Brand Event: Rebuilding Connections and Breaking the Virtual Barrier

The digital and virtual era has taken over experience, encounters, and human connection.

TV, social networks, emails, likes, emojis, comments, videos, images…: these new tools, used by brands to communicate with consumers (especially through influence), are effective and impactful.

The reason? Influence allows brands to reach audiences quickly and en masse in a more personal and direct way, and enables brands to stand out from the competition through authentic communication by content creators (or influencers). The latter benefit from strong credibility with their audience, with whom they have managed to build a relationship of trust.

Influencer marketing is therefore an essential lever for brands that wish to attract the attention of new customers and retain their consumers. By collaborating intelligently with the right content creators (also called influencers), brands ensure they benefit from their visibility on social networks and get people talking about them in an original and creative way.

But is this complete digitalization enough?

Today, brand ambassadors and consumers need more than ever to communicate and exchange face-to-face. This is why influencer marketing also involves organizing events, in person or remotely. An event, an experience, allows for creating strong human connections and forging lasting bonds.

Whether it’s for a product launch, highlighting the best-sellers, presenting a new service / new range or collection, celebrating a brand anniversary, or announcing a new partnership… All occasions are good for organizing an impactful event.

Problem? The question of organizing a brand event raises several difficulties:

• Which guests to target? Which influencers are the most relevant? How to ensure they will give visibility to the brand? And above all, how to measure the impact and results in terms of UGC distributed (stories, shares, TikTok videos…)?

• Is it really necessary to go through an influencer or event agency and pay a high price, without even being in contact with these content creators?

With the event functionality on Trustt, you have control over everything, from A to Z. Explanations.

Events: A Winning Strategy in Influencer Marketing

Organizing an event is the ideal opportunity to meet the best ambassadors and content creators (influencers), and provide them with a unique and unforgettable experience.

In this sense, event marketing is a very effective strategy to meet different brand objectives: launching a new product, expanding the community, boosting visibility…

If you organize an event, your company’s influence strategy is based on a simple process: inviting an influencer to your event (fashion show, showcase party, conference, seminar, new product launch, etc…), allows you to maximize the impact.

Whether on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat or YouTube, these ambassadors become spokespersons by communicating with their community with more authenticity than the companies themselves. A great way to highlight the event and the presented products, while improving organic reach on social networks.

For 89% of marketing professionals, the return on investment of influencer marketing is superior to the results obtained with other marketing channels.

Companies that adopt an event communication strategy to strengthen their brand image, develop their notoriety, engage customers and potential consumers, and generate new leads have understood the importance of events. And this kind of experience directly influences consumers: a study published by Set Creative reveals that “73% of them are more likely to buy a product after participating in an event organized by the brand”.

Discover the Marionnaud Case Study: An Unforgettable Event and Impactful Influencers

How to Organize an Impactful Brand Event?

Launching and hosting brand events takes time (and energy) and often proves to be more complex than imagined:

• Designing a tailored event: renting an easily accessible and original venue, organizing unforgettable activities or workshops, offering personalized gifts to participants;

• Selecting guests and managing invitations: initial contact, sending invitations, confirming attendance, email follow-ups (and risk of no-shows);

• Ensuring the quality of content shared by invited content creators: if the event aims to showcase the brand (especially during a product launch), it’s essential that the stories, posts, and videos shared by content creators (or influencers) meet the brand’s expectations;

• Being able to measure its success: after an event, it’s difficult to measure the impact and outcomes. This involves defining key performance indicators (KPIs) such as the number of participants or social media posts shared by guests during the event, as well as knowing their performance (engagement rate, interactions, reach…)

For all these reasons, the majority of companies don’t dare to embark on an event project, even though the results can be exceptional: brand awareness and e-reputation, product visibility, strengthening of close relationships with the community, and ultimately, increased sales.

The Event Mission with Trustt: The All-in-One Solution for Organizing Unforgettable Moments

Aware of these challenges, and at the request of several brands already using the solution, Trustt has developed a new feature to organize physical or remote meetings with guests of your choice: ambassadors, identified content creators (influencers), consumers, top clients, etc.

Whether it’s a product launch, a masterclass, a live shopping event, a meetup, a private sale, a conference, or even a press event… everything is now possible, without the usual difficulties companies face.

The Event Mission Feature on Trustt in Detail

1 – Formatting the event invitation and publication: venue and date, brand presentation, values, event theme, schedule and workshops…

2 – Recruitment and selection of guests: custom targeting according to the event type (% of influencers, intelligent selection based on brand criteria, etc.), option to make the mission public (via the Ambassador Program) or private (guests contacted directly by email);

3 – Configuring questions asked in the application form: confirmation of attendance at the event date and venue, products/services/brands usually purchased, age, social networks, etc.

4 – Managing applications: automation of emails (non-selection, follow-up to obtain attendance confirmation, event reminders…);

5 – Customization of the mission letter sent to guests and the expected social media UGC: detailed brief to guide talents (trending music, hashtags to use, attire) and addition of resources for inspiration;

6 – Sending a post-event satisfaction questionnaire;

7 – Automatic collection of guests’ social media posts: photos, posts, videos on social networks (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook) or blog articles;

8 – Detailed statistics on the impact of UGC: number of publications, average and individual engagement rates, interactions (likes and comments), potential reach, number of publications…, ability to export data and identify the best-performing posts.

The Advantages of the Trustt Event Mission Feature

As you can understand, the Trustt event functionality allows you to manage your event from A to Z, collect first-party data and UGC shared by your community. All this, without going through an influencer agency (the cost of an Instagram post can go up to €4,550 with certain influencers!)

• Considerable time savings thanks to event management features;

• Continuous improvement of events thanks to guest feedback;

• Involvement of ambassadors and content creators in developing the awareness and growth of the brand they support;

• Quality UGC (TikTok, Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, etc.) that can be reused to enrich the brand’s communication materials;

• Strengthening of the trust relationship between the brand and customers;

• Increased traffic to your website and/or in-store.

Want to discover the event feature on Trustt?

A great example of UGC shared during an event organized by the Khiels brand in Paris, where guests attended interactive workshops, received personalized gifts, right inside a store!

Event Marketing: Promoting the Event and Choosing the Right Guests

Organizing an event involves: promoting it to your target audience and selecting guests. To ensure maximum visibility, it’s not only about communicating about your event in advance, but also selecting influencers (content creators) and engaged ambassadors aligned with your brand, who can produce original posts on social media.

Promoting Your Brand Event or Product Launch

Alongside internal organization, it’s essential to plan communication campaigns and marketing actions aimed at potential guests:

• A detailed presentation of the event on your website: date, location, and registration form;

• Teasing on social media: posts (photos, reels), stories…;

• A communication plan via newsletter several weeks in advance;

• Direct contact with the most loyal customers and influencers aligned with the brand’s approach.

With Trustt, you just need to set up an event mission and publish it on the Ambassador Program page of your website. Ambassadors and content creators can easily apply for it.

Good to know: you can also make this event private. In this case, the event description page and registration form will be sent directly to the contacts you wish to invite.

Selecting Influencers, Content Creators and/or Engaged Ambassadors for an Event

Once the event announcement is published and promoted through communication channels, it’s time to select candidates from among willing consumers and influencers.

To choose them, you’ll need to verify that they:

• Are consistent with the brand image and company values;

• Are part of the target audience or are followed by an engaged community interested in the same type of products/services;

• Display a good engagement rate on their posts;

• Share social media posts that are creative, impactful, and authentic.

With Trustt’s event feature, brands benefit from an intelligent panel selection tool, allowing them to identify the most suitable profiles (filter function with sorting by age, preferred sector, past participations and their social networks, the size and quality of their audience, their average engagement rate, etc.).

Good to know: Social networks are full of “influencers that” can be categorized according to the size of their community and their domain: nano, micro, macro-influencers or even celebrities. But more than the number of followers, the quality of the “audience and” engagement are the best indicators for choosing a content creator. Indeed, micro-influencers display an average engagement rate of 17.96% compared to 4.96% for more well-known influencers.

Are you a brand looking for an all-in-one tool for your product launch event?

The roles assigned to guests at a brand event

During an event or product launches, the influencer or ambassador can fulfill several roles:

• Take advantage of the evening / event to produce UGC (interaction with the brand teams, interviews, staging of organized activities, videos of new products / services, etc.);

• Give their opinion on a new range or concept;

• Test a new product or service in advance, and write a customer review that the brand can reuse for the general public;

• Participate as an opinion leader by taking part in a conference, masterclass or company convention, and thus attract as many of your customers as possible to the event;

• Co-create the content broadcast during your event, thus giving a wider scope to their distribution in the media.

Brand event and product launch: The importance of shared UGC and analysis of the impact with Trustt

The whole point of “a brand event (and especially” a product launch) is indeed “to maximize visibility to as many people in your target audience as possible. Once the guest selection is done, it” is about “ensuring that the shared publications will be of quality and being able to measure their” impact.

Event marketing: The importance of quality social publications

Thanks to Trustt’s intelligent selection, brands ensure they invite engaged influencers and ambassadors, who are engaging and accustomed to producing UGC.

To go further, the tool allows you to personalize the mission letter sent to them, in order to provide them with guidelines and instructions on what is expected from them during the event: dress code, social posts to be made during the evening, ideal video length, suggestions for music or angles, hashtags to mention…

The more precise and inspiring the instructions are, the more motivated guests will be to contribute to the success of the event and share this experience with their community.

Distribution across all social networks of the guests

Among the various types of content used to promote an event, photos and videos on TikTok and Instagram are the most appreciated by internet users!

The advantage of a video? It can be easily shared, helps to generate interactions and can quickly go viral.

Thanks to the instructions specified in the mission letter, the ambassador or influencer is aware of the hashtags and accounts to mention in the description of their posts, reels or stories.

It is possible to suggest that they create a teaser and announce the event to spark interest in their community! A tip that’s good for both your visibility and your SEO!

Measuring the impact of your events and product launches

A winning influencer marketing strategy is one where effectiveness is measured.

From the Trustt dashboard, brands benefit from automatic retrieval of all shared UGC thanks to the mission hashtag, overall performance statistics (total number per social network, number of mentions, interactions, engagement rate, potential reach…) and statistics per guest (engagement of their community around the event…).

Additional Tips: In the case of product launches, it will be relevant to ask guests to share a direct link in their story to the product pages on the website, and provide them with an exclusive promo code to share with their community. Then, it will be necessary to monitor the “traffic evolution and” analyze the generated sales.

These statistics help confirm the success of the event and possible improvements, or even consider long-term collaborations with top influencers.

Would you like to enjoy a demo of the feature?

Event Marketing: A Winning Marketing Strategy!

As you will have understood, events are an “opportunity to” invite engaged influencers and ambassadors, and thus reach millions of potential consumers.

Indeed, it is often during press evenings with journalists or launch events that the commercial success of certain products is determined.

Depending on the nature of the event, the invited audience, the budget, and the expected results, it is possible to imagine an infinite number of formats and activities.

To go further, it is also possible, why not, to involve the influencers with whom you already collaborate in the design of the event… A great way to strengthen the bonds that unite you and demonstrate the trust you place in them.