Brands can think of events as standalone entities — attendees show up, explore your exhibit, talk to reps, and then go home, the end.
However, rethinking your event marketing to include evergreen content can help keep attendees engaged and expand your event marketing reach far beyond the confines of a show floor.
Evergreen content is a great way to support your trade show and other marketing campaigns by providing an end destination for your customers. Creating relevant content centered around your product, service, or brand allows you to target specific audiences across multiple channels and provide support to your event marketing efforts whether events are in-person, virtual, or a hybrid of the two.
Here are a few steps you can take to start creating evergreen content that will keep your audiences engaged before, during, and after your next event.
The first step in creating the right content for your event is identifying your target audience. Understanding who the event attendees are and what their potential needs might be will allow you to adapt your content to provide the information they need and answer their most pressing questions.
One of the best ways to accomplish this is by creating an effective attendee persona based on your most common customers. Important demographics like age, job title, communication preferences, and more will help you step into your customer’s shoes and determine what information about your brand they need most and how they want to receive it. If you need help getting started with building a persona, consider looking at previous interactions with customers for inspiration.
Identifying who your audience is and what their needs are provides the foundation for creating engaging and effective content surrounding any upcoming event. By understanding the issues that come up frequently, you can create content centered around topics that are most relevant to your customers. This way, your audience will come back to the content often, creating more opportunities for engagement.
Evergreen content can be broken into two types: content that remains relevant, regardless of how much time passes or changing culture, and content that loses relevance over time if it is not updated to reflect changing trends. For example, a guide on “How to Brush Your Teeth” probably won’t change much in the next 10 years, but a guide about “How to Upload A Photo to Instagram” will.
The second guide will be “evergreen” as long as the content is updated to include changes made to Instagram, but both of these types of content represent the different kinds of evergreen content topics. When choosing the topics to cover in your content, they should fall into one of these two categories: continually relevant or relevant as long as it is tended to and reflects industry changes.
When deciding on relevant topics for your content, consider the following questions:
Once you answer these questions, you will have a better idea of what to talk about and how to talk about it to deliver the most value for your audience.
Now that you’ve determined the “who” and “what” of your evergreen content, it’s time to think about the “when.” Your content will serve a different purpose depending on when your audience interacts with it — before, during, or after any event you attend.
Before the event kicks off, your content should focus on preparing event attendees and getting them excited about your branded experience. Think about creating a checklist of items attendees can do prior to the event to have the best experience in your exhibit. Or curate a list of testimonials from previous customers to pique interest in your brand and encourage them to visit your booth during the event.
During the event, the main goal of your content is to attract attendees and provide information about your product or service. Tutorials, demos, and infographics are all great ways to help attendees learn more about what your brand offers. This content also gives you a chance to show off your expertise surrounding the topic or industry being covered during the event.
Perhaps the most important content comes after the event ends — this is when you can seal the deal and convert an attendee into a customer. Consider paring down the content you shared during the event into bite-sized bits of content like quick tips or list-style articles. These will help attendees remember the most important information and provide clear next steps for them to take after they leave.
Ultimately, your content serves as an extra, and valuable, touchpoint outside of the face-to-face (or screen-to-screen) interactions you have with attendees during a conference or trade show. Creating relevant and informative content can be the key to an engaged audience that turns into impactful customer relationships for your business.
Learn more about how you can create evergreen content and extend your brand’s reach in our guide, “Expanding Your Brand’s Reach Beyond a Virtual Trade Show.”