Locate Conference
Locate was the first step to unify the Australasian spatial industry. Before the Locate Conference came into existence in 2014, there were multiple annual spatial national conferences, including spatial@gov, the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Conference, and the Asia Pacific Spatial Excellence Awards events. Since the unification each year the annual Locate conference have been able to achieve greater overall attendance, embrace the needs of delegates by offering professional and business development workshops, address policy issues for government, across multiple industry sectors and, of course, amplify networking opportunities.
The 2020 Locate Conference was due to be held in Brisbane at the end of May 2020 and The Creative Collective had been working with Alicia Smith (Conference Organiser) and various Locate Board members from October 2019 towards this event. Activities performed included:
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PR activities – seeking media coverage for the event/speakers etc with many positive pieces achieved
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Regular social media posting and boosting across Linkedin, Twitter & Facebook
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Linkedin Outreach – using with consent chairman Paul Reed’s Linkedin profile, we sought to connect with relevant connections and tell them about the conference
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Monthly EDMs from Mailchimp
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Facebook Ads + Google Ads
Due to COVID-19, the difficult decision was made to postpone the 2020 event until March 2021. In May 2020 we helped Locate pivot to an online program to deliver value for the 200 people who have already purchased Locate20 tickets. After workshopping we came up with the name ‘Locate Connect’ and a program budget, program and marketing plan May – October. Through this period, we continued to offer a diverse range of marketing services to keep the channels & database alive, and some kind of income generated.
The online program was a great success with attendees finding great value and targets being achieved. The Locate Connect program strategically built a larger social media audience + database to relaunch the Locate Conference marketing in October 2020.
In November 2020 we recommended a revamped brand + website would help to give the event a fresh look & feel as it headed into 2021. The result was this logo and this improved website.
After implementing new conversion tracking on the website, we activated all marketing channels & activities again. From preparing and scheduling content on their Facebook channel, post reach in January 2021 was 27,170 (the highest month to date). Post engagements were 14,380 (also the highest to date). The Facebook ad campaigns spent a total of $661.14 and reached 68,237 people, with 147,165 impressions in the same period.