How To Promote An Event Successfully
1 . Introduction
So, you’ve poured your heart and soul, alongside countless hours planning, mapping out and designing this upcoming event down to the last bit. You’ve got it all covered- a fab venue, decor, catering, entertainment and more. But what does make an event epic? The audience, of course!
Event marketing can prove a much greater task when compared to marketing products or services. All possible marketing channels and mediums need to be utilized in order to make the most of your event. We have devised here a time-coordinated guide to tell you how to promote an event to maximize its success and garner significant ROI.
2. How to promote an event: the ultimate guide
Do you want to create a buzz for your coming event or sell a ticketed event? Perhaps both? Make sure your marketing goals are clear. In order to promote your event successfully, it is essential that your objectives and goals are defined clearly, following which you will need a clear vision in terms of measuring your efforts. Set clear and achievable metrics, which will enable you to track the performance of your various investments. Combine the leadership of your sales and marketing departments to devise an accounts-based marketing strategy.
Create a timeline for your promotional strategy to be executed, much like one would for a product launch. This helps allocate resources and distribute one’s efforts and energy accordingly and judiciously, so that your team isn’t all burnt out by the D-Day. Start earlier than you think is early- this headstart helps you work with a vision in mind, aligning each step of your plan with the ultimate results you wish to see materialized.
-
Pre-event marketing plan:
Identifying your target audience is of utmost importance. Who your target audience is is a question that needs to be carefully analyzed, much like a graded lead collection process, as it may not coincide entirely with your regular group of customers. Once you’ve done so, the focus should zone in on creating awareness. This you can do via:- Creating a dedicated landing page on your website with complete event information and registration link. It is important to have some kind of digital identity as it is the crux of the digital domain.
- Listing up your event on event websites such as Eventbrite
- Creating a dedicated event on LinkedIn and Facebook and sharing on different social media groups
- Notifying your email list and subscribers, and preferably giving them additional inside peeks, perks, early-bird benefits, etc.
- Branding the event with attractive elements, assimilating your own brand identity into it but assigning individual colours, taglines, etc. to the occasion.
- Creating a specific event hashtag and leveraging a hashtag campaign across various platforms to heighten visibility and hop on current trends.
- Optimizing your event registration process with automated reminders, early bird and group discounts, incentives, custom badges and goodie bags.
- Share the list of notable attendees and guests of honour, if any, gracing the event. Request them to also give a shoutout to the occasion and announce their presence via their personal socials.
- Do the same for the venue hosting the event. Whether it’s an exhibition organization, a hotel and resort chain or a club, capitalize on the location’s ease of access, facilities provided and a visually pleasing experience overall. In case you feel the venue itself might not have anything to write home about and doesn’t have any social media renown of its own, advertise the city you’re hosting your event in. Level up on the charm- and sell an experience they wouldn’t want to miss.
-
Multi-channel event marketing:
Cross-channel marketing has become an indispensable tool in the world of event promotions. It’s about creating value and offering your audience a sense of purpose for attending your event. In the couple of months closer to the final day, round up your promotional strategy to maximize registrations, now that you’ve gotten the word out and about:- Use promotional ads across the web and social media for swift sign-ups.
- Push your event to the notice of various niche target audiences through content marketing. Deliver value and information via attractive videos, blog posts, guides, podcasts, etc.
- Organize an online competition or a social media giveaway- with either free entry as a prize or for other wins to be reaped during the event to incentivize sign-ups. This is a win-win strategy that also helps you garner greater traction in the digital world. Here’s where you can utilize your event-specific hashtag at its maximum capacity.
Here are a few additional means you can implement to turn heads and push your event to notice, depending on the availability of budget and other resources:
- Email Marketing: Building your email marketing campaign is just as important as any other marketing method. Try building adaptive email sequences that will be more relatable and relevant to the viewers.
- PR: Just because you are marketing on social platforms it does not mean you do not utilize your PR to the maximum make sure you publish your event in relevant newsletters, magazines, and newspapers
- Mail: Never underestimate the power of physical mail. The real and physical element of a mail received creates a mark on the receiver’s mind. A tangible promotional feature, in the digital era, might as well be an element of surprise that breaks through fleeting attention spans and gets people to really listen to what you have to say.
From a month to a couple of weeks closer to the event, you can get things really going by one simple mantra- asking for help! Marketing is no solitary effort, so enlist all the help you can get. Here are some ideas to put to work:
- Create registrant referral links for original registrants to receive cashback or other swag items upon follow-up registrations. You can implement this strategy about a month from the event, once you’ve assessed the status of your sign-up goals and the allocated funds available.
- Alert your co-presenters, partners and influential guests to post on their channels, incorporating your logo and other event-related elements. You can reap significant co-marketing collateral by way of featured posts and guest appearances on other YouTube channels and podcasts.
- Hark back to the past. Recount your brand’s journey and provide captivating glimpses of previous events you’ve organized successfully to pull in an audience with the promise of a good time. Past associates might similarly be approached for shout-outs and word-of-mouth marketing by narrating their experiences.
- Beyond reviews and testimonials, you can also open to the public an archive of previous years’ keynote speeches, performances, and valuable insights gained from the event’s various segments.
- Explore the avenue of influencer marketing. Partner with influencers in your specific industry or ones catering to a much wider and mainstream audience to amplify the charm of your event.
- Allow your audience to participate in the conversation and generate UGC. This can be done via polls, quizzes, video messages, etc. What’s more, you can also utilize the power of AI in events for trendy user-generated content that is branded and a guaranteed social media hit.
3. How to promote an ongoing event
Voila! It’s showdown! The time has arrived for your efforts to reap results. But hold your horses, the event is yet to be made legendary, and it all depends on how you promote it on the big day itself, a few hours before it begins, through the course of the event, and then announcing that it’s a wrap and sharing quick highlights. Here is a list of essentials and interesting ideas for promoting an ongoing event, heightening brand visibility and aiding event recall:- Last-minute reminders: Communication is key! Keep promoting people for registration, offering any last-moment discounts and perks if feasible. Remind them of the timings, and provide detailed dos and don’ts, instructions to reach the venue, floor maps and event trajectory.
- Social Wall: Our Social Wall is a corporate favorite! It mines social media posts across platforms, using your event hashtag, to display on a giant screen. This also serves any ongoing campaign that you might have, as you can prompt the attendees to create specific kinds of photos or videos, participate in challenges through the event, or even participate in an ongoing discussion by voicing their thoughts via a tweet or on LinkedIn.
- Include them in the process: Post pictures and videos of the setup, arrivals, and also ask your partners and notable attendees to make online their journey to the location.
- Hashtag Printing: GoKapture offers you the opportunity to engage with your audience and turn them into individual influencers. Live hashtag printing enables guests to take home a keepsake while advertising your event online.
- Live stream: Try using YouTube, Facebook or Instagram live to showcase your event to the world and leverage FOMO.
