Building a strong brand for your event is important for several reasons. It helps prospective guests remember your event, instills a higher level of trust and credibility in prospects, increases ticket sales/turnout, and more. But you’ll want to avoid making the following mistakes when branding your event.
Not Understanding Your Target Market
The first step in branding an event is to identify your target market. In other words, who is most likely to attend your event? This is the demographic you should be targeting; therefore, it’s a good idea to build a brand aligned with their interests. For instance, you can build your event’s brand using industry-specific jargon/lingo that your target market understands for a stronger response.
Of course, this isn’t limited strictly to event planning. It’s important for all businesses to understand their target market.
Mimicking Other Brands
Your event’s brand should be 100% unique so it doesn’t confuse prospects. If you build your brand using similar colors, designs and other elements from another company’s brand, it may confuse your target audience. When a prospect sees your event’s brand material, he or she may associate it with the other company’s brand, in which case you’ll end up helping your competitors. The bottom line is that you should make your brand unique and one-of-a-kind to prevent such confusion.
Not Using Consistent Brand Imagery
Whether it’s on-site or in promotional material advertising your event, be sure to use consistent brand imagery across all channels. If you use a particular logo in your promotional emails, you should also use that logo on brochures, social media, etc. Switching between two or more logo variants — or other brand elements — creates a disconnect with your target audience, which can hurt your efforts to achieve strong brand recognition.
Overlooking Values
Don’t forget to include values in your event’s brand. The national fried chicken restaurant chain Chick-fil-a is an excellent example of how to incorporate values into a brand. It places an emphasis on family, even hosting giveaways where customers are rewarded with free meals for putting away their phones at dinner time. As an event planner, you should also try incorporate your values into your event’s brand.
Not Associating Brand with the Event
When someone sees your event’s brand, they should immediately associate it with the event itself. After all, that’s one of the underlying qualities of a strong brand: recognition. Prospects should recognize what the brand is about, which in this case is an event. When creating your brand, use words, slogans or even visual designs to tell prospects about your event.
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