What I learned Leading Digital Strategy for an Inaugural Event

Clark County’s Inaugural 4th of July at the Fairgrounds Community Celebration, Presented by ilani

Summary:

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER the Clark County Event Center, ilani, and the greater Clark County Community teamed up to create the “Fourth at the Fairgrounds Committee” (Non-Profit). The goal was to throw an inaugural 4th of July Event that was FREE to the public at the Clark County Event Center in 2019. I was invited to take over all digital aspects of this event, which included the creation of a brand new website, paid and organic social media awareness campaigns, email updates, sponsor fulfillment, creative content/direction, a live voting system for Battle of the Bands, and other roles as necessary. Today I want to give you a better idea of my involvement in this successful event.

Planning Process:

To begin, our main goal in the initial planning stage was to collect as much sponsor revenue as possible to offset overhead fees. ilani, the local casino a few miles up I-5, agreed to become the presenting sponsor, kickstarting the planning process. Before you know it, 14 more sponsors had contributed with either in-kind contributions or cash. Once we solidified our community support, the next step was to get the word out and establish our event as another great option to other events in and around Clark County. To be clear, our goal wasn’t to take away attention from other events; but rather to add an additional 4th of July option in the lives of our Clark County residents. My role was to spread our information as far and wide as possible on all of our digital platforms. Communication wasn’t always easy, and we hit numerous snags throughout this phase. One of the challenges was working through these problems and finding solutions. There’s a lot you don’t think about when throwing a first-time event. The event industry is good at throwing curveballs.

Website:

I created the official website, with mobile compatibility (for on-site usage), speed, and SEO my main priority. Since this was an inaugural event, our audience’s first impression is everything. If we wanted to create legitimacy in the minds of Clark County residents, a good online presence that shows accurate and interesting information about our event is going to be is essential. I created FAQ pages, “About” pages for each event (Firework Show, Battle of the Bands, Kid’s Activity Area, etc, and many others. Once completed, I relied on data and analytics to improve the overall user experience and find out problem areas leading up to our big announcement. I also took advantage of sponsor fulfillment wherever possible throughout the design process.

Results: In our inaugural year we got 22K new users (74% mobile) with a 25% bounce rate from January 1st - July 5th. Our average session duration was 2 minutes per user.

Social Media:

Once the website was in good shape we sent our “It’s Happening!” press release to all of our partners, including The Columbian and other large media outlets. I then created Facebook and Instagram pages to capture the buzz and excitement while also providing important information about our event. To get the ball rolling we partnered with IHeart Media on a campaign to find local talent for our Battle of the Bands competition. We also used a paid and organic social campaign to spread awareness and build a base following. Throughout this process, I communicated with our partners and asked for them to share posts, tag/mention us, and point people to our digital assets whenever possible. I boosted our “4th of July Event,” which reached over 123K and had over 5k planning to attend. I partnered with both ilani and the Clark County Fair to do multiple concert ticket giveaways, which turned out to be massively successful and provided great sponsor fulfillment opportunities. Lastly, I shared website links and used everything in my arsenal to build these pages. It wasn’t easy, but it worked.

Results: 1K FB likes in under one month. 25% referral traffic to our website was through FB.

Email Newsletter

To give people a reason to sign up for our newsletter, we did exclusive giveaways that enticed people to join our list. Once we had a base of people sign-up, I continued to write personalized content that gave them important information and updates. I made sure to point them back to our other digital channels throughout this process.

Results: 1.1K people signed up.

Battle of the Bands

I was involved with choosing the bands, figuring out the format, navigating sponsor fulfillment, and creating a live voting system so our audience could vote during the event. To do this, I implemented 3rd party voting software onto every digital platform available to us. The website had a separate tab on the navigation that was labeled “Vote,” Here I gave detailed directions of what to do. I also created a pop-up after each performance on the front page of the website, so nobody could miss it. A link was shared with all of our Facebook/Instagram pages, and our partners shared the link as well. In order to avoid voter “fraud”, I only let people who were at the event vote for who they think should move on to the next round. This entire process turned out to be a lot more work than expected.

Results: SUCCESS! We had over 1.4k people vote. Minimal complaints were heard; However, website speed was an issue during peak voting times.

The Event

In all, we estimate 5-8k people came through our gates. This was way higher than expected and caused bottlenecks with our limited food options available. Everyone seemed to enjoy our Battle of the Bands competition, the Kid’s activity area (which had 14 bouncy houses and other activities), and the firework show. It was so satisfying to see so many smiling faces enjoying an event you helped make happen. It’s an amazing feeling. Unfortunately, the firework show ended abruptly, as a small brush fire started within our designated fire zone. Despite it being quickly put out quickly, it wasn’t the finish we were hoping for. However, in all, it was a massive success and a unique challenge. I’m grateful to have been a part of it.