Event Marketing: How to Successfully Promote Events, Festivals, Conventions, and Expositions

their boss’s approval before attending. Some are more tradi-

tional and prefer to print them out and read them.

■Include an FAQ (frequently asked questions) section.

Having related links to other areas of interest to your audience

is a valuable resource to provide. It impresses your customers and

shows them that you are a leader in the marketplace. Creating re-

ciprocal links with other sites can also bring more traffic to your

site. Many businesses trade referrals with other businesses on the

Web, just like they would offline. To negotiate this process, you

would identify companies that might be interested in trading links

with your site. According to Deborah Whitman of Microsoft Cor-

poration, this can help you by creating more traffic, and it can also

improve your ranking on search engines such as Google. She of-

fers these six suggestions for identifying the types of businesses

with which to create exchange relationships:

1. Companies that offer complementary products or services


2. Unrelated companies that serve your customers


3. Local businesses


4. Suppliers and distributors


5. Chambers of commerce and other community organizations


6. Competitors
   Once your event Web site is developed, do not forget to in-
   clude your Web URL (uniform resource locator) address on every-
   thingthat is printed. This includes brochures, faxes, press re-
   leases, business cards, and advertisements.
   Writing for the Internet is very different from writing for other
   marketing pieces. Web Ad.vantage has five important rules to fol-
   low when creating copy for a Web site:


7. Speak to the “Everyperson.”When developing your Web
   site, aim to keep it simple so everyone can follow. Unlike
   traditional marketing pieces, conversational language is be-
   coming more common, as well as unconventional writing
   such as slang and catch phrases. The key is to build a rela-
   tionship with the individual.


8. Keep It Tight.Don’t feed your readers too much information
   or you will lose them. Keep paragraphs short, use bullets,
   utilize larger font sizes, and insert graphics when possible.


9. Get Feedback.Have someone critique your site, preferably
   someone outside of your industry, and definitely not your

62 Chapter 3 Electronic Event Marketing Strategies