Savvy event organizers know how to harness the power of digital and social media marketing for events They use crucial brand and experiential marketing tools that drive attendance, define and engage high-value target audiences extend the experience and build brand recognition. Today’s planner needs to know how to design content and leverage the correct channels that promote the message and the experience efficiently. What platforms best suit the audience? What content drives and engages the targets?

Learning Objectives:

• Determine and match your high-value audience and influencers and your social media platforms in experiential marketing
• Develop a well-defined strategic plan that leverage the best digital marketing tools, resulting in a measurable marketing campaign
• Develop a story using visual storytelling for content design and marketing to encourage audience attendance
• Design an interactive advertising plan that creates and builds online ad campaigns that drive attendance sales and that attendees remember

In her keynote presentation, renowned expert and author Bridget Brennan (“Why She Buys”) will inspire you with winning strategies and best practices for increasing sales by elevating the customer experience. Brennan answers the most burning question of our time: When people have countless options for where to spend their time and money, why should they invest in you? Her program delivers insights and context for the major trends driving decision-making, and techniques for applying this knowledge to increase your success. From changes in demographics to cultural shifts in the U.S. and around the world, Brennan offers strategies for thriving in a changing world.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the most important macro trends driving purchasing decisions and behaviors
• Examine how women’s domination of the consumer economy is changing expectations
• Discuss customer experience “best practices” from leading brands and businesses
• Utilize a four-part framework to deepen emotional engagement
• Implement "Monday Morning" strategies immediately
  

What is all the talk about implicit bias? Do you wonder how to make your organization more just and welcoming? Implicit biases or subconscious biases influence how we respond to others. To create equitable work environments, event organizers must acknowledge their own biases and take steps to confront them. Through a mixture of presentation and interactive discussion, participants will explore the sources and impacts of unconscious biases as well as some concrete steps for reducing them.

Learning Objectives:

• Discuss what implicit bias means and how it may influence our decisions
• Explain that being implicitly biased does not necessarily mean we act in explicitly biased ways
• Recognize some behaviors that may suggest bias or differential treatment
• Apply techniques that help remove biased perceptions and improve interaction
  

​The content here is owned by Paulette Brown and cannot be replicated or repurposed.

As the business events industry continues to experience significant change, it is necessary for event organizers, suppliers and other stakeholders to think and behave in new ways to create more value. In this case study-rich session, Peter Sheahan will challenge you to find opportunity in this massive disruption. Wherever you sit within the business events value chain, it is crucial for you to leverage change and disruption to create more value because organizations don’t change, people do.

Learning Objectives:

• Develop an appetite for taking intelligent risks
• Embrace disruptions in the events industry and your role as an agent of change
• Find opportunities to innovate and drive change within the disruption
  

"What can an event professional like you learn from Coachella, mega-churches, and great retail shopping plazas? Everything.

Traditional association events—conferences, trade shows, and annual meetings—are exactly that. Traditional. The old model of content, community, and commerce has given way to a new era of insight, intimacy, and inspiration. It’s time to rethink your approach to designing and delivering events so that you stand out from the competition and attract more of the right people.

Learn the six things you must do to turn your next meeting into an irresistible, live media experience that sells out."

Learning Objectives:

• Shift your thinking to see your event as a product
• Identify what you need to know about your audience to attract them
• Understand how to create a roadmap for reinventing your even
  

This session will begin at approximately 3:10 p.m. CT