Events Marketing: An Opportunity To Build Your WordPress And WooCommerce Community!

Events can be central to your revenue growth, or an enormous waste of time. You get to decide…  — MATT HEINZ (President, Heinz Marketing)

According to the study by Bizzabo, almost 60% of the leadership-level marketers believe in the criticality of using events as the marketing channel to achieve their business goals.

Events marketing and building community is the most preferred channel, today, to expose your brand/product to a wider section of the audience. And it won’t be surprised if I say how well WordPress and WooCommerce community is swaying the eCommerce industry with events marketing alongside. Another research from Forrester claims that Events acquire 24% of the B2B marketing budgets.

There’s no boundary to marketing channels and creativity in pitching deals to potential buyers. However, the hardest part is to catch their attention and motivate them to make purchase decisions. In order to succeed now, it’s important for businesses to plan and strategize in order to stand out from the crowd.

The events marketing concept, therefore, seems to be a promising marketing and promotional channel for your business. Event-based marketing is capable of helping your business grow in a variety of ways – from brand awareness to new opportunities and pipeline value leads. So let’s see what this article has in store for us to learn and implement…

What is Event Marketing?

In literal terms, an event marketing concept includes well-defined and structured planning, organizing, and executing a promotional campaign to promote the brand, product, or service. Events can either be online or offline. Also, to be a part of an event you can either host it, participate in it or just be a silent profiter by being a member of the sponsors’ committee.

Organizing an event is a versatile practice. The gathering of 10-15 people around a round table, launching products in the presence of a potential audience, or hosting multi-day conferences and seminars are all different types of events.

Belonging to the digital marketing and eCommerce industry, it would be hard if you’re not aware of the events like Inbound, WordCamp, WooSesh, Adobe Virtual Summit, Forrester B2B Summit, eCommerce Warsaw Expo (EWE), Richmond E-Commerce Forum Autumn, etc. These events have showcased the real picture of how you can build a complete WordPress and WooCommerce community with the proper networking and interaction.

Moreover, building an event community is also critical in seeking the role of how the modern industries are channeling their efforts towards event-based marketing. The next section will help you understand the importance of event marketing a little deeper.

Why Building Event Community is Critical for Your Business?

Building an events community like WordPress and WooCommerce gives your business a new exposure and reach. Hence, listed below are some of the few benefits that your business can leverage with an events-based marketing community.

1. Build Connections with Events & Meetings

One of the most important reasons for adding events marketing to your business growth strategy is that it helps you build your WordPress and WooCommerce communities. When you participate, sponsor or be a host to an event, you get an opportunity to interact with new faces that can be your potential leads as well.

Targeting the right events and meetups can help you refine your demographic audience. Having a specific audience to target through events marketing can attract the ones having the same interest as yours, thus giving you a dedicated chance to convert and nurture their interests in your products/services.

2. Keep the Lines of Communication Open for Attendees

Communication is the most crucial element of executing event marketing. If you wish to participate in an event or even in case you’re organizing one, you must specify the various channels through which the communication can flow throughout the event. For example, having a Question-Answer meetup after specified durations, networking and interacting session hours, etc.

3. Increase Brand Awareness with Platform Customization

Events tend to give your brand new exposure, hence spreading brand awareness among the potential audience. Since events usually are organized in real-time, you have the chance to interact with the audience representing your company and brand. Different platforms allow you to interact with a wider section of the audience and share your ideas, thoughts, and vision.

4. Track Engagement for Better ROI Reporting and Market Segmentation

Not all your audience has the same intent and interest. With events marketing, you can segment your market on the basis of your audience and how they interact with your brand. Moreover, segmenting your market can help you in improving your sponsored ROI as the interested ones will only be attending the events. However, to analyze the results with more accuracy, you can map your event’s goals with the metrics to analyze the performance of your events later.

5. Strengthen Your Marketing Strategyevent management

Events also play a keen role in strengthening your marketing strategy. With events marketing, you tend to promote the upcoming activities through various channels including social media and other media publications. The more you promote your hosted event or spread the word for the event you’re participating in, tagging the renowned speakers or sharing their POVs with a mention, brings your business in front of their connections too. Thus, giving you a strong base to extend your network circle.

6. Provide Easy Access to Community Resources & Research

This is the one reason that I personally like events marketing. Participating in the events will give you open access to ample resources and research papers/theories. This additional information enlightens you to a better understanding of the market and prevailing trends along with the future scopes of how things might turn.

Types of Event Marketing to Build Empowering Communities

Events have always been a closer part of our lives. Not only in the corporate industry but different types of events have also been the irreplaceable part of almost every industry. Studying events marketing, it, therefore, becomes important for us to have a clear picture of different types of events marketing.

1. Webinars

Webinars or online seminars are the types of events involving discussions, presentations, and/or workshops. The Webinars, as an event, usually last for 60-90 minutes and are often held on-demand basis or in real-time.

The webinars enable opportunities for the participants to connect and interact with each other to discuss information on a topic. The best part is that the participants have the platform for real-time webinars to directly share their queries and concerns with the presenter during a question and answer session.

2. Virtual Events

The virtual events bring together the participants from different geographical locations to the same platform where they can connect, network, and engage in meaningful discussions. Moreover, virtual events are set up in a way to give you a feel of an offline event. For example, the Inbound. If you’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of it then you’ll know that their virtual environment setup gives a real look and feel of the offline event by setting up a virtual lobby where the attendees can ask queries, collect reference materials for the events, meet the speakers and other participants, etc. Such virtual events are hence organized in real-time for all the participants to have a fulfilling experience.

3. Live-Streaming Events

Have you been part of the song launch event of your favorite singer?

Well, since the pandemic resides, there have been many instances where marketers, specifically, from the media industry opted for social platforms like Instagram Live and other broadcasting platforms to launch their songs, products, or services with a simple webcam or a full production crew for higher quality broadcasting. Live streaming gives you an opportunity to engage with your audience using chat and other social media functionalities.

4. Physical Events

The physical events as the name suggests are the offline events that are organized to build face-to-face interactions. Although, hosting physical events require a comparatively huge amount of investment than online events. Yet, their impact can’t be ignored as it involves the human factor that online events lack.

5. Seminars/Conferences

Seminars and conferences are often confused with each other. But since we’re discussing the types of events here, it will be better if we clear out the thin line of difference between the two.

Seminars, on the one hand, are the events describing smaller gatherings or meetings where the speaker shares his knowledge with the audience. While, on the other hand, Conferences are the company-specific or rather said industry-specific events where I. The attendees come together and deliver information to each other. Conferences are larger-scale events than Seminars.

6. Trade Shows

Trade shows, this event derived its name from the agenda of gathering, i.e., traders coming together to interact and build their network. In this type of event, multiple representatives from various professions gather together to display their products and services or to partner with other companies for mutual growth and development.

Some Popular Events to Build Your WordPress and WooCommerce Community…

There are events organized by the WordPress and WooCommerce community that can help you build your very own community or forum, giving your business a new and fresh hope to grow better.

1. WordCamps

The WordCamps are casual events organized locally. These events cover everything related to WordPress like –

• How to use WordPress effectively?
• WordPress plugins and themes development
• Enhancing security
• Advanced techniques
• Blogging tips, etc.

The WordCamps are locally organized, and therefore their subject matter can also be flavevent managementevent managementored concerning the attending communities. These events are attended by almost everyone from the blogging community to the WordPress developers community.

WordCamps are not only a set of conferences. It also includes many other activities as well. Being a member of the WordPress and WooCommerce community, you have the opportunity to either be a part of it or in case you couldn’t attend the event then just watch it later on the WordCamp channel of the WordPress.tv.

2. Woo MeetUps

WooCommerce MeetUps are formal events held around the globe with the aim to guide the participants with better practices to run their WooCommerce stores.

You can be a part of the Woo MeetUps by entering the WooCommerce groups near you or joining the popular groups that organize the meetups regularly. Or you can also be a host by joining hands with the WooCommerce MeetUps organizing committee.

Some upcoming meetups in the Final Quarter 2021 are –

• The Digital Age and Tools for Network Marketing
• Talk: Funnel Hacking
• The State of the Venture Industry: Interactive Q&A with Jason Calacanis

3. Do The Woo (Podcast)

Do the Woo Podcast is a one-of-its-kind podcast running WooCommerce news and insights for all those who work on WooCommerce sites, plugins, and other development activities. It is a great way concerning the audio-marketing preferences of today’s people to get insights, share stories and information with their fellow community members.

4. WooSesh

WooSesh is a virtual conference for WooCommerce store builders held in real-time. It is a highly curated event to provide the best possible information and experience to all the participants. Each speaker at the WooSesh is selected with precision to address topics and subject matter in order to complement or build information for the participants.

Attending WooSesh events and conferences will help you in varied ways like project scoping, troubleshooting, improving customer experience and site performance, etc.

Few Examples on How Various Businesses are Building Their WordPress and WooCommerce Community…

Apart from events, there are various other conventional ways too to build your community of experts like –

1. MakeWebBetter Forum

The MakeWebBetter Forum is the one place where you get all the information about everything related to WordPress and WooCommerce. It is an easy community forum to connect and network, share queries, ideas, and solutions with beginners and experts from the WordPress and WooCommerce community.

2. WordPress Support Forum

WordPress provides multiple resources to share information and solutions with their audience. The WordPress Support Forum is one such platform where you can get any information or specific advice that you couldn’t have found elsewhere. The WordPress Support Forum is where the whole WordPress community is available to resolve your confusions and doubts on a broad range of topics.

3. Quora

The most spread open-forum platform, Quora, is also the platform for the WordPress and WooCommerce community to share knowledge and information. There are many Quora spaces that deal specifically in everything about eCommerce, WordPress, and WooCommerce like –

• WordPress
• WordPress Knowledge-base
• The World of eCommerce | MakeWebBetter
• WordPress Solutions
• SEO Highlights

4. Slack

The WordPress and WooCommerce community on Slack channels are always up for some new learnings and knowledge sharing. Some of the top slack communities serving the WordPress and WooCommerce communities are –

• WooCommerce Channel
• WP Developers’ Club
• The WordPress Governance Project

5. Reddit

Reddit is also a popular platform where the WordPress and WooCommerce communities come together to interact and share knowledge in the form of subreddits on a particular topic. Some popular subreddits for WordPress and WooCommerce related topics are –

• WordPress
• ProWordPress
• WooCommerce
• WordPress Plugins

6. Local Expert Groups

There is no forum or platform where the WordPress and WooCommerce community is lacking their hold. Be it then specific forums and channels or popular social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn.

There are ample groups and dedicated pages available on Facebook and LinkedIn with active members that share valuable insights on marketing and development regularly. What’s more, is that these groups and pages entertain the users and developers at all levels. Some of these groups are –

• eCommerce and Marketing Insiders
• Advanced WordPress
• WordPress Help
• WooCommerce – WordPress eCommerce
• WordPress Plugins Suggestions
• WooCommerce Help & Share
• WordPress Solutions
• WPBeginner Engage – WordPress Help for Non-Techies

Summing Up!!!

Events marketing is the traditional concept that has gone viral as modern marketing methodologies. Building a loyal community of customers, users, and or participants who are willing to be the part of gatherings to learn something new for their business and grow it to new heights.

Building a strong WordPress and WooCommerce community will give you a better platform to connect, interact, learn, explore, resolve queries, share ideas, and whatnot. Hence, it brings you a lot of information to learn from and grow your business to new heights.