Marketing Events a Great Time to Socialize

Hosting parties or gatherings as part of a cross-channel marketing campaign - be they webinars, client galas or some other event - has often been a challenging aspect of drumming up enthusiasm for a brand.

As Chris Litster, vice president and general manager of Constant Contact's event marketing, recently commented, the strategy used to involve phone calls, direct mail invitations and prayers that people would show up. But it has evolved with the rise of the social web, the company found in its recent survey. More nonprofits and small businesses are turning to social media marketing as a means of drawing more attendees and generating buzz for their events.

Already, 77 percent of respondents are using Twitter, Facebook and other social forums in addition to their email, online, website and print components, according to the survey. Out of the group that don't yet have a plan for creating an integrated marketing campaign, more than one-third (34 percent) said they have started thinking about designing one.

Those opportunities are not without a caveat, however. A study from uSamp found that despite consumers' growing level of comfort with establishing social media connections with their brands and regularly visiting the sites, they continue to harbor worries about security and privacy.

Out of responding adults, 64 percent said they were either very or somewhat comfortable with the current state of social media protections, while those who don't use social media said it was the worry about privacy that kept them from joining.

"Our Social Media Habits survey offers compelling insights into consumer behavior and attitudes, especially given the conventional wisdom how we value - or don't value - privacy in the social media space," said Lisa Wilding-Brown, uSamp's vice president of global panel and sampling operations. "User privacy is an enormously dynamic area, and even as site operators attempt to address the issue, consumer perceptions are slow to change."