6 event ideas for small product businesses to engage with your customers

A customer is usually sold on two things: 

1. Quality of your product, 

2. Service from you. 

Whenever you commence your business, it is apparent that your product should have a quality of not less than an appreciative value. Whereas, when your customer expects service from you, even if you are an e-commerce website, it means they want their experience to be smooth. Therefore, you need to make your checkout, sign-ins, offers, availability, payment options and delivery time efficient. These little "services" can become your milestones or bottlenecks. However, there are other activities that can increase your brand's value to your potential audience or show how your brand represents a noble cause or show how your brand is different from your competition. Here are a few ways to create awareness and make your audience engage with your brand:

1. Webinars: A virtual way of conducting events that Covid-19 has made popular! Webinars are hosted digitally, wherein a login link is provided for interested members to join in. Webinars are a great way to connect with your potential audience because any person only requires a smart phone to join a webinar. Webinars can be interactive or informative. If you have a project management software business, you can invite significant e-commerce businesses' key people to talk about how a system like yours has helped them out. Or you may invite some of your customers to talk about your software. Better yet, your key professionals can talk about how your new software can help out a business. This will provide great insight for business owners on how to update their operations.
2. Product-based events: An excellent way of engaging your customers with your products. For eg.: if you sell makeup, you can have a teaching class using your products. Or if you sell musical instruments, you can have a tutor teach you how to play a particular instrument. Any teaching class or a hobby class which can use your products to teach people any skill is a great way to engage with your customers and flaunt your merchandise. What's more, these can be conducted online or offline.
3. Seminars: Seminars are a great way to meet people and learn new things. You can host a seminar wherein you involve industry leaders to come and speak about recent events. Or you can have talks on interesting topics on "How to save money?", "How to make more money?" in order to get more people to be interested and join your seminar. As discussed above, seminars are a great way to meet new people, and networking also plays an important role in attracting new people to attend your seminar. You will only need to acknowledge some value addition to your audience whenever you host a seminar. It is, therefore, imperative that it has the most reliable people on the panel and the most comfortable venues.
4. Participate in a flea market: This event fairly depends upon the type of product you sell. If you are a handicraft, paintings, clothing, accessories, etc. Exhibiting at a flea market or a college festival or a fair or an exhibit is an interactive way of selling your merchandise or at least getting the word out. These festivals or fairs are built for people to engage with different products, and this is the only place where people participate with product owners and are interested in what they have to offer. If your product is right for a flea market, you should always participate! an interesting way to attract customers is to provide exclusivity to their merchandise. For eg.: If you are a fashion designer and have a boutique showcasing your merchandise at an exhibit, or at your retail store, you can give exclusive access to your customers. If you are hosting the event at 12 pm for everyone, you can have exclusive access for exclusive members at 11 am. How do you choose your exclusive members? Simple. You can ask your customers to sign up, providing their contact information and email address, and only the people who have signed up for the exhibit will have first-hand access before everyone else. In this manner, you get to have all the contact information of your potential customers, which can be further used for marketing. An appointment-based software, Appointo, can help set up appointments for your customers who have signed up prior for the exclusive exhibit. Appointo can shoot reminders to your customers at regular intervals reminding for them to attend the event on time.
5. Interactive show for people in a mall/public space: An interesting way for people to know about your product and brand is to host an interactive show in a mall or in a public place. A place can be barricaded for children to play in a bounce house or interact with a beloved cartoon character. Or games for adults, which are a fun way to get your customers to talk and have fun, and these games also have an entertaining factor for the onlookers. These events might be expensive sometimes, however, if executed with the right feel and taste, you can attract as many eyeballs as you wish to. These shows not only engage the people who have participated in these events but also the ones who have gathered around in curiosity. Curiosity will always provide excellent branding. Another advantage of these shows is you almost always get a definite number of people you know you will get a chance to interact with.
6. Celebrity influencing event: This is an old and effective way to catch eyeballs and get your brand known to your potential customers. An influencer or a celebrity talking about a brand in your retail store, or a public space or an exhibit, can be a great way to attract an audience. The only drawback is you cannot sieve through your exact target audience with this exercise, but you can attract a lot of people to get to know your brand name and what you do. Celebrities attract the attention of people, media and social media, therefore, these types of activities, wherein these celebrities talk about your brand, even digitally go a long way to make your brand memorable in people's minds!

There are several ways for a business to attract and engage people. However, it all depends upon the product and the audience you are looking for! Experts say that, any engagement which does not happen with your target audience of at least 1% to 5% is a waste of time and resources. The right type of branding can only be achieved when there is an understanding of how you can reach your audience and in what manner. Understanding your customer, the oldest mantra of marketing.