How AEC Companies Can Use Digital Marketing to Maximize the Value of Industry Events

For most AEC companies, attending industry events is just part of doing business. You need to have plenty of strong connections to keep your business on track to grow and thrive, and many of those relationships are going to be formed or strengthened at industry outings. Whether you love them or hate them, embracing the importance that these events play in the overall outlook of your business is necessary.

Of course, if you are going to invest the time and money needed to attend an event, you might as well get as much value out of it as possible in return. We’d like to help you understand how digital marketing can help make conferences and other occasions as beneficial as they can be. Consider the tips below and reach out today if you’d like further assistance.

Start with Social

The most obvious way to leverage digital marketing in the context of industry events is to use your social media channels to boost engagement and drive people to come to see you. Social platforms are the fastest and most effective way to let people know what you are up to, so why not start posting about each event in the days leading up to the occasion? People who will be at the event might not have known you were attending, so seeing a post may encourage them to stop by and say hi.

As you plan out your posts, see if the event you’ll be attending is using a specific hashtag to drive discussion about the conference. Adding that hashtag to each of your posts will make it easier for it to be discovered by people who aren’t already following your accounts. If you are going to be busy in the days ahead of the event, consider writing your posts in advance and using a scheduling tool to make sure they go out at an appropriate time.

Would Ads Be a Good Investment?

It’s possible to use digital ads to drive traffic to your location at an industry event. By running some paid ads, you can tell people about your presence, what you’ll be showing or offering, and where they can find you. For a business that already has experience running PPC ads, this would be a natural transition and a great opportunity to make sure your time at the show is well spent.

There are some key points to keep in mind if you are going to utilize this strategy. Those points include the following –

• Focus on large events. This technique probably won’t be effective for smaller niche trade shows, as the search volume simply won’t be there to support the time and effort to set up a PPC campaign. There would be very few searches and perhaps no clicks to fight for in that case. With a large show, however, plenty of search volume is going to be present and you might be able to boost your presence by making sure people know you’ll be there.
• Deliver a clear message. You don’t want to run ads that simply say you’ll be at the show and please come by and see us. That can be part of the message, to be sure, but there should be more. Are you introducing something new at the event? Will you be offering special deals or discounts to event attendees? Make it clear to the reader what they have to gain if they give you some of their valuable time.
• Cast a narrow net. Unlike some other types of paid search campaigns, where you may want to get as many impressions as possible, it’s much the opposite here. You want this campaign to be very tight and focused, only displaying ads to those whose search activity indicates they are attending the show. This will cut down on wasted spend and help you maintain a reasonable click-through rate.

Capture Content Opportunities

Another way to pull value from an industry event is to use it as a chance to create some great content for your various digital marketing channels. As long as you are there and interacting with a variety of people in the industry, you might as well be keeping an eye on how some of what you are doing can be turned into digital assets. The exact way this comes to life will depend on your business and the type of digital marketing you do, but here are some ideas to get you started –

• Plan blog posts. Industry events can be a great plan to come up with some new ideas for blog content. Pay attention to what is happening around you at the show and take some notes on any blog ideas that you come up with along the way. Once the event is over and you are back to your normal day-to-day schedule, you can pull out those ideas you logged and turn them into valuable content to add to your site.
• Video testimonials. Few forms of digital content are as valuable to a business as a testimonial. At an event, you might run into past customers or clients, so you could ask them to record a quick video speaking about the work that you did for them previously. Even if you don’t know just yet how you’ll use these videos, record them and then find the right application for the content later.
• Take a lot of pictures. This might sound simple, but it’s sometimes hard to find good pictures that relate to your business when creating digital marketing materials. If you have a booth set up at an event, capture some pictures and store them away in a file that can be accessed by your whole team.

There is no doubting or debating the power of digital marketing, but it can be difficult to get started if you don’t have any experience in this space. And hiring a full-time employee to handle this work might not make sense for your needs. Fortunately, we are here to help. Get in touch right away to learn more about our services and discuss what we can do to help your AEC business grow.