2024 marked five years of Buzz Project, and five years of marketing creativity for a range of great clients.
Our latest project, part of an ongoing working relationship with parent organisation BEYOND Studio, was to lead the marketing and communications for BEYOND Conference, the UK’s leading conference for research and development within the creative industries.
The conference plays host each year to a global gathering of current and future innovators, and this year's event hosted more than 1000 people at MediaCity in Salford, Greater Manchester.
The brief
Our goals for BEYOND were simple - raise brand awareness, increase engagement and, ultimately, grow the audience for BEYOND. 2023's event in London saw 500+ delegates in attendance and some very positive growth, but we knew more could be done.
What we did
We looked at the data to get a sense of the current picture. The conference has a well-established and loyal audience within academia, industry and government, typically aged between 35-55. It has a strong social presence on LinkedIn (its primary channel, due to the conference's B2B connections with industry and academia) and on Twitter, Facebook and (much more recently), Threads.
Audience profiles from the marketing plan
We wanted to look after BEYOND's loyal audience, but also reach some new groups of people too, by exploring a new channel that attracts younger and more diverse audiences. We used the 2024 conference to launch on Instagram; an essential visual platform for the creative industries, with opportunities for engaging creative/tech start-ups and a younger demographic through reels, stories and paid ads, using an updated 2024 brand creative by Hazel Tilley. We also planned to use Instagram as a live-action platform during the conference.
BEYOND Conference Instagram profile
The BEYOND newsletter was already well-established with some 4k+ readers - we updated the template design to fit the brand update, looked at creating more streamlined content, and added in more video and more calls to action.
For the website, we worked with the conference's network of partners to publish a series of blogs in the build-up to the event, improving SEO on the website, and providing further content for email and socials.
Digital content and comms plan
We developed an integrated digital content and communications strategy that covered social media across five channels, regular emails to the growing subscriber base, plus blog posts and press releases, working to a comms timeline that spanned eight months.
Comms schedule taken from the marketing plan
The results
We've seen impressive growth across the social channels, particularly on Instagram and LinkedIn, further subscriber growth and engagement on email, and improved traffic to the BEYOND website from both organic social and search channels - and we were so pleased to be able to share these results with the client!
Sam Michel, Director of BEYOND Conference and BEYOND Studio, said:
"Buzz Project have quickly become part of the BEYOND team, not only providing much needed strategy in our overall approach to marketing, but also taking on the increasingly complex tangle of social channels that have become vital to engaging our audience. It has really paid off, with our largest ever increases in reach and engagement."
Applying this approach to your business
As always, we spent time looking at the data (website, socials, email and more) and getting a better understanding of BEYOND's existing audience. We looked for opportunities for growth and diversification.
We looked to see what competitors were doing on their social channels, on their websites and on email. We explored competitors' followers on socials, plus other little tricks to grow our audience.
We spent time ensuring the brand design was reflected in all content designs for social and email, to ensure a cohesive brand look across all communications.
We maintained a tone of voice that was consistent and suited to the audience.
We created a content strategy to ensure consistent posting and engagement.
We monitored engagement to see what posts worked best and what didn't work.
We made sure we engaged with our key stakeholders - social is a two-way street!
We crunched all the data and feedback following the project and presented the findings.
Get in touch if you'd like to find out more or to discuss your own growth project.
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Lead image: Keisha Thompson at BEYOND 2024. Image copyright: BEYOND Conference
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