In-Person Events Can Boost Your Online Visibility

It’s no secret that online visibility signals are changing. LLMs can surface critical information immediately, removing your opportunity to discuss your unique value proposition in your own words.

So what makes a difference in an environment like this?

My answer: in-person events. Old-school PR, just getting your name and face out there in the community, can have a deep impact on how often you show up in LLM summaries and what those summaries say about you and your brand.

What Are In-Person Events, Anyway?

People who have worked in marketing for decades know what in-person events are and how they relate to PR. But for the newbies, here’s a quick summary.

In the days before online search (and long before LLMs), companies got the word out by talking to their potential customers in real time. That meant holding branded events, including:

• Grand opening receptions

• Holiday parties

• Open houses

• Members-only sales

• Product sneak-peek sessions

• Conferences

Some companies went further and met with potential customers by joining local business groups (such as Toastmasters), sponsoring school sports teams, volunteering at a local nonprofit as a group, or entering something (like a float) into a community event.

As more companies rely exclusively on search, these techniques are falling out of favor. But now is a great time to bring them back.

Understanding the Connection to Online Visibility

Every time you successfully participate in an in-person event, you increase your potential for online visibility. We know that LLMs use unusual signals to surface answers to queries, and many of them are closely tied to events, including:

• Chatter on Reddit

• Address queries on Google Maps

• Press coverage

• Facebook events

• Ticket sales data

Every time you do something in-person, it leaves shadow data behind for the LLMs to scrape and surface. The more traditional PR you do, the better you could perform in new forms of online discovery.

How Can You Get Started?

Few companies have thousands of extra dollars and hours to toss into a comprehensive PR strategy. In addition, some executives are worried about engaging with the public during such a difficult political climate. It’s understandable, but don’t let your concerns keep you from using proven techniques to boost your online visibility.

My advice is (as always) to start small. Pick one community organization or event that’s both trusted and popular, and look for a way to partner. You don’t have to take over and splash your name everywhere. Just do what you can with what you have. A small success could encourage you to do even more next time.

In addition, look for ways to add an in-person component to the promotions you’re holding right now. Maybe your online-only business could host an in-person pop-up table, or you could open up your business for a one-time open house. (Remember: Freelancers like me can help you both source and succeed with events like this.)

How to Measure Success

Trackability is one of the main perks of online marketing. We can run experiments and see the results almost immediately in meaningful marketing metrics like clicks, time on page, and conversion rate. In-person events and their relationship to LLMs are harder to quantify.

Look for trackable data like sales, completed inquiry forms, and incoming calls. Better yet, ask your prospects how they found out about you. Some may mention your events directly, and that’s the best metric yet.

Don’t forget that some of your impact will come from working within your community and attempting to make it a better place. Every time you connect with the people in your city or town in real time, you have the opportunity to spread kindness. It may not translate into immediate business success, but it could make your home a better place in which to do business, and that’s valuable, too.