How to Market Your Event

Planning an event can be hard work, logistically you have to juggle a lot of different tasks, and when the organisation is over, it doesn’t end there! You then have to market your event and try and get people to attend. That’s where marketing comes into play. Based on our experience with events, we have compiled a few tips to help you attract the right audience.

Pre-Event Marketing

The best way to market your event is with Social Media, email marketing, and affiliates make sure you use as many channels as possible to spread the word. Great things to include are Testimonials from previous events, early bird discounts, and a speaker line-up. On your registration thank you page, make sure you include a link to share with colleagues and send a follow-up email with another link to share the event, be sure to include your hashtag and auto-add to their calendar, so they don’t forget! Here are a few more pre-event musts:

• The most important part of marketing your event is the event website or page. Make this as attractive as you can, include all the information on the event, speakers (pictures and great bios), location, costs etc… make it compelling to people who want to attend. Make it easy to read and navigate and make sure your Register button is prominently displayed.
• Use social media to create a buzz, try creating an event hashtag, share links to your speaker’s social media profiles and follow people. Make sure you post regularly and use as many social media channels as possible.
• Keep content regular on your event website so you have things to post on your social media. Ask your guest speaker to write content to help create some noise around their talks and ask them to share with their networks.
• Ad the event to your on-hold marketing, when people call your business, direct them to your event registration page. You can also mention your early bird discount in your on-hold messages.
• Tell the media, both local and industry-specific tell them about your event. Organisations like The Chamber of Commerce are often happy to post relevant events.

The Event

Make sure you capture everything on the day and stay active on social:

• During the event keep your social media active, tweet, or post throughout the day. Attendees will be keeping an eye out for your hashtag, so keep it interesting.
• Gather feedback from as many people as possible to use post-event and for your next event marketing.
• Take lots of photos and record presentations so you have lots to share post-evet.

After the Event

Keep the buzz going post-event with the following:

• Provide videos of the presentations for people to watch who couldn’t make the event so they can see what they missed so they want to book next time
• Send a post-event email to all who attended, thanking them for attending
• Create a survey to gather feedback for people who you might not have completed one on the day. All great content for your next event.
• Ask people to sign up for alerts for your next event, so you can grow your email list

All the information you’ve gathered will be like gold dust when it comes to marketing your next event!

Check out our other blogs for more great tips.