Hosting a stand-out corporate event is a great way to capitalize on experiential marketing. The higher quality the event, the more likely a customer or member of the press will become a brand advocate. Here are five techniques you can employ at your next event to better engage your guests while also fostering long-term relationships. 

Organize A Hands-On Guest Engagement Team
One of the best ways to ensure engagement with guests is to create a designated group of staff members responsible for forging genuine interactions with your event attendees. Make sure these individuals are charming, charismatic and extremely knowledgeable on your business. Once they’ve engaged someone, have them offer that person a tour, a seat, or a refreshment. This is a great way to make a meaningful branded connection, while also generating soft leads. Remember, a little bit of kindness forges stronger relationships. Kindness reduces the emotional distance between two people and makes them feel more bonded – which will increase the person’s comfort level, and the likelihood of them willing to hear about what you are offering.

Utilize Lounge Space To Open Minds
Imagine strategically placed lounge spaces with comfortable seating at your event. Now imagine how appreciative guests would be if a company went out of their way to make them comfortable, especially if they are coming straight from work.

As Ferris Jabr wrote for Scientific American:

Downtime replenishes the brain’s stores of attention and motivation, encourages productivity and creativity, and is essential to both achieve our highest levels of performance and simply form stable memories in everyday life.

Even if it’s subtle – logo placement, audio/visual displays playing, spokespeople entertaining and speaking with those relaxing – it’s an ingenious way to get people to appreciate your brand.

Provide Strategically Placed Digital Brochures 
Consider adding tablets near lounge spaces or on each table. Equip each tablet with your digital brochure, so guests can immediately learn more about your products and solutions. Often it’s hard for guests to not touch technology placed in front of them, and in today’s world, where nearly everyone is used to looking at a screen, utilizing an interactive screen is a familiar way to promote your organization, products or services.

Leverage the Excitement Music Creates
Whether it’s a rock and roll playlist from a DJ or live entertainment, music can intrigue and capture attendees’ attention. Music often releases the ‘pleasure chemical’ dopamine into our brains.

On an evolutionary and neurological level, “creative domains, like music, allow humans to connect in a synchronized way, helping us develop a group identity and makes us more likely to work together,” notes neuroscientist and musician Jamshed Bharucha. At a corporate event, the right music can create excitement and make attendees curious about what will come next. 

Provide Useful Promotional Items
Paper, more often than not, will be thrown away. Tired products, like lanyards and drawstring backpacks, will be regifted or sit in the bottom of a drawer. But give someone something useful, and you’ve placed a solid reminder of your value in their hands.

Customized promotional items to consider include tech gadgets, such as Bluetooth speakers and smartphone chargers. Health and wellness products can encompass fitness tools, custom soaps, and candles. Apparel items could include eco-friendly branded tee shirts or sunglasses. Trends in drinkware include imprinted mason jars and infusers.

Inviting people to attend your corporate event is important; but also important is being remembered for all the right reasons. These tips will help ensure successful connections are made and your brand is represented in the right way.

Ready to start planning your event? Speak with one of our Event Coordinators today.