Surefire Ways to Promote Your Event
After many a grueling meeting, nearly missed deadlines and the occasional bad hair day, meaning pulling out too much of your own hair after surveying outside vendor deliverables, your event is finally set to go. The speakers have been arranged, the catering secured, the venue is rodent-free.
Now is the time to promote the thing.
Chances are your event needs promotion, notable exclusions being strictly internal corporate affairs. But even some of those require promoting within the company, especially if attendance is not mandatory. Here’s a list of smart things every good event manager does before their event, whether they want to sell those tickets and reach that sweet break even spot, or simply to draw the attention of media and the general public, for whatever reason – and there’s usually a good one.
First, take a deep breath – and plan your time. As a rule of thumb, events in every category below “epic stadium” need two weeks’ worth of promotion, at the least. Once you have read through all these ideas, you will see why.
Go online
Yes, I know this is 2015 and everybody and their pet iguana is online, but this needs to be reiterated and ingrained in stone. You would be really surprised at how many people there are in this industry who still don’t see the need for having a website or social network presence for their event.
Connectivity and easy access to information we take for granted nowadays certainly makes event planning easier, because they naturally facilitate promotion. Basically, your event online presence promotes itself, if you do it right.
Create an event page and if possible, funnel ticket purchase and attendance confirmation through it exclusively. If your event is public, SEO the hell out of that baby. Make an event hashtag and friggin use it in all your social media posts. Ask attendees, speakers and sponsors to use it in theirs. Hassle your family, friends and the guys from your bowling team to use it.
When it comes to digital marketing, direct emailing still reigns supreme, with response rates an order of magnitude higher than targeted advertising. Write (meaning, hire a professional copywriter to write) a call to action email and send it out to as many relevant addresses as possible.
Be creative and relentless in this. By “creative” I mean stuff like changing links on your (or your company’s or client company’s etc.) Linkedin and Facebook profile to lead to the event page instead of the official company site. By “relentless” I mean primarily social network use, which will serve as your pre-CRM (CRM before you actually have customers i.e. attendees) and your primary WOM flywheel. If you want to do social network event promotion right, creating a dedicated event page on Facebook, Linkedin and even the undead aberration that is Google+ is where your work just begins. There have to be constant updates, a relentless stream of information and, of course, conversation with both potential and already secured attendees.
Don’t think I’ve skipped over Twitter, and neither should you. You don’t need to create a dedicated Twitter account for the event, because amassing followers takes a long time, but do follow people relevant for or interested in the industry or the type of event you are organizing. Initiate conversations with them, while simultaneously and shamelessly plugging the event in your own tweets. And use that hashtag!
Reach out to relevant and/or influential bloggers with event info and perhaps a free ticket or two. Finally, if your speakers and/or entertainers have an online presence, make it a part of the deal that they use their owned media to promote the event.
The bottom line is – practice going through as many online channels as possible, since digital clutter is all around. Even going for the no-nonsense paid media approach is advisable, provided your budget warrants it, but focus more on stuff that speaks directly to your prospects like direct email and community management.
But Don’t Forget Offline
Okay, we’ve got online covered. But, the last time I checked, most events still took place in meatspace, and as such could benefit greatly from some good old fashioned promotion like posters or newspaper advertorials.
Nothing like a nice press meetup, with speakers, sponsors and influencers to get the media ball rolling. And yay, that means another mini-event for you to organize!
Afterwards, submitting event-related PR stuff to media has a much better chance of resulting in something about the event actually appearing in the media. Globally speaking, you should go local (and this pertains to online media, too).
Send event info to industry associations, and this is also applicable if you are organizing a rock concert – the local scene will probably want to know about it, if they don’t already. But that doesn’t mean you should not send a heads up to, for example, the local motorcycle club.
Out-of-home and TV advertising usually has terrible ROI for events that are not pop star concerts or massive parties. That means the general rule of advertising applies even more poignantly to events: use your resources smartly and promote where your audience is. You wouldn’t take out a print ad in the New York Times announcing that you have great property to sell in Omaha and you wouldn’t go on Facebook to target teenagers (and if you have to know, it’s all Tinder and Viber now, but gods only know for how long).
Many an event manager has fallen victim to the so called “to big to fail” fallacy when organizing an event that is, well, big. They assume that people are just going to flock to the event because of its perceived relevance. And you can never, ever be sure of that, except maybe if your client is Kim Jong Un. So, a good event management team will always promote the event, and do it in all available ways, focusing on the most effective subset: channels that speak personally to the potential attendee.