Brent Turner, SVP, strategy and technology at Cramer, points out the brands that have the most effective approaches for extending their user conferences into a longer-term communications plan have a strategy that starts with simple alignment.

“The long-term-focused content and the event-focused content share the same core pillars,” he said. “The three core pillars of a user conferences are typically announcements, skills development and peer-based learning.”

The possibilities for brand extensions are endless and include podcasts, webinars, online communities and chats, smaller “roadshow” events, video and more. Currently, event planners are using combinations of all of them.

Turner’s team worked with Dassault Systèmes and its SOLIDWORKS strategy to move into a year-round content plan.

“Their annual user conference brought together 7,000 of their mechanical engineering and design users and now we’ve taken the pillars of the event and moved them into digital channels,” he said.

Cramer generated numerous live and on-demand videos; a new podcast series primarily recorded from the expo floor; and a new ongoing series of live-streamed webcast events which will launch new products. It was built around SOLIDWORKS’ existing community strategies and successful mini-event roadshows.

Planners believe there are best practices that should be followed when adding extensions to your event brand: be valuable, be consistent, and expand on what people love.

Turner says planners must tap into what’s already working.

“Instead of trying to invent new wheels, we expand what people — attendees and brand-side teams — love about the big user conference, and bring it into the market,” he said.

Using brand extensions can add more buzz to your event brand, keeping people talking more often and drawing more people to future in-person events. Sticking to the core values of the event brand will prove most successful when launching a new brand extension.