When you’re preparing to host an event, landing pages need to be among the deliverables in your plan. These are important regardless of the nature of your event. A one-hour webinar and a three-day in-person seminar all require these assets.
At a minimum, you’ll need to build out pre-event and post-event pages. If your event spans multiple days, you will also need to create pages on which you can post updates as the event unfolds. These pages must work to encourage sign-ups, keep people excited enough to actually show up and generate post-event activity…the ideal of which is the conversion, of course.
The 5 Essential Ingredients
We’ve found that these landing pages are most effective when they include all of the following elements. Most of these should not surprise you but at least one just might. Check them out:
- An Event Value Prop
Front and center needs to be the reason that someone should attend your event. What can they get there that they can’t get somewhere else? What about your event is better than another similar one? This value proposition is not the same thing as your company’s value proposition although it should be connected as the point of your event is to market your company in some fashion.
- A Glamour Shot
Pictures sell. Make yours something that really showcases the feeling of your event or the glory of using it. Think about shampoo commercials and images of those glorious, sought-after locks. You bet they sell the product.
- The What & Why—in Detail Form
If you think of the value proposition as the promise of what a people will get, this is the fulfillment of that promise in some fashion. It gives a more granular look at exactly what will be learned and experienced. This information should be as practical, relatable and realistic as possible. Visitors should read it and instantly be able to think about how they can apply their new knowledge once the event is over.
- Testimonials
This is the item that I’m guessing you may not have expected. Hearing from others is a form of social proofing and can give a lot of credence and weight to your own claims. To get maximum impact out of these, get testimonials from multiple people that span your different potential attendees. Use photos and titles to increase peoples’ ability to relate to them and therefore their power.
- The Call to Action
This is the “Duh” item, I realize, because this is the whole point of the page. Nonetheless, it is still critical to call out in this post lest it be thought that this is not important if you have all of the other element. The call to action is akin to “asking for the sale” in a sales cycle (which a landing page is part of).
Used appropriately in conjunction with mechanisms that drive people to them, these pages can and should do a lot of the heavy lifting for your event marketing.
In addition to the 5 essential ingredients listed here, there is one other essential element—tracking. You should set your metrics up for these pages and monitor them from the moment they launch. Your results can tell you if and where adjustments are needed along the way.
