How to Leverage Influencers to Maximize Your Event

Posted on June 8, 2023


Ever since the market reopened, the malls are filled with people and events are back again! Have you seen the latest Cosplay event at 3 Damansara? A successful influencer-led event can even revive an almost dead mall! 

As an Influencer Marketing company we want you to succeed for your next upcoming event. So, we decided to share the whys and hows to engage with influencers for an event. Let’s dig in!


Benefits 

If you haven’t thought about it yet, now is the right time! Why do businesses host events in the first place? We will help you understand:

                          1. (a) That attendance brings an offline event, online.

        Usually when you run an event in a shopping mall, a hotel or a cafe, it costs you a minimum five figures to pay for event space, food, speakers, emcee, event management company and you’re at the mercy of who can attend and the capacity of the event of course. But with the amount you’ve spent, why not take the event online with a few thousands more, where you can reach hundreds of thousands more people? Show everyone online what a great party they’ve missed! Also contents online live forever, so keep that legacy alive forever!

(b) Some big influencers can also drive traffic to your event.

Our biggest fear when running an event is that nobody shows up! The good news is we can leverage some of the biggest influencers to drive their followers to an event. Call it a meet and greet. We’ve had experiences where we had our influencers followers flocking the streets outside of a cafe just to have a quick glance at their favorite online celebrity. Make sure you bring some of these influencers to your event the next time!


When should you bring some influencers to your event?

There are lots of reasons of why and when to invite KOLs to your event, let’s cover some major ones:

(a) When it’s a B2C event and you have more users online that is not present. 

This basically means when you manage to build an online presence and you have your online audience, which is great! But there are not enough offline interactions. Get acquainted with your target market, give them a reason to come and get to know your product more. Make it fun, interesting and engaging! Attract new customers with the help of influencers.

(b) When your product is intangible and you’re having an event, it’s the best time to bring some influencers.

Think about it. How do you promote insurance online via influencers? How does that compete with beautiful clothes & skincare products? You don’t! So when you have an event, it’s your best chance! Plus, this is a great way to spread awareness, since influencers will post content from the event on their social media, which will attract more attention from a bigger audience.

(c) It’s a plus point for when you’re freaking out that not enough people are coming to your event. 

People have a natural instinct to go where the crowd goes. And usually that is exactly what influencers can make happen. Their fans would love a chance to meet them in real life and if their audience knows their favorite influencer is attending a particular event - they will follow.


 How to engage influencers for an event?

Unless your event is in KLCC, or someplace everyone has easy access to, you may want to look for agencies with a database. Agencies usually are as detailed as this: ‘KOL from Shah Alam/Cyberjaya’. SushiVid has a great database on this!

Another important point is that you only want to invite those influencers who know what to do during events. These should be outgoing, cheerful, friendly people, who also make great content on the spot! You would also need to know their availability. Yet again, speaking from experience, SushiVid knows exactly who those people are.


What type of contents do we recommend? 

This is actually highly dependent on your campaign objective. A lot of clients like to invite bloggers, so they could write an article about the event. Articles are great, cause they are searchable! 

Although, with recent trends we see a big jump in demand for TikTok videos and Instagram Reels. Brands love the influencers to attend the event and create a vlog-style video of them on the spot. This is a good choice, as it’s more engaging, it can also show the event’s environment, and it’s something to discuss with the audience. It’s also a very important aspect to remember for brands whose target market is Gen Z, as they have a shorter attention span, which is why it would be wise to choose short engaging videos over long detailed articles.

It also caught our attention that nowadays most of the events stream online. This is a great opportunity to attract online users while running an offline event. The next time you run an event, be sure to get some influencers to share about your event on their live stream!


See some sample of our client influencer events

This is a picture from TIME Internet’s event at Sunway Pyramid. TIME Internet engaged 15 KOLs to attend, received total ER of 1.84% and total reach of 124,867. It was a great experience, and our client was satisfied with the overall execution of the campaign.


From left, KOL Nur Aqilah, Alina and David from SushiVid


The image below is from Natura’s event at MidValley. They have launched a new product, which required some assistance from influencers to boost awareness. Client engaged 10 KOLs to attend, received total ER of 32.31% and total reach of 47,672. Influencers had to highlight the newly released product in their IG Reels and to talk about their experience at the booth.


From left, Alina from SushiVid and KOL Farah Dafri


And another example of our on-ground event was YSL Beauty Raya, which happened in KLCC. This campaign was done for the promotion the brand was having at the time. For this campaign we engaged non-beauty influencers, starting from Micros and above, which turned out to be a super good choice ! 

This time, the client engaged 50 KOLs. Results exceeded all expectations, with a total reach of 5,243,529, and ER of 11.34%. Some of the KOLs that were involved in this campaign were Ivor XianzLucas LauDaisey Gorgeous.  The campaign was so successful and to such an extent that it got featured in Marketing Interactive!


From left, Armand from SushiVid and KOL Lucas Lau


Next time when you think of an event, do reach out to us, as we would love to help you out! We are a dedicated and experienced team when it comes to on-ground events, plus you wouldn’t have to worry about a lot of things if you let us help you! 

We hope this article helped you understand the importance of having influencers at your events. So, next time you think about having an event, do think about how we can leverage influencers. Last but not least, we have an event package in our Sales Packages on the website, do check it out HERE!