Marketing teams get even more thrilled by developing event specific apps. But these activities will always come at the expense of other events' potential to generate post-event revenues. That's why it's better to develop a standard post-match monetization procedure that can be implemented regularly.