You’ve planned your perfect event: you’ve booked the venue at the perfect date, you’ve secured the speaker that’s been fully booked for months, and you’ve planned the perfect schedule
Your job is done, or is it?
Now comes the most challenging part: just because you’ve built your event, doesn’t mean guests will automatically come. Without enough attendees, even the most well-planned event is doomed to fail.
This is why how well you market and promote an event is just as, if not even more important than the planning phase. Yet, event promotion can be quite challenging, especially on a tight budget.
Thinking of ways to successfully promote your event but don’t know where to start? You’ve come to the right place. Here, we will discuss some of the most effective event promotion tactics and techniques you can use right away.
Without further ado, let us begin right away.
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Have a well-designed and functional event website
No, even if they have social media profiles with a significant number of followers, they are not direct replacements for a functional event website.
If you are an event organizer that runs multiple events per year you can technically create a landing page for the event and link it from the main website, but it’s best to create a dedicated website for the event, which can also help in SEO.
Make sure the website is fully functional with online event registration (more on this later) and optimized for SEO:
- Proper keyword research to identify queries and keywords your target audience use to search for events
- Optimizing your content for these keywords naturally
- Optimizing the technical aspects of the website for SEO: mobile-friendliness, page speed, site structure, etc.
- Build backlinks by building relationships with relevant media, influencers, and other websites
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Make it as easy as possible to buy your ticket
Attracting your target attendees is already hard enough, and the last thing you want is for these potential attendees to cancel their registration because it’s too difficult/confusing to buy your ticket.
Make sure it’s as easy as possible for them to buy tickets from as many platforms as possible, including:
- Third-party ticketing
Make sure your event is available in relevant third-party ticketing platforms depending on the type of your events. By making your event available on these platforms, you’ll also get the benefit of these platforms’ audience reach, so more people will be aware of your event.
- Your own website
Consider integrating event registration software so your target attendees can easily register for the event on your website.
With Eventtia you’ll also get other useful features like attendee tracking and management, and task management for your team, making it an all-in-one solution for your event planning and event promotion efforts.
- Social media
In this day and age where everyone is on social media, it would only make sense to promote your event on these platforms. Make sure to make it easy for your social media followers to buy tickets with as few steps as possible. For example, you can provide a link on your social media post accompanied with CTAs like “get tickets here!” that will link to your website’s online ticketing page.
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Send an event press release
If you want to maximize your event promotion efforts, especially if you are on a tight budget, it’s crucial to work with the relevant press, websites, and influencers in your area and in your niche.
How should you do that? The most effective way is to write and distribute a press release.
An event press release will help you share information about your event to relevant press and influencers, so they can spread the word to their audience. The hope is so that some of their audience will attend the event.
Make sure the press release is well-written. Make sure to provide a good first impression, and also pay attention to timing.
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Social media marketing
Again, promoting our event on social media is fairly obvious, but the question is, how should we do it? Everyone is doing the same thing, and getting your event noticed amidst all the noises is easier said than done.
It’s very important to stay creative, and here are a few tips:
- Create a sense of urgency by posing an event countdown. You can leverage the countdown sticker of Instagram Stories for this
- Post attractive video teasers on social media. For example, share a short interview with the stars of your event.
- Create an event hashtag. Make sure it’s unique, short, and easy to spell and remember. Use the event hashtag every time you promote your event and encourage your talents/speakers and sponsors to also use the hashtag
- Host contests and giveaways, always effective to help generate buzz
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Email marketing for event promotion
Contrary to popular belief, email marketing remains a very effective marketing channel for events with a very high ROI.
Email marketing is especially useful if you are not promoting your very first event, so you can invite attendees from previous events for example by offering a loyalty discount. However, even if this is your first event, you can always be creative in getting that email database.
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Referral and affiliate programs
You can, for example, offer a group discount program so people can get their ticket for cheaper if they bring their friends. You can also start an affiliate program so influencers can help promote your event and earn commissions when their audience book your ticket.
Closing Thoughts
While promoting an event can surely be challenging, by using the above tactics and techniques you can start an effective event promotion strategy to attract more attendees to your event. Be creative and communicate why your event is unique and convince your target attendees why they should attend your event. Focus on communicating the benefits they’ll get when promoting your event, and don’t solely list your speakers and features of your event.