6 Key Ways to Captivate Your Audience at Your Event

Events are complex – with so many pieces to the puzzle to streamline production, the message should remain consistent and most importantly, keep guests entertained! Entertainment and audience captivity will drive loyalty and brand awareness well past the event’s immediate audience. Experts at Brightline Interactive and Traction Event Labs recently spoke at the Florida Festivals Events Conference on how to achieve just that. Here are the top takeaways that should be noted when planning your next event activation.

1.Know customer/event dynamics

Certain customers react differently at certain types of events. Example: Sports fans are not the same across the board. Different sports have different consumer tendencies and should be treated as such. Take in account the factors below when planning your activation.

1. Sports-based behaviors

2. Event format & location

3. Time of year

4. Time of day

5. Rural vs. Urban

6. Age-based behaviors

2. Know your customers

Older demographics are usually slower to adapt to new technologies and many have outdated technology that may not always work with your activation strategy. The younger generation tend to have an easier grasp on tech trends and does not need as much instruction to participate.

3. Different people use social media differently

Don’t discredit the older generation on their use of social media. Just learn how they use it. Studies show that ages 50+ use Facebook as their social media preference to keep in touch with family and friends. Those that use LinkedIn are usually high-ranking business professionals and key decision makers. Their presence on both of these platforms make them strong influencers in unique ways and needs to be carefully planned when incorporating them into your social media sharing strategy. On the opposite side of the spectrum, the younger generation view more video content and use more image-led social media such as Instagram and Snapchat which need to be thought about in their own specific ways. Remember that not all social mediums are created equally so it is important to know how your particular audience will interact with your activation to make the best use out of your social media strategy within your activation.

4. Follow the Process to Successful Event Activations

Activation implementations are very complex and need to be fully vetted and tested for ease of use. The infographic above lays out the key considerations when putting your event together.

5. Simplify the technology

Technology advances a lot faster than we can keep up with it. Remember that your average audience member will feel this way tenfold. These tips will help keep your audience’s attention throughout the experience:

1. Streamline the length of the experience

2. Optimize traffic flow into stations

3. Base experiences off familiar experiences

4. Determine best time to collect personal information

6. Simplify registration

Lead generation is usually one of the main goals of any event activation. Collecting audience information is a key step in measuring success and should be carefully incorporated into your strategy. Brand ambassadors are a good way to engage your audience in the experience and prompt them to sign up. You can take it one step further and have the ambassadors collect information on behalf of the audience to make it easier for the customer. You should also only collect information that is critical to your lead-gen strategy. The more information the customer is required to give, the less wiling they will be to engage with the experience. Also, take advantage of RFIDs, QR codes and barcodes when possible to ease the collection of data.

Pro tip: offer something of value that the customer needs to give their correct information to receive. An example would be a personalized photo or video they can send to themselves. This would warrant the need to give a correct name and email address.

See some of our favorite activations below: