Event Video Marketing : How to create “the buzz”

A fabulous event needs fabulous video content to go along with it.

We thought to give you some insider tricks to help you get the most out of your event with video marketing. Read on to learn how you can get your event noticed, increase registration and attendance, and keep people engaged with your content long after the event is over.

Before the Event

According to some marketing case study, video content can raise on-page event registrations, by up to 80%. Here are a few ideas for videos you can leverage ahead of your event to garner interest and encourage registration:

Teaser videos

Teaser videos are a great way to get people excited about your event. A teaser video should be short, fun, and keep people guessing. The goal is to capture attention and intrigue people to check back to learn more. Here’s an example of a teaser video we created for a past industry mixer event of our own:

Speaker Intros

If you have speakers slotted into your event, check to see if they have relevant existing video content from their past speaking engagements, or ask them to create a quick video ad-hoc about what they are going to share at your event. Sharing this content ahead of your event, in addition to your agenda and topic descriptions, will help potential attendees see the value that your speakers will bring. Here’s an example of a reel from Seth Godin, at TED2003, he’s one of our favourites keynote marketing speakers.

Past Event Recap

A compelling and upbeat video of a past event can help potential registrants visualize what your event will look like, and motivate them to sign up to attend.

DWF Tip: You should start distributing teaser, speaker intro, and past event recap videos about four to six weeks before your event. In addition to featuring these on your event page, send them directly to your targeted attendee list with personalized emails.

During the Event

During the event is a great chance to capture various types of original video content for different marketing objectives and uses. It goes without saying, that it’s better to get too much footage than not enough. The more footage you get at your events, the more creative ways you can mix and match the content to suit various platforms. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Event Recap Footage

Capturing footage of the event itself is a great way to drive attendance at future events. Your videographer should capture what makes your event unique, whether it’s the great speakers, professional development and networking, an exciting product launch, or simply a fun time. Quick interviews with attendees can fit in well here too — why did they decide to attend the event and what did they enjoy most about it?

DWF Tip: A good rule of thumb is to keep event recap videos at around 90 seconds long. The content should be about 70% people, 30% atmosphere. People love to see what type of people are coming to your events. 

Customer Testimonials

Certain types of events, such as trade shows, open houses, and conferences are a great chance to interact with your customers in person. It’s also the perfect opportunity to capture them on camera saying nice things about your company. Different from in-depth polished testimonial videos, your objective at events should be to get quick sound bites. You can later group these short clips by industry, role, or a specific type of problem solved.

Event Speaker Sessions

You should make it a habit to always record the content presented at your events, regardless if it’s a large event with numerous speakers and sessions or a small event with just one presentation. And if the speaker is an employee or executive of your company, this is also your chance to position them as an industry thought leader.

DWF Tip: Depending on your budget and resources, you can have your videographer film the speaker(s) or you can do it yourself. The most important thing is to make sure it’s easy to see the slides and hear the presenter.

After the Event

Your event is wrapped up. You need to keep the momentum going.

You used video content to attract event attendees and maintain their attention. Now, your job is to make sure your event video content lives on long after the actual event. Here are some suggestions on how to do that:

Leverage Your Event Recap Video

Send a follow-up email with your event recap video. Upload the clip natively on your social media platforms, keeping in mind what’s most effective on each one. You can also use this content to promote future events.

DWF Tip: Give your videographer 72 hours to edit the video footage from the event. The industry standard is 2 revisions on editing and use of Creative Commons Licence for the music.

Gate Useful Content to Generate Leads

You have a few options for what to do with the speaker or presentation videos from your event. A proven content marketing strategy is to gate educational content to generate leads. You can also break the videos into shorter clips and leverage them on your social networks as teasers for the full video. Be sure that you’re posting your content in the right places to get maximum ROI.

Repurpose the Video Content

Just like other videos and content pieces, event footage can be repurposed in various ways.

DWF Tip: The easiest way to get started on repurposing is to transcribe your video content and break it into shorter clips, based on theme and suggested length for various social platforms.

Once your video content is transcribed and broken down into shorter clips, you can use your new written and visual content in various ways to stretch the life of your video(s), improve SEO rankings, target your audience in better ways, increase distribution, and get more eyes on your content.

Summing Up

• When leveraged correctly, videos can be a marketer’s best friend for driving event awareness, attendance, and engagement.

• Use existing video content and short custom videos to create buzz and excitement ahead of your event.

• Creating videos during the event is all about taking advantage of the crowd and atmosphere to build your video content library.

• After the event, you want to leverage the great video content captured at the event to keep the momentum going and your customers engaged.