How To Boost Attendance Using Photos and Videos
Event Organizers Must Use High-Quality Photos And Videos To Boost Attendance
Most people are familiar with the idiom “a picture is worth a thousand words.” In the world of event promotion, a picture might be worth more than 1,000 words and a high-quality picture or video might be worth a lot more than that.
In fact, Forrester Research, a very highly regarded market research company, estimates that one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words as this headline reports. Video is more powerful than the written word because of how the brain works, reports Psychology Today. Consequently, consumers are 39 percent more likely to share content delivered by video than content delivered by text.
“Videos are processed by the brain 60,000 times faster than text,” wrote Psychology Today columnist Liraz Margalit Ph.D. “Humans are hardwired to avoid demanding cognitive strain, so this tendency toward “laziness” will, more often than not, invite us to choose information that is easy to process over the form that makes us put out a lot of effort.”
Like words, though, photos and videos must be produced based on quality, not quantity. Poor photos and videos, in fact, can be a greater turnoff than poorly-written promotional materials. Here are some tips for maximizing the chances that your company produces high-quality images.
- Rely On Professionals:
Can you afford to hire a skilled photographer to produce high-quality photos and videos? Only you know that, but at minimum you should consult with professionals to give you tips on ideas and review your work. The article “How to Market an Event: 50 Event Marketing Tips" recommends that marketers with a limited budget offer a professional photographer free admission to an event in exchange for photo services.
- Learn About Equipment:
If you can’t afford a full-time photographer and an amateur on your staff, maybe you, has to produce some photos and/or videos, you should invest the time into learning about equipment. This Entrepreneur magazine article has advice about laptop or desktop cameras, smartphone cameras, and digital single-lens reflex cameras as well as advice about sound quality and other issues. Reading consumer advice articles and talking to experts could make the difference between buying high-quality and low-quality equipment.
- Utilize Social Media:
You need to have someone who understands the dozens of things social media can do to spark interest in your event working for you -- and knows how to do things like post events on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media outlets. The “someone” could be you!! This article, “26 Ways to Use Video for Your Social Media Marketing,” has several excellent ideas. The best social media outlet for you might be YouTube. Posting a video of a past event or a highlight reel of past events could spur interest in the next event.
- Write Stories:
High-quality photos and videos without a story are like high-quality products without customers who need them. As an event organizer, you have to give your prospective audience a reason to go to your events. Thus, photos and videos of happy people should correlate with the event you’re marketing. Stirring up emotions is a great way to tell a story. Your event, for example, might be a charitable event and the photos and videos might depict people who can now walk thanks to your organization. Subtitles and audios need to supplement the photos and videos.
- Think Like An Event-Goer:
Pretending you’re a prospective event-goer is difficult but necessary. When you are able to think like an event-goer and a professional event marketer at the same time, you will be able to produce more popular videos. That might mean producing humorous videos or videos with popular music. “You need to capture viewers’ interest within the first 10 seconds (or less) or they’ll stop watching and move on to something else,” notes “26 Ways to Use Video for Your Social Media Marketing.” “This forces you to be concise and get right to the point.”
Producing high-quality photos and videos is a difficult but important step toward maximizing your audience. Hopefully, the above tips will help you take that step.
