360° marketing including trade deals with media partners and agency coordination to drive awareness and registrations to a large annual show – IAAPA Expo Europe.
Background
How to market to existing and new audiences an annual gathering of industry leaders, IAAPA Expo Europe, each year hosted in a different country in the EMEA region?
International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) is a trade association representing over 7,000 amusement-industry members in more than 100 countries worldwide and operating several global attractions-industry trade shows. It is also a producer and owner of IAAPA Expo Europe, the Leisure Industry’s Premier Event in Europe.
Each year it is the place where thousands of attractions professionals gather to learn what’s new and suppliers showcase their innovations on an expansive trade show. To connect peers from the entire EMEA region, it rotates between largest cities and venues across Europe.
Approach
To create awareness and bring attendance (from exhibitors and visitors), while working as EMEA Marketing Co-Lead, in collaboration with the Global Marketing team, I was in charge of:
- Annual marketing plan covering objectives, market SWOT, focus, and according strategies and tactics.
- Event pages linked with a registration system, requiring ongoing updates, and covering all the aspects of the event such as attendee information, pricing, venue details, health and safety updates, press and media contact info and more.
- Email marketing aimed at prospective attendees and exhibitors, and contracted exhibitors, generic and segmented, including registration abandoned techniques scenarios and last minute know before you go communication.
- Content marketing such as video and text articles for the IAAPA-owned magazine.
- Social media organic and paid presence at various owned channels including announcement posts, session previews, speaker teasers, and time specific venue and health and safety updates.
- Trade media and partner association deals to exchange exhibiting space for promotion to their audiences, all to drive attendance.
- Media buying including offline and online promotion booked via media agency.
- Digital marketing in collaboration with a digital agency including retargeting, SEO, and paid social media.
- Offline collateral for on-site marketing such as show guide, venue maps and leaflets.
- Live social media updates including daily posts, acknowledgments of speakers and sponsors, and daily summaries of the event.