Basics: Planning your marketing for SCA Expo
I’m back from Kansas City USCC with a full heart of love for my coffee friends, old and new. I’m still a little tired but it’s full steam ahead for Expo in 3 weeks (!!!).
Today’s topic in this section is about marketing for a conference (*cough SCA Expo cough*). Whether you are attending as a individual professional, a coffee company, sponsor, or exhibitor, the basic marketing tenets are the same. And planning is your friend.
Goals: Set goals for attending. What do you want to tell your followers? Do you want to share what you’re learning from the classes or do you want to share about new products? It’s not an either/or situation but make sure you know what you want to convey online.
Plan it out: Expo is ridiculously overwhelming. Write out your “can’t miss” items and then your “maybe I can go” items. If you are repping a company, be sure to include all the classes & guest roasting spots you’ll be at. This seems like basic knowledge but if you don’t write it down, you’ll forget in the moment.
Make those templates: Depending on how in-depth you want to go on your marketing, start creating your promotional templates now. Get those Instagram covers ready, write out your social media text, and plan ahead so you don’t find yourself scrambling the day of.
Decide on the schedule: If your company will be posting from the floor or competition arena, know what topic(s) and frequency you’ll be posting at. And be conscious of your audience! If you normally talk to 80% consumers & mostly about what coffee you’re brewing, don’t overwhelm them with 20 IG stories & 10 Facebook posts in three days. Instead, opt for a summary post.
I highly recommend the digital marketing planning to start *now*. If you’re an exhibitor, I’m sure it started months ago. Best of luck in your planning!
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Facebook added quoted message replies in Messenger.
Twitter updated its third-party usage limits. This could have a direct impact on you if you use a software to manage Twitter. It also announced a new in-app camera (swipe left). If you like looking at prototypes, screenshots of Twitter’s revamped app are now available. And finally, it launched a podcast on advertising stories for their platform.
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