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This post is part of an ongoing series of posts, which is based on the book "Top 21 marketing channels for membership sites', written by The Subscription Coach Amanda Northcutt.

 Download the whole series in a book

There are many opportunities for creative marketing at trade shows and industry conferences: pay for a booth, buy a sponsorship through the event's organizer, hold a spin-off event in conjunction with the show/conference or conference, and many more.

If you're fortunate enough that someone else in your field is hosting an annual event where your target audience comes all together, you must attend.

Relative to hosting your own event, going to a conference that someone else is putting on is like clicking the "easy" button. BUT, if you just go to the event without planning, you might as well stay home.

There are often conference/event/trade show sponsorships available for purchase, booths, and other opportunities to get amplified exposure to attendees over what you can accomplish on a one-to-one basis. The Holy Grail of event engagement at someone else's event is being a speaker. I'll address speaking engagements in the future and, however uncomfortable it may be initially, public speaking in front of your target audience is as good as gold. It's a fast path to confidence and trust, provided that the speech you give is compelling, valuable, and relatable.

Assess sponsorship opportunities in the same way you would with any paid advertising. It should be measurable, and the responsibility lies with you with an event sponsorship. Your presence at the event, the brand experiences you build, as well as your the call to action you make will be the determining factor in your success or failure thereof. Your event strategy needs to include pre-event prep, an on-site plan, and an after-event sequence. It doesn't matter whether or not you have a paid sponsorship, though it's likely to be more straightforward if you've got one.

Prep: If you can get access and exposure to the list of attendees before the event you can move their sales funnel more quickly. If you're a corporate sponsor, ask the organizers how to maximize the value of your sponsorship. Request more than is provided within the sponsorship deal If you think of a creative approach to give worth to the participants and make the organizer look nice.

If you do not have a sponsorship or aren't an influencer within your field You're not likely to attract the attention of organizers in any kind of significant way. Circumvent this by getting on Twitter or Instagram and then using the event hashtag to try and locate others attending. Meet them and consider hosting a happy time, meal or a mini-workshop offsite in the days and hours in the days and hours leading up to the main event.

The day of: Sponsor or not Find a way to get leads. It is possible to do this with a one-to one basis, with a pertinent resource or offering the prospect you are interested in exchange for contact information or the permission to interact with their social media accounts. Be attentive and avoid being pushy or pushy. If you are able to help anyone, inform them that you believe you could and ask for permission to contact them. Taking a second to write a quick note about every person in order to make a personal follow-up email will put the bar higher than those with generic follow-up emails that do not include personal information.

Follow the hashtag for the event via social media throughout the event and afterwards, and use it your personal hashtag. That's a free way to amplify your presence and help you be more noticeable to the attendees. It's also an excellent opportunity to identify potential clients or influencers throughout and following the event.

If you're planning to hold a booth at a convention, you'll need to figure out how to be noticed. It's not my expertise however, you can go to Pinterest and search for creative inspiration. Get noticed and if your industry lends itself to having a bit of fun make sure to play with it. A good way to achieve this is to set up the booth themed, and then have staff members or volunteers dress the way they want to dress.

Another thing I've seen well is having employees going around and asking attendees would they prefer to join an exclusive restaurant or club for drinks at the end of the evening. They then have to go to your booth to hear more about the services you offer and to sign in (lead capture) to receive an invitation. If you decide to do this, then you must be a friendly group in your booth. People who your potential customers actually want to spend time having drinks with. Hire an area or bar that is popular in a restaurant in town and make the payment at the end of the evening. This kind of thing creates a little buzz (no joke intended) on the night, makes it possible for potential clients to experience a positive experience of your company and acts as a direct lead magnet.

Follow up All your prep and work on the day will go to waste when you fail to follow-up regarding the follow-up process. Keep in mind that lead-capture during the event is key because otherwise, you'll not have plenty of people to follow-up with. Oops.

After the occasion, compose an individual email including your contact information that you made a notes of your time with them (you already did this, don't you?) And connect with them on their favorite social media site for the two-in-one punch. Don't wait around on this. You must make the most of event hype and energy, and if you delay this for a week, you've likely missed the boat. After you've sent the customized email, trigger the automated drip sequence that you created prior to the event. You can do this through your email service provider (you were granted permission to email your customers, didn't you?) and then move them along the sales pipeline just as you would any other person who visits your site. But, you've met that person face-to-face and your calls to actions (CTAs) must have greater significance (attend an engaging webinar, begin the trial, purchase) rather than someone who in the process of establishing your drip program following the acquisition of your lead magnet website.

If you're allowed to distribute cards, but you are not able to collect details of names or contact information because of some reason, make your own landing page and include a special lead magnet offer specifically for attendees of conferences. Make a specific batch of business cards created with the website's URL as well as brief descriptions of the awesome free resource you've created just for them. Make sure you have an email capture forms on that page to request downloading and start an automated nurture sequence for them to follow.

 There's an infinite number of ways to work this, however the most important thing to remember is that you require an prior, during, and post-event method that's quantifiable.

Webinars

Webinars are 45 to 90 minute value-forward online seminar that can be shown live in front of a live audience on the web or pre-recorded and consumed on demand. Webinars make excellent top-of-the-line source and build email lists tools, but could also be utilized towards the end of a marketing funnel to request the purchase.

Webinars are produced by yourself in a single event, or in a set of events called an event, either that includes guests or not, or as the guest speaker on other people's. Whatever the case, they can and should be leveraged to showcase your knowledge and establish authority and credibility within your particular industry. You can use them once or create evergreen webinars with the same content they should be relevant for the next 12-24 months.

If you operate in a closed-model membership (meaning that you open your site to new members a handful of times in the year) an individual event or summit could serve as a fantastic closing strategy. I'd recommend hosting this kind of webinar in real time and mentioning a an extremely exclusive limited-time offer on your promotional materials. This offer is only available to those who attend live following the event, not to viewers who view the replay. The replay of the webinar should still be sent to people who didn't go live, but you can improve your attendance live and closing ratio when your viewers know something special is happening in the closing.

Hosting a summit is one of the best moves you can make to become an authority/influencer. You must have a sizable email list to attract others from the industry as guest speakers and if you manage to succeed it will surely be well-rewarded. This is a lot of work. I would not recommend it unless you're willing to invest enough time to ensure that your summit technology, promotion, guests, content planning, scheduling, and follow-up completed.

Being a guest on someone else's webinar and inviting your viewers to join is the perfect way to dip your toe into the water and to get familiar with the camera, without having to put into the work hosting your own. If you're working alongside partners on cross-promotions or have an organic influencer strategy that is in place, you're more likely to be top of mind on the guest list of those who are hosting webinars and summits.

Like fully harnessing the power of an industry conference or conference, creating a prior webinar promotion strategy as well as a follow-up plan is crucial. Because summits and webinars provide such a wealth of information for your intended audience (not to mention an enormous amount of effort on your behalf) be sure that you're repurposing your content that you learned from the event: transform it into a blog book, series, podcast or podcast series, YouTube videos, a lead magnet, and on.

 The most crucial thing to keep in mind whether you're hosting or guesting is that you provide an unimaginable quantity of value for participants of your webinar. Don't be tempted to hold back your secret sauce. Now is the moment to show that you've got the secret sauce and that you have plenty of other benefits that came from behind your paywall.

Meetups or events in person

In-person events and meetups can consist of one of these: hosting happy hours, in-person courses/lessons, workshops or sponsorship of events held in person in cities that have a large percentage of your members live or any other way it's possible to gather people on the ground. The events can be either unpaid or free or educational, or simply enjoyable for gatherings that build community.

Most membership sites we work with offer an online community element in their membership. Since a community is the main differences between membership and a class. If you're able to bring together your members in person, and put on events that your members (and prospective members) appreciate and praise on the internet, you're going to boost sales, cLTV, convert rates and also the strength of your online members.

Events like these are a great place to allow members who are currently or prospectively to mingle and chat. Let your current members do the "selling" for you prospects through casual conversation. If you have a few members of your current membership value the benefits of your membership to make it clear that they will show up somewhere in the flesh discussing your membership, it will come up naturally in conversation.

As with industry conferences and trade fairs it is essential to plan ahead of time, make the actual occasion live up to its expectations, and plan the ability to follow-up. Your prep and follow up depends on the kind of event you're holding.

If it's a workshop, you're likely charging people to attend, and will need to prepare marketing materials, and then the workshop details themselves (workbooks, handouts, a slide deck, your presentation, guest speakers/instructors). The follow-up should consist of an audience survey as well as bonus material, or a special offer for some other item. If you've met someone in person and earned their trust, leverage this trust into profitable opportunity to upsell them.

If you're planning to host an evening of happy hour, a little preparation is required. Make sure you choose a good location, serving food or drinks, as well as getting people there. Once you're there, engage with everyone in attendance and make sure there's no one absent. Asking current members to bring a like-minded friend to join you is a great method to increase the number of people who attend.

A Happy Hour isn't the best opportunity to make sales If you're hosting prospective members, make sure you have a smart strategy to ensure that you're able to follow up with the people you invite. Your lead capture could be entry into a contest for the chance to win a membership for free, swag, etc. It could also be something more subtle like handing out cards to prospects with an exclusive promo code printed in them.

No matter what the event, ensure you have a plan for lead capture and follow-up for potential customers in attendance. Just as your marketing materials for memberships have to match the materials that paying members receive behind the paywall, your promotion for the event should be in line with what you can deliver in person , or else you risk being badmouthed on social media. Make sure you have raving supporters of your events , rather than critics in order to be able to hold successful an event in the near future. This is a perfect time to harness the underpromise, overdeliver principle.

Speaking engagements

Maybe this is more fear-inducing than direct sales to some however it's extremely effective when done well, recorded, and fully utilized. If you're new to public speaking, it's fine. Activities like guest blogging, guest podcasting hosting, participating in webinars, creating videos as well as. All of these are great practice of public speaking.

There's no need to aim for the moon in the beginning. Find a local business association and present a talk there or teach the workshop in-person to a small group. There is even the option of going to an area that you do not know to make a presentation If you're looking to take the pressure off. Start small, and when your confidence and skill set improves, move up to a larger gig.

Request to host the breakout session at conferences, or organize an informal breakout session either prior or in the aftermath of someone else's occasion (in a non-shady way naturally). Once you've done those things successfully, start to harness your organic influencer, guest blogging/podcasting/webinar hosting strategies to move further up the speaking ladder. If you're in the loop for pertinent speaking opportunities due to the fact that you're a part of a network and have put in your time and effort to develop the social capital of that network, you're many times more likely to be invited to be a candidate for a speaking slot even if you're not particularly well known as of yet.

Speaking gigs with a higher profile have the same value as publishing your own book or holding a conference or even a summit with other industry experts with respect to reach and influence. No matter the size of the event, make sure you fully leverage your presentation by repurposing it for other mediums. Be sure to take a quality footage of your speech or presentation. Then post your video to your own site both behind and in front of the paywall. Post it on YouTube and use the video to create a series of blog posts as well as a podcast, or to spark discussion in your communities, both paid and free Include an embedded video on your website's "About" and "Resources" tab on your website.

 Additionally, you can use the recording of your video to be eligible to other speaking opportunities. After you've proved yourself to be an effective speaker, and have promoted your presentation accordingly, using a recorded video of your presentation along with some social proof (positive feedback you received from attendees) Your public speaking career will become a whole lot more easy.