3 Ways to Grow a Loyal Fanbase for your Event Brand

As an event brand, it’s in your best interest to build your brand loyalty and grow the community around your organization. To produce recurring events, you want to have a database of loyal fans. You will want to get exposure through other systems and convert their customers into direct fans of your brand and community. A key point to developing a strong loyal fanbase is to train your fans to go to your website and your Facebook page to find you and your event information. Keep reading for three ways you can effectively learn how to grow a loyal fanbase!

1. Extend Your Virtual Reach

Leverage the reach of event aggregation sites to reach their customer base. Let them do the extra marketing for you to increase sales; while you focus on sharing your own website sales to your fan base. Why?

By promoting and marketing your own website, you are boosting your own website SEO. You are also training your audience on where to find you and where to register for events. If you always redirect them to a third party website, why would your audience come back to your website?

To leverage third party, event aggregation sites like Eventbrite, simply post your event without marketing their ticket link. When sales end, convert the new customers from the other sites into fans of your site and brand.

Find out which ticketing systems do marketing for event producers and post your events there. This can be done with a simple Google search for events in your region. Some examples might include Eventbrite, TicketZone, Brown Paper Tickets, etc.

Also, there are many niche smartphone applications that aggregate events and market events for you. We suggest spending 10-15 minutes doing a search for event posting applications on iTunes and Google Play. Find the ones that fit your event and post away!

PRO TIP: Your marketing efforts should be focused on driving traffic to your brand. However, selling tickets on other sites is no problem.

With Sparxo, you can import ticket sales from other sites to use our check-in system; creating one seamless check-in experience. The best perk about Sparxo is that we are a white label (no brand) platform, so the goal for us is to give you tools to grow a loyal fanbase, brand and directly connect with your audience.

2. Partner with Local Businesses

Our team suggests that you make a list of organizations and local businesses that match your brand so that you can cross promote with them. Pitch a partnership that you can drive customers to them as they drive customers to you.

Here are some tips for your new relationship:

Give them a custom referral tracking link so you can see if they are a good fit for future events.
Offer them a discount code specific to their fan base as an incentive
Place their logo on your flyer, website, and event descriptions
Add them as event hosts to your Facebook event
Make a flyer specific for them that has their logo as the focus so they will want to use it to promote
Post their logo on Instagram and Facebook giving them a shout-out as an event host, tag, and hashtag them to capture their fan base

3. Ramp Up Your Marketing

Now that your reach is expanded, make sure your loyal fanbase knows that you are a choice when it comes to events. Tag promotions to other marketing messages in the weeks leading up to your event. Make sure the message stands out and the link always goes back to your website.

To stand out from the competition, give your growing fanbase tools to share your event.

This includes:

Having a #hashtag for your brand and/or event
Creating an account handle on popular social media accounts for your brand
Creating a catchy, memorable event slogan such as “The Happiest Place on Earth” (Disneyland) or “Live today, love tomorrow, unite forever” (Tomorowland)
Repost and tagging posts from fans, partners, and sponsors
Live streaming your event to capture fans who otherwise wouldn’t have known you existed
Posting your live stream to channels specific to regions you want to target