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This article is part of a series, based on the ebook 'Top 21 marketing methods for membership websites Written by the Subscription Coach Amanda Northcutt.

 Download the entire series in a book

There are many opportunities for creative marketing in trade shows and conference: purchase booth space, buy a sponsorship through the event's organizer, hold an event that spins off with the conference or show or conference, and many more.

If you're lucky enough that someone else in your field is hosting an annual conference where your target audience comes together, you need to be present.

Relative to hosting your own event, attending an event which someone else organizes is similar to clicking the "easy" button. But, if you simply show up, sans strategy it's best to go in your home.

There are often conference/event/trade show sponsorships available for purchase, booths, and other opportunities to get amplified exposure to attendees over what you can accomplish on a one-to-one basis. One of the Holy Grail of event engagement in the context of an other event is being a speaker. Speaking engagements will be discussed a bit later, but as uncomfortable as you may feel at first, public speaking to your targeted audience is as good as gold. This is a quick way to gain confidence and trust, provided that your presentation is entertaining relevant, informative, and memorable.

Consider sponsorship opportunities the same way you would with any paid advertising. They should be quantifiable and that's largely on you when you're a sponsor for an event. The presence you make at the event, the brand the experience you provide, and calls to action are likely to decide the success of your event or lack or lack of. The event plan you choose to use should be pre-planned, with an on-site plan, and a follow up sequence. It doesn't matter the event regardless of an official sponsorship. However, this will be much more straightforward if you've got one.

Preparation: If you can have access to the list of attendees before the event you can move people through the sales pipeline quicker. If you're a patron you can ask the event organizers for ways to fully leverage the sponsorship. You can ask for more than is provided in the sponsorship package If you come up with a unique way to provide worth to the participants and also make the event look nice.

If you don't have sponsorship and you're not an influencer in your space it's unlikely that you'll get the attention of people who are organizing the event in any important manner. You can overcome this issue by joining Twitter and Instagram and use the corresponding event hashtag to try and find others who are coming. Meet them and think about hosting a party, happy hour, meal, or off site mini-workshop during the hours and days in the days and hours leading up to the main celebration.

The day of: Sponsor or not, figure out a way to attract leads. You can definitely do this on a one-to-one basis by providing a relevant resource or even a deal to a potential customer who is interested in exchange for contact information or the permission to interact with their social media accounts. Read the room and avoid being pushy or pushy. If you can help anyone, inform them that they can help and ask for permission to contact them. Taking a second to write a quick note about each person so you can create a personalized follow-up message is sure to put you head and shoulders above the ones who send generic follow-up messages that do not include personal information.

Find the hashtag used for the event via social media throughout and after the event, and use it yourself. That's a free method to increase your visibility and make you more visible to guests. This is also a great opportunity to identify potential clients or influencers throughout and following the event.

If you do have a booth at a convention, it is important to find a way to make your presence known. I'm no expert here however, you can go to Pinterest and browse for creative inspiration. Make yourself known and if you're industry lends itself to having a bit of fun and entertainment, you should play it up. One way to do this is to create a themed booth and have employees or helpers dress the way they want to dress.

Another thing I've seen successfully is to have employees walking around and asking people would they like to be invited to an exclusive restaurant or club for drinks at the end of the evening. Then, they have to head to your booth in order to learn more about your offering and sign in (lead capture) to receive an invitation. If you're doing this, you need to be a friendly group in your booth. People that your prospects actually want to spend time having drinks with. You can rent a popular bar or room inside a popular restaurant and make the payment at the end of the evening. It generates some buzz (no pun intended) at the event, lets potential customers have an enjoyable experience when they interact with your brand which in turn acts as a direct lead magnet.

Follow up Your entire preparation and on-site work is wasted if you drop the ball on the follow-up strategy. Be aware that lead capture at the event is key as you'll be left with enough people to follow up with. Oops.

On the day following the party, send them an email to each person with your contact information that you made a notes of your time with them (you already did this, don't you?) And connect to them via their preferred social media site for the two-in-one punch. Do not put off this. It is imperative to make the most of event hype and momentum and if you delay this for one week, you've probably missed the boat. After the personalized email, trigger the automated drip sequence that you created prior to the event. This can be done through your email service provider (you got permission to email themtoo, don't you?) and move them through the sales pipeline just as you would any other person who visits your site. But, you've met them in person therefore your calls to actions (CTAs) must have more consequence (attend an engaging webinar, begin the trial, purchase) rather than someone who in the process of establishing your drip program after picking up the lead magnet from your website.

If you are only allowed to distribute cards, but you are not able to collect names and contact info because of some reason, make a landing page with an exclusive lead magnet specifically for attendees of conferences. Make a specific collection of business cards designed that include the website's URL as well as an overview of the awesome free resource that you've designed just for them on it. Make sure you have an email capture forms on that landing page in exchange for downloading and start the automated nurture process to adhere to.

 There's an infinite number of methods to implement this, however the most important thing to remember is that you need a pre- the event, throughout, and after it strategy that's measurable.

Webinars

A webinar is a 45-90 minutes of value-added online seminars that can be shown live on the internet to an audience or recorded, and consumed at any time. Webinars are great as top of the funnel sources and email list building tools, but are also a great tool to use towards the final stage of a sales funnel to ask for the sales.

Webinars are produced by yourself as a one-off, produced as a series, a summit with or without guests or as an invited guest at someone else's. They could and should be used for demonstrating your expertise, and build authority and trust within your field. They can be used once or create evergreen webinars, the content of which should be applicable for the next 12-24 months.

If you have an open model for your membership (meaning that you open your site to new members a few times per year) an individual webinar or summit can be a great way to close the deal. I'd suggest offering this kind of webcast live, and then mentioning a very special, exclusive limited-time offer on the marketing materials you use. It can only be made available only to attendees who attended live after the event, not to viewers who view the replay. You can still send the replay to those who don't attend the live event, however you could improve your attendance live and closing rate when your viewers know something special is happening during the course.

Hosting a summit is one of the best moves you can make to become an authority/influencer. It is essential to have an extensive email list to attract other industry experts as guests and if you manage to succeed you will definitely be well-rewarded. It's a lot of work. Therefore, I don't suggest it unless you're willing to invest to the amount of time required to have your tech, your summit marketing guest speakers, content plan, scheduling, and follow-up completed.

Being a guest on someone else's webinar and inviting your viewers to join is a great way to dip your toe in the water and get familiar with the camera, without having to put into the work to host your own. If you're working alongside partners on cross-promotions or have an organic influencer strategy that is in place, you're more likely to be in the forefront of mind on the guest list of those who are hosting webinars and summits.

Like fully harnessing the power of the power of a conference or an conference, creating a prior webinar promotional strategy and follow-up plan is vital. Because summits and webinars provide such a wealth of information to your target audience (not to mention an enormous amount of effort on your behalf), make sure you're repurposing your content from the webinar: turn your webinar content into blog book, series podcast, or podcast series, YouTube videos, a lead magnet, etc.

 One of the most important things to consider whether you're hosting or guesting is to offer an overwhelming amount of value to the attendees of your webinar. It's not the time to keep your secrets sauce. Now is the time to prove you have the sauce that's secret and there's plenty more where you can find it behind the paywall for your membership.

Meetings in-person or meetings

Meetings in-person and meetings can consist of one of these: holding happy hour, in-person courses/lessons, workshops or sponsorship of local events that have a large percentage of your participants reside as well as any other place you can get people together in person. Events can be cost-free or paid for or educational, or just good fun for gatherings that build community.

Most membership sites we work with have an online community component within the membership. After all, a community is one of the biggest differentiators between a membership and a class. If you are able to gather your community in person and put on events that your members (and potential members) appreciate and rave about online it will improve sales, cLTV and rate of conversion, as well as the strength of your online group.

These kinds of events are a great place for members, both current and future to mingle and chat. Allow your members to perform the "selling" to you to prospects through casual conversation. If a handful of your current members value your membership enough to be present in the flesh discussing your membership, it is likely to be a natural part of the conversation.

For industry events and trade fairs You must plan in advance, ensure that the occasion live up to its anticipation, and then have an action plan for following up. The way you prepare and the follow-up will depend on the type of event you're holding.

If it's a workshop, you're likely charging people to attend, and will need to prepare marketing materials, and then the workshop details themselves (workbooks, handouts, a slide deck, your presentation, guest speakers/instructors). Follow-up materials should comprise an audience survey along with bonus materials and an offer to buy something else. If you've recently met people in person, and earned their trust, leverage that momentum into relevant upsell opportunities.

If you're planning to host an event like a happy hour, only a small amount of preparation is required. Concentrate on finding a suitable location, serving food or drinks, as well as getting people there. Once you're there, engage with all attendees and ensure that there's no one absent. Inviting members who are already there to invite a friend who is similar with them is an effective option to boost your membership as well.

And while a happy hour is the last time to sell, if you're inviting prospective members to join, you should have a clever way of making sure you follow-up with your prospects. Lead capture might be entry into a contest for an unrestricted membership, items. It could also be some other method that is more subtle, such as handing out cards to prospects with an exclusive promo code printed with a special promo code.

Regardless of the type of event, ensure you have a plan for lead capture and follow-up with prospects in attendance. In the same way that your marketing materials for memberships have to match the materials that paying members receive behind the paywall, your event promotion should be in line with what you're able to deliver in person , or else you're at risk of being branded a bad name on the internet. Make sure you have raving supporters of your events , rather than critics to ensure that you are able to successfully host events in the future. It is the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the underpromise overdeliver principle.

Speaking engagements

It's possible that this could be more fear-inducing than direct sales for some of us However, it's incredibly effective when done well recording, recorded and used. If you're still new to public speaking, don't worry about it. Activities such as blogging, guest-podcasting, hosting or appearing as a guest speaker on webinars, making videos as well as. These are all excellent ways to prepare of public speaking.

You don't have to shoot at the stars when you're just starting out. Look for a local association of business and present a talk on the spot or lead the workshop in-person to some of your peers. It is also possible to go to the town nearby where you don't know anyone for a presentation if you really want to relax. Start small, and when your confidence and skills improve, you can you can move to a higher level job.

Apply to teach breakout sessions at conferences, hold an unofficial breakout event either prior or in the aftermath of someone else's conference or event (in an ethical manner, of course). Once you've done those things successfully, start to harness your organic influencer, guest blogging/podcasting/webinar hosting strategies to move further up the speaking ladder. If you're in the loop for pertinent speaking opportunities due to the fact that you're a part of a network and you've put in the effort to create the social capital of that network, you're many times more likely to be considered to be a candidate for a speaking slot even if you're not particularly famous at the moment.

Speaking gigs with a higher profile have the same value as creating your own book, holding a conference or even a summit with other experts from the field with respect to reach and influence. No matter the size of the event, make sure you take advantage of your talk using it in various other media. First make sure you're able to take a quality footage of your speech or talk. After that, you can upload your video to your own site both before and behind the paywall. Put it up on YouTube and use the video to create a series of blog posts, podcast topic, to seed discussion within your communities, both paid and free Include an embedded video under the "About" and "Resources" page on your website.

 Also, make use of the video recording to apply for other speaking gigs. When you've established yourself as an excellent speaker and promoted yourself accordingly using recorded videos of your talk and some social proof (positive reviews you got from attendees), your public speaking life will get much more easy.