Digital Marketing for Venues: How to Market a Venue Online
Digital marketing for venues can be a goldmine.
It takes effort but the results can be incredible.
Whether you are a small business or a multinational company, when you apply digital marketing correctly, this kind of advertising can grow your business in ways you can’t imagine.
Similarly, you too can use some digital marketing techniques to make sure that your venue becomes a known one when prospective clients search on the internet.
The digital marketing efforts can be accomplished either with an in-house team or a digital marketing agency.
However, with the digital marketing field getting saturated with average digital agencies that claim to be the best, it’s better that you unify your digital marketing efforts in-house.
Worried how that’s going to work out?
This comprehensive guide on digital marketing for venues shares the smallest of details of how to make your venue’s presence felt online.
Without further ado, let’s get to the crux of how to apply digital marketing for venues in-house.
You can jump to the section you want to read about:
12 tips for how to market a venue online:
1. Prepare a social media calendar and stick to it
2. Never underestimate the power of email marketing
3. Churn out more video content
4. Make use of influencer marketing
5. Keep an eye on online review sites
6. Maintain a well-updated website
7. Feed on user-generated contents
8. Don’t ignore the power of ads
9. Live streaming events
10. Set up incredible PPC ad campaigns
11. Make sure your website hyperlink is everywhere it can be on the web
12. Follow the plan
1. Prepare a social media calendar and stick to it
Social media is a crucial part of digital marketing.
You can get a lot of leads and make online visitors curious about your venue.
You probably already have all the necessary social media accounts for your venue. However, it’s time to engage with your followers and make your venue a brand name.
Consistency is the key.
Prepare a realistic social media calendar that reflects your business’s identity.
Push out valuable content on a regular basis and draw a clear CTA at the end of each post.
There is software that lets you schedule your posts like Hootsuite that can save you a lot of time.
This way, the posts can go out regularly and your team won’t have to rush at the last moment to push a post live on time.
Also, it’s not always about the numbers. It’s about the engagement.
Try to participate with your customers. If you wish to maintain an informal tone, you can casually reply to the comments and mingle with your users.
Furthermore, you can always jump on the trend bandwagon. Posting relevant content on trending hashtags can give your posts a huge boost.
For reference, your social media calendar must include the following elements:
– The type of content you are planning to post
– The social media channels you are opting for
– The hashtags or trends you plan to make use of
– The schedule of the posts (the date and time each post gets uploaded)
– The engagement rates from specific posts
The timing of your post matters.
For example, the users on Linkedin are quite active during business hours, while on Instagram, you get more traction in the afternoons.
It is important to roll out a few trial posts to see what works and what doesn’t work for your account.
2. Never underestimate the power of email marketing
It’s a common misconception that email marketing is dead. But it isn’t!
The reason why people believe that is because their emails go directly to the spam folders instead of being read.
For your emails to be read, implement targeting.
Push out emails only to people who are interested in your venue and have opted into the emails.
The targeting can be achieved by keeping a close eye on the visitors on your website.
Further, you can also identify potential clients based on their search intent.
If the users are searching about your competitors, they are probably interested in venues and are looking for viable options.
The next thing to focus on while sending emails is your content.
Make sure your emails convey the message with minimal sentences. Infographics can do many wonders too.
You can either let the customer know of the upcoming offers or send them your newsletters.
Either way, make sure not to spam their inbox. A maximum of two emails per week would do the trick.
3. Churn out more video content
People nowadays consume a lot of video content.
Be it on YouTube or TikTok, short-format videos are loved by millennials and Gen Z a well as older generations.
You could make short videos of the previous events hosted at your venue showcasing how the event management team decorated the space.
You could even include short testimonials from your customers.
You can either seek the help of a professional videographer or make short reels with the help of a TikTok lover from your marketing team.
This way, the audience will see what your venue looks like and ideate over how it can be utilized for different events.
Further, you can make use of the content you use in your marketing emails.
Turn an infographic into an animated video and upload it on your social media handles.
Share some valuable tips that would help your prospects. After all, when you create relatable content, the engagement rate increases.
4. Make use of influencer marketing
It’s true that influencer marketing is getting kind of overrated due to the repetition of content and overpromoting of average brands.
However, if you find the right influencer and help them with content that resonates with your business, you could get great traction.
Some special discount coupons for the influencer’s followers would easily attract them to your business.
You could invite them to your venue and ask them to give a virtual tour of the same to their followers.
This way, both your followers and theirs would get to see the actual beauty of your venue and would genuinely consider it as an option.
Although for this to work, you need to find an influencer who actively engages with their audience and is relevant to your niche of business. Only then would your efforts be fruitful.
5. Keep an eye on online review sites
Event management companies look at reviews before narrowing down on a venue to use for their event.
Make sure your online reviews don’t spread a negative word about your business.
It’s quite normal to have cynical reviews. They show up every now and then.
However, the way you respond to them matters.
If the customer wasn’t satisfied with the way you arranged things, apologize for the inconvenience, and provide them with a discount coupon if you can.
Make all your interactions with the customer transparent and this way, people will know that you really value your customers and take the time to make sure they enjoy doing business with you.
6. Maintain a well-updated website
The first thing your potential visitor is going to judge is your website.
It should represent your brand and must have the latest pictures of your venue.
A well-organized and updated website gives a good impression to the client and they get a feeling that you take your work seriously.
The benefits of having a website are many.
You can get new leads, showcase your venue, inform the customers about the upcoming events and promotions, and so on.
However, just having a website isn’t enough. It should be updated and, above all, optimized so that it shows up when people search for venues in that area.
Further, don’t just throw random photos and content on your website. Have a goal in mind and optimize your website to draw conversions.
Since we are focused on digital marketing for venues, prepare a portfolio that clearly showcases the beauty of your venue.
Include photos from previous clients and their testimonies as well.
This way, the potential customers can get an idea of how to utilize the venue for their event and how trustworthy your company is.
Include pop-up surveys on your website
Popup surveys are in-built surveys on your website.
Instead of sending out full-fledged surveys to your potential customers or clients, you can easily know what customers think about your business from these surveys.
Ask one or two highly directed questions.
For example, ‘How exciting does our website look on a scale of 1 to 10?’ Based on the ratings, you can decide whatever changes to make to your website to ensure it is more pleasing for your potential clients.
Further, you can also conduct small market research surveys and the visitors can easily share their feedback.
If you are planning to add some new arrangements to your venue, you can ask the visitors their opinion and then make the changes if necessary.
7. Feed on user-generated content
When you host an event in your venue, people are going to put up stories and statuses.
Make use of the opportunity. Ask them to tag your social media handles and direct traction from their page to yours.
User-generated content can really make a buzz. To encourage your attendees to upload more, you can run some social media contests parallelly and award a prize for the best picture or video captured during the event.
This way, you get a lot of content, both for your social media handles as well as your website.
8. Don’t ignore the power of ads
Before you think ads aren’t your cup of tea, hear us out.
Targeting potential or interested customers helps you get a lot of traction.
When people search for keywords very relevant to your business, you can roll out ads to let them know that yours is a better option.
Targeted ads often fetch higher conversion rates.
It helps you create a buzz and make your venue’s name appear at the top of relevant SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
9. Live streaming events
This is a great idea, but you really need to seek the permission of the event management company before live-streaming an event.
If it’s a fun, cool event, then it’s great to live-stream these occasions on your social media handles.
Further, you can save a glimpse of it and post it on your social media accounts after some time.
The reason why it helps your digital marketing efforts is that event management companies will get to see your videos when you use the right hashtags.
They can exactly know the vibe your venue sets and whether it is suitable for certain events.
10. Set up incredible PPC ad campaigns
Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns can be set up on a number of different platforms.
The first is Google ads, whereby you can pay Google to have your venue listed at the top of the map of results for your chosen keyword phrases.
This is worth doing if you are an obvious result for what they’re searching for e.g a rooftop bar.
It may be worth putting an ad on keywords whereby your competitor venues have thousands of reviews, an amazing rating and a big DA score.
As realistically it will take a very long time to go above them on the map of results.
By paying for an ad you can jump above them and steal some clicks from people searching.
Another popular platform is Facebook and Instagram ads.
The best way to create ads on this platform is to include a promotion in the ad that you can track.
E.g. a free drink if you quote ‘FREEDRINKPLEASE’.
This way you can track the ad spend vs how many people have said that phrase.
The final PPC platform to consider is actually ours, Bloc.
Bloc is the only pay-per-result platform of its kind whereby you only pay for a ‘customer’ if they physically attend.
We track the check-in via geo-location so you don’t pay for impressions or clicks like the other platforms, but only on a successfully tracked check-in on the app.
11. Make sure your website hyperlink is everywhere it can be on the web
There are hundreds, if not thousands of places you can put your website link on the internet.
By doing this you’re doing two things a) getting traffic from that site and b) giving Google a backlink to consider for SEO purposes.
What you’re looking for are sites that get high search volume (you can use UberSuggest to check) and allow a ‘dofollow’ backlink to your site.
One to consider is Bloc Nearby.
It’s completely free to list your venue on Bloc and your venue will be automatically placed in hundreds of articles that are relevant.
12. Follow the plan
Having a digital marketing plan in place alone won’t do the trick.
Your team needs to follow up and make changes whenever necessary.
Further, tracking your progress is another integral part.
Suppose you posted infographic content on one day and a reel based on a recent trend the next day.
See which one of them gets traction and what kind of engagement both yield.
With that said, you should try to diversify the type of content you put out. It becomes repetitive when you upload reels daily.
Finding the right balance is necessary.
Also, if you are running ads, check the conversions.
Is it yielding more traction than usual and is the targeting done the right way or not?
Digital marketing for venues becomes effective only if you work according to the plan, you laid out. If not, all your efforts and money will be wasted.
Conclusion
Well, that’s the A to Z about digital marketing for venues.
Try out these ten steps to improve your marketing efforts and gain traction online.
Whatever you implement, make sure it reflects your company’s identity.
For this, you will have to define one at the beginning and stick to it whenever you post or promote content.
Define your brand’s tone, interact with your users, post regularly and overall, gauge your efforts.
If done right, you can easily make your venue a well-known one to the event managers around the place.
