Since January, I have been working with Rexburg Pop Up Shop as the Advertising & Social Media Specialist. This non-profit organization puts on community vendor events where local businesses can feature their products and services. The goal is to get community members to the event to support their local businesses by buying products. We also wanted to make it more unique than a regular craft fair so events typically include a photo booth, educational classes, and other fun activities.
Our first event for the season was a Galentine’s themed one, so I created social media graphics and posters for the event using Canva. I tried to make it more girly since many of the vendors had jewelry, clothing, makeup, and other products targeting women. The first part of the event was a vendor show and the second was a date night for couples, so I made separate flier for the different parts of the events. We directed traffic to the Facebook event page (which I also published and monitored) for more information. Below are some of the graphics I created. I always use Canva templates to start the design, and I end up changing many elements to make it unique. I tried to make the date night flier seem a little more gender-neutral with the color palette and the typography so that it would be appealing for men and they would want to bring their significant others.
Then, I contacted vendors about the event by posting in community groups and networking groups. I also boosted the event on Facebook and targeted my ad towards people in the Rexburg & surrounding areas. Last year, the event targeted mostly women under age 50 since we only did the Galentine’s part and not the date night. This year, I targeted a slightly broader audience with the ad since it involves a date night for couples, so it was a wider age range and involved both men and women. This meant that the analytics were influenced by different factors than last year so it wasn’t the most easily comparable metrics, which was somewhat challenging to analyze, but this ad still did as well as last year’s and increased traffic to the event page.
After the February event, I compiled a report of ad analytics and feedback from vendors for the event organizers. I also maintained posts on social media to keep some traffic on the page. We have a Google drive that includes all of the information and data for the events, so I also spent some time organizing it and writing helpful information so that future volunteers can efficiently help. I drafted emails and social media posts about the events for future use and organized past event fliers and graphics into respective folders. This will help the event organizers and future volunteers to be able to do the event advertising now that I’m finishing my time with them.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19 is causing some businesses to close temporarily and community members are now staying home, we organized an online event for vendors to sell products or gift cards from home. We were going to do an event to train business owners on marketing and social media, but then we decided that an event involving more of the community would be more helpful at this time. This allowed the community members to shop local without having to leave their houses and also unites the community in thinking about how to help each other. I created the flier (and other graphics) for this event, which you can see below. I also was able to publish the event page to build more community awareness.
This opportunity of working with Rexburg Pop Up Shop helped me to strengthen my skills with advertising, graphic design, and research/analytics. I was able to learn more about event marketing and how I can make a big impact on the success of in-person events using online media. I got to see the advantages of online and in-person events and how to advertise for each and reach the right target audiences. It also was good for me to be able to give instructions on my experience working with the Pop Up Shop so that future volunteers can help to make the events successful through advertising. And above all, I learned that the Rexburg community has a lot to offer for everyone in the community and I’ll miss that sense of togetherness when I eventually move from the area. I’m glad that I’ve gotten to find my niche with helping business owners, dreamers and doers through advertising. I will definitely use these skills in the rest of my career and with my own business efforts.
Riley Brown 