To stay ahead of the game, you need to invest in some tools and teams that will help catapult your brand to greater heights. Using the right online marketing tools can help lighten the load for event marketers.
The thing is, it is hard to make a decision and pinpoint what tools are worth the price and investment because using web tools and apps is a personal preference. There are plenty of alternatives available, and if you had the time (and also the money), you would be experimenting with all sorts of tools to choose the one that you are confident in using.
Here are six tools of online event marketing tools that can help you boost engagement, attendance, track conversion, provide analytics, and get return visits.
1. Content Marketing: Buzzsumo
What does it do? Buzzsumo enables marketers to source the most shared content on specific topics and websites. Marketers can also refine lists according to the type of content such as social media posts, blog posts, news items, or just infographics. The advanced feature includes ‘monitoring,’ and ‘influencers’ are essential to track ‘conversation’ taking place online while your event is happening.
What does it cost? The free version gives you limited results. However, the pro version starter plan is ideal for small businesses and bloggers, and it costs $99/month. But if you want something deeper and significant, then the Advanced feature at $299/month comes with API access and many more incredible features.
Why should I get it? Content marketers would love this because it helps track topics and subjects related to your event, especially when there’s a unique hashtag involved. It allows event managers and content creators to analyze headlines for their effectiveness.
2. SEO and Site Speed: Pingdom Website Speed Test
What does it do? Website speed is crucial, especially when you are launching a new product or service, and you’ve set up booths for people to access you both online and offline. If you have an event and you want your audience to sign up at your website only to have your website load slowly, this is digital suicide, not to mention you don’t score high on first impressions. Website speed not only means your pages load faster, but it is one of the fastest ways to improve your SEO rankings and increase conversion rates. With Pingdom’s, IT specialists and marketers can test their website speed, and it also gives a free report that gives you an in-depth analysis of your site as well as tips to improve it. If you are heading into an event, you need to make sure your site is performing on an optimum level.
What does it cost? The test itself is free; however, for a full-on website monitoring service, it will cost you anywhere between $13.95 to $454 per month.
Why do I need it? Full-time monitoring is essential and useful for large websites that receive plenty of traffic. A few mere minutes of downtown or crash can cost you revenue as well as traffic. You can save a lot of money by investing in a monthly plan with Pingdom to continuously check your websites’ status, give you alerts, and monitor and report on site speed.
3. Social Media: Buffer
What does it do? Social media automation tool Buffer allows you to schedule updates across a variety of networks for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and LinkedIn. It comes with a browser extension to help you schedule updates directly from your browser, or you can even use its mobile app. This software is extremely helpful for event marketers or social media managers to post content as and when a live event is happening. This ensures your audience online can follow your updates even when they are not physically present, and the audience present at the event can interact with your posts.
What does it cost? The free plan has limited features, but its packages cost a reasonable $10 to $250 per month.
Why do I need it? Buffer mostly saves you time, especially if you want to share the same content across your different social media accounts easily and quickly. With Buffer, you can fully automate your social media posting, and you can set up an ideal posting schedule in seconds. In business, time saved is money saved.
4. Testing: VWO
What does it do? VWO is an A/B testing tool that tests what is working and what is not working on your website. VWO can test elements such as website UX, design, copy as well as the headline.
What does it cost? You can start the trial for free by the plans begin at $49/month.
Why do I need it? If Pingdom is too expensive for you, the VWO can do the work for you as well but with fewer features.
5. Hashtag Analysis: Keyhole
What does it do? Keyhole offers a detailed analysis of the hashtags that you use for your event marketing campaign. Instead of randomly using hashtags with your campaigns, Keyhole enables you to track and analyze hashtags in real-time, shows you how influential it is, its engagement, reach, and popularity.
What does it cost? The trial is free, but paid versions start at$132 to $799 a month.
Why do I need it? Let’s face it- marketing campaigns nowadays thrive on hashtags. Not only can you track hashtags, but you can also get analytics by account, keywords, mentions, and URL. This is a useful tool to have if you are always working on marketing campaigns targeting heavy social media users.
6. Video Optimization: Wistia
What does it do? Wistia is ideal for event marketing campaigns that use YouTube as part of their strategy. YouTube’s analytics is limited, but with Wistia, it gives marketers better insights to the people watching the videos you upload.
What does it cost? It has a free plan that has its basic features and also analytics that will be given for a maximum of three videos, so it is a good way to try this platform to see if it does deliver the kind of information you are looking for. If you want to sign up for more, then be prepared to invest in $99/month on its pro plan.
Why do I need it? This platform is ideal for marketing campaigns, agencies, and businesses that rely extensively on video content. Production houses, sites that feature tutorials and recipes, blogs that showcase video production and so on that churn out video content on a regular basis will benefit with understanding how each viewer interacts with your content, what they click on, where they look and so on which would enable marketers to tweak their video content more effectively to appeal to the masses.
Bottom Line
If you want to create an unforgettable brand presence for your product and service, you need the right professionals and the right tools. Experiential marketing services such as CraftsmenInd are among the well-known names in the industry to bring your event vision to life.
