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This article is part of the series, and is based off the book "Top 21 marketing methods for membership websites published by the Subscription Coach Amanda Northcutt.

 Download the whole series in a book

Creative marketing opportunities abound in trade shows and conferences. You can pay for a booth, buy an event sponsorship from the show's organization, or host an off-site event to coincide with the event or conference, and more.

If you're fortunate enough to find that someone else from your sector is organizing an annual event in which your audience is all together, you must be there.

Relative to hosting your own event, going to an event which someone else is putting on is like hitting the easy button. But, if you simply show up, sans strategy, you might as well go in your 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. One of the Holy Grail of event engagement at someone else's event is being a speaker. I'll address speaking engagements a bit later, but as uncomfortable as it may be initially when you speak to your targeted group is as powerful as gold. It's a fast path to trust and authority, provided your speech is engaging meaningful, relevant and valuable.

Examine sponsorship options in the same way you would with any paid advertising. It should be measurable, and that's largely on you in the case of a sponsorship for your event. The presence you make at the event, the brand experiences you build, as well as your the call to action you make will decide the success of your event or lack or lack of. Your event strategy needs to be pre-planned, with an on-site plan, and the follow-up process. This is true regardless of the event regardless of any paid sponsorships, although it's likely to be more straightforward if you've got one.

Prep: If you can gain access to and visibility on the attendees list prior to the event, you will be able to move their sales funnel faster. If you're a sponsor you can ask the event organizers for ways you can make the most of the sponsorship. Request more than is included within the sponsorship deal If you come up with a unique method to offer the attendees with value and also make the event look great.

If you do not have a sponsorship and you're not an influential person in your area, you're unlikely to get the attention of organizers in any kind of meaningful way. Get yourself on Twitter as well as Instagram and then using the hashtag to find others who are coming. Begin to get acquainted with these people and think about hosting a party, happy hour, lunch, or a mini-workshop offsite on the days or hours that will be around the occasion.

The day to: Sponsor or not find a method to capture leads. This can be done with a one-to one basis, through providing relevant resources or offering to a potential customer who is interested to exchange contact details or the permission to interact with the person on social media. Be attentive and be respectful, not pushy, or salesy. If you're able to assist someone, tell them you believe you could and ask for permission to contact them. Taking a second to write an outline of every person in order to make a personal follow-up email will put the bar higher than the ones who send generic follow-up messages completely lacking personal details.

Track the event hashtag on social media during and after the event, and use it your personal hashtag. It's an easy way to amplify your presence and help you be more noticeable to attendees. This is also a great method to find potential customers or influencers throughout and following the conference.

If you have a booth at a conference, you'll need to figure out how to be noticed. This isn't a guru's advice, but get on Pinterest and search for ideas for your creative process. Be noticed, and if your industry lends itself to a little lighthearted fun and entertainment, you should play it up. A good way to achieve this is to have a themed booth and have staff members or volunteers dress according to a specific fashion.

Another thing I've seen effectively is having staff wandering around asking guests whether they'd like to be invited to an exclusive club/restaurant for cocktails at the end of the evening. Then, they have to head into your booth and learn more about the services you offer and sign up (lead capture) for an invitation. If you're doing this, then you must ensure that you have an enjoyable group of people at your booth, people whom your customers would actually like to drink with and spend time with. You can rent an area or bar that is popular in a restaurant in town and pay the tab after the evening. Something like this creates a little buzz (no pun intended) during the event. It lets potential customers have a positive experience of your company and acts as an in-person lead magnet.

Follow up All your prep and work on the day is wasted If you don't follow up in the follow-up plan. Be aware that lead capture at the event is key, otherwise you won't have many people to follow up with. Oops.

On the day following the party, send them an individual email with the personal details you made note of when you met them (you already did this, don't you?) and make a connection with them through their most popular social media outlet for the one-two punch. Don't put it off for too long. You need to make the most of event hype as well as momentum. If you delay this for more than a week, you've not seen the big picture. Following the personal email, trigger the automated drip sequence you wrote before the event, from your email provider (you got permission to email themtoo, don't you?) And then, move them through your sales funnel the same way you would a person who has visited your website. But, you've met that person face-to-face and your calls to take (CTAs) ought to have greater significance (attend a value-packed webinar, start the trial, purchase) than someone who is in the process of establishing your drip program following the acquisition of the lead magnet on your website.

If you're capable of handing out cards but not collect details of names or contact information because of some reason, make your own landing page and include an offer for leads exclusively for conference attendees. Make a specific set of business cards designed with the website's URL as well as brief descriptions of the amazing free resource that you've designed just for them on it. Then have your email capture forms on that page to request the download and kick off an automated nurture sequence to follow.

 There are a myriad of possibilities to use this but the main takeaway is that you require an pre- the event, throughout, and after it method that's quantifiable.

Webinars

Webinars are 45 to 90 minutes of value-added online seminars that can be shown live in front of a live audience on the web or recorded, and consumed at any time. Webinars are great as top of the funnel source and build email lists instruments. They can also be used toward the final stage of a sales funnel to ask for the sales.

Webinars are produced by yourself in a single event, or in a set of events called an event, either with or without guests, or as a guest on someone else's. In any case, they are a great way to display your expertise and establish authority and credibility within your particular industry. They can be used one time or produce evergreen webinars - the contents of that should apply to in the coming 12-24 months.

If you run in a closed-model membership (meaning you only open the site to new members a handful of times in the year) an individual conference or webinar can be a great way to close the deal. I'd suggest offering such a webcast live, and then mentioning an extremely exclusive limited-time offer on your marketing materials that will only be offered to live attendees at the end of the session, and not for those who watch 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 percentage in case your attendees know that the event will be special in the closing.

Hosting a summit is one of the best moves you can make to become an authority/influencer. It is essential to have an extensive email list to get expert guests from other industries, but if you can succeed, your efforts will be well-rewarded. This is a lot of work. I would not recommend this unless you are willing to commit to the amount of time required to have your technology, summit promotion guest speakers, content plan schedule, follow-up, and more hashed out.

Being a guest on someone who is hosting a webinar and inviting their viewers to join can be a fantastic chance to get your feet into the water and to get at ease on the camera without putting into the work to host your own. If you're working alongside partners on cross-promotions or already have an effective influencer strategy implemented, you're likely to be in the forefront in the guest list of the webinars that are being hosted by those hosting them as well as summits.

Similar to fully exploiting an industry conference or conference, creating a prior webinar marketing strategy and a plan for follow-up is essential. Since webinars and summits are such a wealth of information to your target audience (not to mention the hefty amount of work on your part) ensure that you reuse the information that you learned from the event: transform it into a blog post series, ebook podcast, or video series on YouTube or a lead magnet and on.

 The most crucial thing to keep in mind whether you're hosting or guesting is to provide an inordinate quantity of value for the attendees of your webinar. It's not the time to hide your secret sauce. Now is the opportunity to demonstrate that you've got the recipe that works and you have plenty of other benefits you can find it behind the paywall for your membership.

Meetings in-person or meetings

Meetups and events in person could include one of these: holding happy hour, in-person courses/lessons, workshops or sponsorship of local events where a critical mass of your members reside, and anything else where it is possible to bring people together in real life. Events can be cost-free or paid for, educational in nature, or just good fun for community-building.

The majority of membership websites we work with offer an online community component within the membership. After all, a community is one of the biggest differentiators between a membership and a class. If you can gather your group in person and put on an event that your members (and potential members) enjoy and then praise on the internet it will boost sales, cLTV, convert rates and also your overall strength as a members.

Events like these are a great place for members, both current and future to socialize and have a chat. Let your current members perform the "selling" on your behalf to prospective members through casual chat. If you have a few of your current members value your membership so much that they appear physically, talking about your membership can be an easy topic of conversation.

Like industry conferences or trade shows, you must prepare in advance, ensure that the conference live up to the anticipation, and then have a follow up strategy. How you plan and conduct follow-up will depend on the type 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). Follow-up materials should comprise an audience survey, bonus materials, and the possibility of a discount for other items. If you've met an individual in person and gained their trust, leverage this trust into profitable potential upsells.

If you're planning to host a happy hour, little prep work should be necessary. Make sure you choose a good venue, providing appetizers and maybe drinks, and getting people to the event. After you've arrived, you should engage with the people in attendance, and be sure that there's no one left out. Inviting members who are already there to bring a like-minded friend with them is an effective option to boost your attendance as well.

And while a happy hour is the last place to be salesy, if you're inviting prospective members, make sure you have a smart strategy to ensure that you follow-up with the people you invite. Your lead capture could be entering them into a contest to win the chance to win a membership for free, merchandise, etc. It could also be something more subtle like handing people cards that have a special promo code in them.

Regardless of the type of occasion, make sure you've got an approach to lead collection and follow-up with prospects in attendance. Just as your membership marketing materials should be in line with what paying members actually get behind the paywall, the event's promotion should be in line with what you're capable of delivering on the spot or you risk being badmouthed online. Create raving fans of your event, not naysayers to ensure that you are able to successfully host future events. This is the ideal time to harness the underpromise, overdeliver principle.

Speaking engagements

Perhaps this is even scarier than direct sales for some of us however it's extremely effective when done well, recorded, and fully leveraged. If you're not familiar with public speaking, it's fine. Activities like guest blogging, guest podcasting, hosting or appearing as a guest speaker on webinars, making videos as well as. All of these are great ways to prepare for public speaking.

You don't have to shoot for the moon as you're starting out. Find a local business association and make a presentation on the spot or lead an individual workshop for a small group. It is also possible to go to a nearby town where you don't know anyone to make a presentation if you really want to take the pressure off. Begin small and, as your comfort and skills improve, you can up level to a bigger job.

Apply to teach breakout sessions at conferences, host an unofficial breakout session before or after 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 able to access pertinent speaking opportunities due to the fact that you have a strong network and you've put in the time to build an online presence within the group, you'll be much likely to be selected as a potential speaker, even if you're not particularly famous as of yet.

Speakers who are more prominent are on par with creating your own book, organizing a conference, or even a summit with others in the industry, both with respect to impact and reach. No matter the size of your speaking engagement, you should make sure you maximize your presentation by repurposing it for various other media. First make sure you're able to capture a high-quality footage of your speech or presentation. Then post your video to your site, behind and in front of the paywall. Upload it to YouTube and use the video as a blog series or podcast subject, and use it to spark discussion in your paid and free communities Include an embedded video on the "About" or "Resources" page on your site.

 Not to mention, use the video recording to apply for other speaking gigs. After you've proved yourself to be a valuable speaker and market yourself accordingly using recorded videos of your talk along with some social proof (positive comments from your audience) Your public speaking life will get simpler.