Make Your Event Bigger and Better: Promote with Cobalt Digital Marketing

Digital marketing has quickly become one of the most effective methods of drawing attention to your trade show, conference, or event. When done correctly, you can increase your attendance rate, expand your reach, build community, manage ticket sales, and essentially make your event bigger and better.

But, truth be told, it’s a little easier said than done. There’s plenty of strategizing that must take place in order to properly promote your event. Naturally, you’ll want a dedicated team of marketing professionals to handle this undertaking, especially if you don’t have the experience of doing so yourself.

That’s where the experts at Cobalt Digital Marketing come in. We’ve helped numerous companies and organizations promote and market their event to the fullest extent possible - and we can do the same for you.

In fact, we recently wrapped up one of our biggest successes; the McAllen Chamber of Commerce chose Cobalt Digital Marketing as the digital marketing agency to promote their 2018 Business Expo.

About the McAllen Business Expo

The McAllen Business Expo is the region’s premier business event, bringing together hundreds of businesses and entrepreneurs, and thousands of attendees. The goal of the Business Expo is to provide outstanding networking opportunities, learning experiences, and professional business seminars, all while furnishing the perfect setting for the showcasing, advertising, and selling of products and services.

As the leading business expo in the Rio Grande Valley, our team at Cobalt Digital Marketing understood that the promotion for this event had to be bigger and better than any year prior - and that’s exactly what we focused on.

Using a number of initiatives including social media marketing, digital ads, video content marketing, and various other channels, we were able to:

• Help generate nearly $1,750 in online sales!
• Update the McAllen Chamber website to include e-commerce capability so that sponsors and exhibitors could register and pay online.
• Obtain support from expo sponsors to create videos that promoted the event.
• Sell out all booths 3 entire weeks before the event.
• Bring together 152 businesses.
• Reach more than 10,000 people through Facebook Event.
• Increase McAllen Chamber website traffic by 40% over the same period last year.
• Increase website traffic by 20% over the previous period (June/July).
• Reach 100,000 people with display ads.
• Help to draw in thousands of attendees.

Amazingly, we were able to accomplish these results within an 8-week period by successfully employing the Cobalt Formula™.

You can watch the Chamber’s wrap up video here.

Promoting with the Cobalt Formula™

Our objectives for the 2018 McAllen Business Expo was to obtain sponsors, increase attendance, improve event visibility, and secure exhibitors. Through a multi-faceted approach utilizing website marketing, social media marketing, digital ads, and content marketing, we were able to reach our goals.

Tactics

1. Website - As previously mentioned, we updated the Chamber’s website to include capabilities that allowed sponsors to register and pay directly online without the need to sign-up in person. Naturally, this streamlined the process for exhibitors and sponsors, allowing them to focus on their own priorities without having to take time out of their busy schedules to make a trip down to the chamber; for business owners and entrepreneurs, time is of the essence.

2. Facebook - Our social media catalysts developed a Facebook Event page to reach nearly 10,000 individuals through engaging posts, videos, and ads. Additionally, we were able to complement our own efforts by increasing traffic to the McAllen Chamber of Commerce’s own Facebook page, and increased their likes by nearly 200 people. This two-front approach helped us to reach even more people than originally anticipated and gave the McAllen Chamber of Commerce a vital boost that should help them in their promotion of next year’s event.

3. Instagram - The value of social media cannot be overstated and our social media team had the creative idea to not only leverage Instagram but also develop a real-life Instagram frame with tie-in hashtags to generate interest and buzz around the event. During the period of September 6th through the 12th, we reached 858 unique accounts and an astounding 5378 impressions.

4. Display ads - We took advantage of Facebook ads to strategically target and promote to our audience. We reached over 100,000 people with an economical cost-per-click of only $0.29.

5. On-going promotion - Our entire social media team attended the event to continue engaging our audience. We went from booth to booth and attendee to attendee, capturing live video, photos, and boomerangs that have since been used to develop quality content on Instagram and Facebook even after the event ended, drawing further attention to the expo and the McAllen Chamber. We also created a number of articles to continue showcasing all the wonderful happenings of the 2018 McAllen Business Expo.

We understood that our responsibility to this project was not going to stop once the event had taken place. We were dedicated to ensuring that we saw the promotion of the event all the way through and that’s why we have continued to promote content to already begin preparing for next year’s event. A year really does fly by and we want to make sure that our reach is even bigger in 2019.

Are you ready to take advantage of the Cobalt Formula™ for your next expo, trade show or event? If you want to learn how our catalysts can promote and turn your event into the next big thing, then contact us today at 956-303-6555. Bigger and better. It’s what we do.