One of the most efficient strategies to reach your marketing goals is to host online and offline events. Your event, however, will only be a success if you can convince people to show up in the first place.
Get your event marketing techniques in place early to guarantee that your event spaces are filled and that you have the best chance of engaging with your clients.
Individuals who attend your event give up their time (and frequently their money) to be there. As a result, you must provide them with a compelling reason to come.
And before you even consider marketing your event, you must first ensure that people are aware that it is taking place. This is why marketing your event may make the difference between a big success and a complete disaster.
From fliers to word-of-mouth, event marketing has gone a long way.
With today’s internet marketing tools, you can sell more tickets, generate more buzz, and reach a more narrowly focused audience than ever before.
Do you have an upcoming event? To get the word out and attract more people, consider employing any or all of these event marketing strategies.
1. Marketing on Social Media
From pre-event marketing and the use of hashtags and live postings to promote your event while it’s happening, to post-event feedback and follow-up with attendees, social media may be used at all phases of your event planning.
Nearly half of event planners have a dedicated social media team, and over 80% of event marketers utilize social media to promote events.
Marketers benefit from social networks for various reasons:
- They supply thorough information on their members, allowing you to promote to a highly focused audience or modify your campaigns to different target groups.
- They make it simple for people to exchange information and make suggestions, allowing your current consumers to help you promote your business.
- They come with built-in analytics, making it simple to track the progress of your marketing campaign both during and after the event.
- There are both free and paid promotion possibilities. The most successful method is frequently a combination of both.
You may target different categories of consumers or utilize different forms of marketing by using multiple social networks. For B2B marketing and events, LinkedIn is frequently the top choice. In terms of reach, Facebook wins, while YouTube is a must-use medium for promotional video.
2. Email Marketing
One of the most successful ways to increase event attendance is through email marketing. To get the most out of it, you’ll need a well-thought-out approach.
Email is a natural way to communicate with pre-registered participants, send out mailings, and follow up with people after the event. It’s also a terrific approach to reach out to new people who haven’t previously expressed interest in your event.
You may utilize your normal mailing list messages to generate excitement for your event, and you can even advertise your event using other people’s lists (perhaps with an affiliate scheme for ticket sales as an incentive).
Timing, subject lines, content, CTAs, and personalization are all important factors to consider when it comes to email marketing effectiveness. Learn about email optimization and be sure to assess the performance of each email so you can continue to enhance your campaign.
3. Specific Landing Pages
Nearly 60% of marketers claim their own website is the most effective marketing platform for their event.
This straightforward strategy of online event marketing should not be disregarded. Create a specific landing page for your event on your website and ensure that it is optimized for conversions.
You may then send visitors directly to this page from social media, display advertisements, and pay per click advertising, as well as from your blog and other pages on your site.
This landing page may be a powerful tool for getting people to sign up for your event. You may then follow up with other marketing strategies like email and social media postings.
Even if the specifics aren’t set yet, it’s critical to build a page for your event well in advance of the event date. This not only allows you to collect information from those who have expressed an early interest in attending, but it also helps you boost your SEO and establish authority ahead of your main marketing push.
4. Influencer Marketing
Leveraging the reach of major industry influencers may help you raise awareness of your event while also making it more desirable to potential attendees.
Bloggers, vloggers, social media influencers, and influential persons in your business or area may all be contacted. These influencers may then promote the event on your behalf to their own audiences, which might be thousands of people larger than the number of people you could reach through your own marketing methods.
Another option is to invite influencers to your event (for free if it’s a paid event, or with a monetary incentive if it’s not). This may be a good way to promote your event before, during, and after it happens, especially if you’re planning a series of them.
Influencer marketing is especially successful when selling to a younger audience or in areas like fashion and cosmetics. 70% of millennials prefer celebrity endorsements over influencers.
5. Publications
Although press releases have been around for a long time, they are still as useful as ever in today’s digital environment.
A press release is a terrific method to get the word out about your event, especially if you can come up with a unique approach or plan to use new and creative ideas and technologies.
Press releases may also be used to advertise your event’s landing page and social media hashtags, as well as to identify prospective influencers for further promotional possibilities and to reach an audience that isn’t reached through your usual marketing channels. Thousands of journalists and news organizations may get a single press release.
Certainly, the event marketing methods and concepts we’ve given aren’t the only ones out there, but they’re among the most effective ones you can utilize as a starting point for your entire approach.
You’ll be in a much better position to build buzz, attract more people, and eventually obtain more ticket sales and registrations from your target attendees if you use an event marketing platform and apply these methods.