A delighted audience.
That is the dream.
Creating delightful and memorable experiences for your audiences can be a tough nut to crack as an event organizer, but it isn’t impossible. A few creative tricks are sometimes all you need.
If you haven’t considered pop-up events as part of your event engagement strategy, you’re missing out. This blog will tell you all there is to know about setting up successful popup events that will delight your audiences and leave them wanting more.
What is a Pop-Up Event?
Pop-up events are small events hosted for a specific audience, in a unique setting, and are usually temporary and full of surprise elements. The main goals of hosting a pop-up event are to engage audiences by creating a memorable experience, spread awareness of your products, and reel in an all-new customer base.
Pop-up events are usually hosted in an in-person, virtual, or hybrid setting only for a few hours or days. They can be anything from a temporary online store, an unexpected storefront to promote a newly launched product, or a simple booth set up at the country fair. The possibilities are endless, and you can be as creative as you like.
Types of Pop-Up Events
You can provide a fun and memorable way for audiences to discover what your brand is and what it can offer through pop-up events. However, based on your goals for the event, you can divide pop-up events into different types. Let’s explore some of them.
1. Surprise Pop-Up Events
A surprise pop-up event is almost always going to be a temporary setup. It leaves a lot of room for your creative teams to whip up something truly amazing for your audiences. By definition, any such event should take your audience by surprise and leave them in awe of what just happened. For example, you may want to host a surprise concert at the end of a boring conference to leave your attendees delighted. It will be something they’ll remember for a long time because they weren’t expecting it.
2. Pop-Ups for a Product Launch
Most event organizers use pop-up events to launch a new product. You may have seen pop-up stalls in various malls or community centers from retail stores. A pop-up stall can be easy to set up and your target audience gets to see, use, and hold the product. You can use fabulous designs, standees, and screens to attract customers.
3. Marketing Pop-Ups
Other than marketing a newly launched product, you can also set up pop-up event marketing stores to market your products in general. Pop-up stores allow you to meet your customers face-to-face and leave a lasting impression. You can use pop-up events to tell them more about your company’s values, culture, services, and so much more.
4. Permanent Pop-Ups
While most pop-up events only last a couple of hours or a few days, some can end up becoming permanent. If you’re looking for a place to start your retail business, a temporary-to-permanent pop-up store can be a great way to test the waters and find the best location. You can set up shop somewhere, and if the venue is a success for you, make it permanent!
5. Seasonal Pop-Ups
Many businesses run special events for occasions like Eid, Christmas, Diwali, or other seasonal events. These can be discounted shops or themed stalls. Seasonal pop-ups can be a good way to celebrate diversity, add a fun element to your marketing, and generate traffic and sales.
6. Pop-up Restaurants
Food fairs are very popular in most parts of the world. Pop-up restaurants or food trucks are a great way to attract new customers while simultaneously keeping your costs low. They are easier to run and have minimal overhead costs thus making them a great investment. Moreover, you can meet people at the fair, include fun games, and even special menu items to keep it fresh.
7. Retail Pop-Ups
Retail stores often host pop-up events to promote their brand and sell their products. These stores are temporary setups and are often stationed in a mall or a busy shopping area. It is a great way to get yourself a prime spot with great customer footfall and generate some quick revenue.
8. Digital Storefront Pop-Ups
Many retail stores choose to build digital pop-up storefronts for their business. They are virtual replicas of physical storefronts and are often virtual trade shows. The immersive experience allows online visitors to shop around, walk in aisles, and explore all the products up for sale.
These are only some of the types of pop-up events that you can host if they align with your goals. However, the possibilities are endless and you can be creative with what you want to host and achieve with your events.
9. Virtual Pop-up
A virtual pop-up event can be a fantastic way for retail stores or companies to sell their products or services online in a creative way. Many online pop-ups are fantastic ways for retailers to develop strategic relationships with their potential clients. They are a great way to capture the attention of global audiences in this fast-paced world. Moreover, virtual pop-up events can also be used for marketing, product launches, or setting up online subscriptions for customers looking for a discount.
9 Tips for Hosting Successful Pop-Up Events
Hosting a pop-up event requires a creative flair and fantastic event planning skills. You have to execute your event logistics strategically to make sure your creative vision comes to life. Here are a few essential tips on how to plan a pop-up event that will bear actual results.
1. Nail Your Event Goal
Whether you’re hosting a pop-up event for a small business or an enterprise, you need to align on an event goal. For pop-up events, it is best to make your event goal as specific as you can. You should keep this goal in mind when you’re selecting the venue, chalking out pop-up details, and thinking of product placements.
You can’t possibly do anything and everything with a pop-up event. Therefore, take your time to carve out what you want to achieve and set priorities accordingly.
2. Plan Logistics
When you’re hosting at a unique location you probably won’t find everything you’re looking for readily available. Moreover, temporary setups might involve more strategic onsite planning as you’ll need to sort out food, transport, electricity, and other basic utilities. Therefore, one of the first things you need to do is find the best flow of how you’re going to run things.
Logistics can make or break the success of your event so think of everything in advance, make contingency plans, and always be prepared for the unexpected.
3. Focus on Design
With a pop-up event, you want to stand out, and you want to make a difference. Therefore, the design and aesthetics of your event will be very important. You can think of a theme or focus your designs around a certain product or service. The better-looking event you throw, the more crowd you will likely pull.
4. Use Event Technology
Event management platforms often have ticketing software, badge printing solutions, and event networking tools that can help you organize a great pop-up event. Instead of doing things manually, make sure you leverage event management technology to boost your audience’s experience. If you want to make it memorable, you should invest in tech that helps you achieve all your event goals and streamlines processes for you.
5. Give Out Freebies
“I don’t like free stuff”, said no one ever.
If you want to attract crowds, you’ve got to make it worth their while. Not everyone will be immediately interested in your product, but free swag will make them want to take a look anyway. You can organize games and give away prizes to the winners. You can also lure some people in with free food, a coffee stand, or goodie bags with official merch.
6. Market Your Event with a Stellar Strategy
No one will come to your event if they don’t know about it. Being loud with your promotional activities can help you spread the word effectively and fast. You want to make as much noise as possible with pre-event marketing so that when you’re live, there’s a crowd waiting for you to open your doors!
7. Go Big on Opening Day
Pop-up events aren’t here to last forever so you want to make an impact – and fast. This means that you have to start as early as the opening day. Don’t wait to play all your best cards till the end. The opening day is your chance to make as many people interested and through the doors as you can. When the launch is big, it will attract even more people to visit in the coming hours or days as the event goes on. This is the best way to capitalize on your audience’s FOMO!
8. Host Sustainably
Sustainable event planning is not only the responsible thing to do but also a great way to appeal to environmentally conscious crowds. Many event organizers can forget about the waste they’re producing as they host temporary events. The flyers you print, backdrops, standees, food waste, and general debris that you leave behind are all things you can easily curtail.
Do the right thing by focusing on hosting a carbon-neutral and sustainable pop-up event. You will please crowds, make a conscious effort to go green, and might as well save costs by choosing digital venues or marketing collateral.
You can also host sustainable physical pop-up events by designing a reusable and portable booth setup. You can ship the booth to any location you want and reuse the collateral as many times as possible. Some of the things you can reuse are portable standees, signage across the booth, and acrylic stands.
9. Collect Feedback
As your event progresses, you need to collect feedback from most (if not all) of the people that showed up. Feedback is vital for providing consistently great events and improving things even further. You can design small polls for event attendees, or just people a few questions as they walk out. Whatever means of feedback you pick, use it to make better decisions and improve the attendee experience.
3 Inspiring Pop-Up Event Examples
Pop-up events aren’t easy to host if you want to make them unique. They are popular with many global organizations and you can take an idea or two from how they host their events. Here are some popular examples to get you started:
1. Nike’s Unlaced Pop-Up Store
Unlaced is one of Nike’s most popular signature sneaker collections. At the time of their launch, Nike hosted a pop-up event in Paris and many other major cities around the world. These events were one of a kind and made the new collection an instant success.
What Worked: Nike included a corner for customizable shoe designs and interactive installations to wow their audience. The events were a completely immersive experience for attendees and made them feel engaged at every step.
2. HBO’s Westworld Pop-Up
When HBO launched the highly anticipated second season of the acclaimed TV series Westworld, they organized an unforgettable pop-up event that left a lasting impression on all attendees. The pop-up activation event took place in Austin and left the audience in avid anticipation of the new season of the hit series.
What Worked: The event was a real-life peek into the Westworld universe. HBO chose a Wild West theme for it. They brought in actors and created lifelike sets to offer fans a chance to experience the show’s world.
3. Fortnite Party Royale Pop-up Event
The popular online battle royale game, Fortnite, hosted a series of events called the Party Royale. These unique pop-up events were virtual and happened within the game’s massive maps. Fortnite left players hints throughout the gameplay before they launched the event.
What Worked: Celebrities like Young Thug, Diplo, and Noah Cyrus performed live concerts within the game. They hosted multiple in-game activities and made sure every player knew something big was coming up with their pre-event hints like half-built buildings and unique new structures.
Host Successful Pop-Up Events with Event Management Tech
Whether you’re planning for an enterprise or a small business, pop-up events should be a part of your event strategy. They are ideal to bring audiences together in a fun way and improve attendee engagement.
However, pop-up events can be difficult to execute properly without the right event management technology. You should invest in the right tech that can help you power through your event planning process from start to finish. Look for features like ticketing and registration, stellar streaming options, event marketing tools, and attendee engagement features among others.
