Interactive Marketing Techniques for Events: Engaging Your Audience in Real-Time

Last Updated: 

September 17, 2024

Real-time engagement event marketing, with live polling and gamification, for example, keeps people’s attention. Think of turning passive viewer-type people into active participants and connectors.

You might be interested in how this works. The answer is straightforward: when people feel that what they’ve got to say matters, that’s when they feel appreciated and valued. They are more likely to stay and chat, and will tell others about your event. 

Think about the effect of a timed interactive element: a Q&A session in real time, or live feedback polling. As people share their opinions and experiences, you’re fostering community and buzz on the spot. Your event becomes a live experience with a deeper, lasting impact.

Key Takeaways on Interactive Marketing Techniques

  1. Real-Time Engagement: Interactive marketing techniques like live polling and gamification turn passive attendees into active participants, enhancing their experience and connection to the event.
  2. Audience Involvement: When attendees feel valued and appreciated, they are more likely to engage, stay longer, and share their experience with others, amplifying your event's reach.
  3. Setting Clear Objectives: Define specific, measurable goals for your interactive marketing efforts to track success and make adjustments as needed, ensuring your strategy aligns with your overall event objectives.
  4. Understanding Your Audience: Tailor your interactive content by researching your audience's preferences, demographics, and online habits to create relevant and engaging experiences.
  5. Choosing the Right Channels: Select platforms and channels that resonate with your audience's preferences, whether it's visual content on Instagram, professional networking on LinkedIn, or live interactions on Twitter or YouTube.
  6. Engaging Content Formats: Incorporate live polls, contests, and gamification features into your event to increase participation, gather real-time feedback, and make the experience more dynamic and enjoyable.
  7. Maximising Engagement with Live Features: Utilise live Q&A sessions, live tweeting, and streaming to foster real-time interaction, keep the energy high, and expand your event's impact beyond physical attendees.
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Planning Your Interactive Marketing

Interactive marketing plans must consider objectives, audience and channels because those elements are critical for inclusiveness.

Setting Your Goals

First, decide what you want to accomplish with your interactive marketing – for example, drive up attendance, increase sharing on social media sites, capture new leads, or boost brand awareness. 

State your goals using terms as specific and measurable as possible. Instead of ‘increase attendance’, try: ‘increase attendance by 20 per cent’. This way you can track your tactics, and if it’s not working, simply adjust the formula.

Knowing Your Audience

Know your audience: find out what kinds of things they are already reading and watching, their preferences and, most importantly, gather information on their online habits: what time of day are they most active, what are their online interests, and what content works best for them. The more you can learn about your audience from surveys and analysis, the better placed you are to create content for them.

Think age, location and profession: what demographics can you find for your audience? This could make all the difference between writing a serious-sounding missive or informal holiday wishes. But think beyond demographics and consider your audience’s likes and tastes. What content format might they enjoy, and tone that’s most appropriate for them?

Choosing the Right Channels

Follow channels your audience is engaging in. Create and share visual footage on Instagram or YouTube if they are visual learners. Focus on LinkedIn if it’s for professional networks. Network offline by stepping out to events and meeting with your target group.

Even consider variations such as videos or interactive polls, or modular exhibition stands, like the ones from Showplace. These stands can create a visually engaging space for your brand to represent itself to your audience.

Find a platform and a style that fits your objectives and learns users’ habits and preferences, and, in essence, if you engage them, their attention will follow.

Content That Engages

In the modern and mobile world, being able to bring live audiences from the fringes to the heart of an event requires highly interactive and immersive content. This content would include live audience polling, contests and gamification features to increase the participants’ engagement.

Live Polls and Surveys

Real time polling and surveys using handheld devices, such as iPads, are crucial in keeping your audience alive and involved. As a presenter, you can ask questions related to the event’s theme and get immediate answers in return in the form of live votes. 

Not only does this allow you to verify that your message was understood as envisioned, it also lets you adapt the course of your event to the input you receive from your audience in real time.

Benefits:

  • Real time feedback
  • Increased participation
  • Audience insights

This can be a poll created easily via dynamical tools such as Slido, Mentimeter or Poll Everywhere. However, be disciplined in keeping questions short and powerful yet relevant.

Contests and Giveaways

You can increase engagement and make the occasion more fun and competitive for attendees by hosting contests and giveaways, and you might offer some sort of prize that is congruent with your event and what your brand stands for. You can use contests like a challenge on social media or a quiz.

Examples:

  • Best event photo contest
  • Trivia quiz about the event topic
  • Social media hashtag challenge

Just be clear about the rules and rewards in the lead-up, and let Rafflecopter or Gleam (two of many entry-contest services) run the entry process, so a winner can be plucked randomly without any stress for you or them. 

Gamification Tactics

Gamification, on the other hand, is the process of adding some aspects of games to your event, such as leaderboards, points-scoring systems or collecting badges for completing activities, to create competition or a sense of personal achievement.

Key Components:

  • Points and rewards
  • Leaderboards
  • Challenges and achievements

Set up tools such as Kahoot! or EventMobi so that several activities throughout your event take gamification form – so long as they are fun and relevant to your event content, you will find participants more engaged and eager to participate.

These interactive tools will help transform your event from being a passive space into an active space.

Live Features to Maximise Engagement

Live features bring the energy specific to interactive formats and turn your viewers into participants, making them feel more engaged with your event and more inclined to contribute. Here’s a round-up of the seven must-haves to leverage real time interaction.

Live Q&A Sessions

A Live Q&A Session allows your audience to engage in a discussion with panellists or a guest speaker by asking questions or sharing their thoughts and feedback right away.

To engage:

  • Announce the Q&A session in advance to encourage participation.
  • Use a moderator to manage the questions.
  • Use platforms like Zoom or YouTube Live which have Q&A built in.
  • Highlight interesting questions and thank participants for asking.

Live Tweeting and Streaming

Live Tweeting and Streaming will attract more viewers and give those who weren’t able to attend a chance to keep up. They will spread a lot of real time updates and give a FOMO (fear of missing out) feeling.

To engage:

  • Appoint a social media manager to post real time updates.
  • Use branded hashtags to unify and track the conversation.
  • Ask attendees to tweet their thoughts and share highlights.
  • For streaming: steady connection, trusty earphones and eyes.
  • Use Twitter, Facebook Live and Instagram Live for these activities.

Summary

Using interactive marketing in your events will increase audience engagement and create memorable experiences. By turning passive spectators into active participants through live polling, gamification and social media interactions you’ll create a sense of community and excitement.

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