If you aren’t into content marketing, you’re missing one of the marketing world's biggest trends…ever. Trade show exhibits are serving as recording studios for YouTube videos. General session keynotes are being captured and redistributed as investor briefings, sales overviews and employee messages. Bud Light’s main Super Bowl TV spot was filmed at an event.
The live event has emerged as an incredible feeder of authentic content for the rest of the marketing mix. Let the other groups inside your company know that if they need content, they need your events. Here are 15 types of content that can be easily extracted from events and used across the entire marketing mix.
TV Spots – There’s no better place to capture an audience interacting with a brand that at an event. And most event sets are better than anything an ad agency could build.
Print Ads – Event environments are unique expressions of the brand. Total miss not to photograph them for corporate print slicks, outdoor ads, banners, and so on.
Viral Videos – The best viral videos capture random, unscripted moments—and those are the building blocks of great events.
Infographics – Breakout sessions, keynotes and Q&As provide fresh content for stat-driven or quote-based infographics.
Social Media Posts – There isn't a more content-rich source for real-time or scheduled social media posts than live events.
Webcasts & Podcasts – Event sessions can be streamed live or collected for future release as “digital classes” to company or customer audiences.
Live Media Interviews – Events provide a broadcast experience like no other, which is why so many brands are building media areas right into their event environments.
Employee Briefings & Sales Training – Event sessions and keynotes can be streamed or taped and used for internal employee communications.
Executive Roundtables – At C-Level events, putting CEOs in a room for on-the-record conversations can be turned into strategic press materials, media articles, videos, editorial features, blog posts and more
Testimonials – Video capture chats with current customers on the show floor talking up your product or service. Plus, with so much going on at events, there’s no shortage of content to grab for your PR team’s B-Roll library.
Blog Posts – There’s a lot happening at events, and much of it can be written up as articles and columns for blogs. (Don’t forget to invite bloggers to the events so they can post to their channels.)
Product Overviews – From a CEO introducing a product to a live demonstration of a product or service, “demo content” captured at events is showing up on morning talk shows, online, across social media, even in television infomercials. This product content can be rolled up into instructional pieces for customers, sales reps, etc. Turning this content into videos, webinars, web articles and .pdfs can also form an action-packed product toolkit for sales.
Photos – Whether for Instagram, press materials, dealer catalogs, direct mail or other marketing channels, events provide endless images… for endless uses.
Vine, Periscope & Meerkat – Six-second videos are all the rage, and there is a ton of "micro-content" available for capture at events.
Slideshares – The days of only distributing slides to attendees are gone. Today’s events push speaker slides to the cloud for amplified eyeballs and content reach.
As the use of live events continues to grow, so will the use of live event content across the entire marketing mix. Stay tuned.
Author: Ben Nazario – The ultimate traveler. Tech & gaming fanatic. Biz dev enthusiast. My goal at Sparks is to assist clients in deploying programs that drive brand performance.
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