12 Event Marketing Ideas

If you’ve got an event that is being planned, you’ll need to effectively market it so that people will attend and make it be a rousing success. If your community doesn’t know about it, no one will show up! You can always hang up posters or hand out flyers with a street team, but how can you take your next event marketing campaign to the next level? That’s what this article will explore in-depth.

In order to begin, you’re going to need to figure out two specific things:

1. What is the target demographic for the event?
2. What will this target demographic find to be of value?

You must be specific to your demographic in order to find the most success. It’s not good enough to list your demographic as “Seattle” or “San Francisco.” You’ve got to define it on a micro level, such as “Households with at least one child living in Seattle that make more than $75k” to really find success. Then take this niche group, look at the value that the majority of them seek out, and that’s when you’ll be ready to implement these ideas.

Great Event Marketing Ideas

1. Be Compelling
The description of your event must make it impossible for your target to resist the pitch you’ve made. Be clear and concise about the value your event will be able to provide. Make sure people understand where the event will be, what time it starts and ends, and what people may want to bring to maximize their enjoyment. If you’re concise, you will be memorable.

2. Include Recommendations
Allow people or businesses you trust to review your event from a historical perspective so that you can use their observations to better market yourself. When a third party has a verifiable quote or review about your event that people can read on their own, you’ll create a higher level of trust. You can even create the quotes you need from people… as long as you verify with them that it’s fine to say these things on their behalf.

3. Provide Content Now
Excitement builds for the best events because people receive valuable content regarding the event before the first day of it. If you’re planning a concert, a free MP3 download of an artist’s song before the event can provide valuable content. It could be promotional products that go beyond the typical swag of pens and pencils that are seen. It could be a free webinar to introduce a concept that will be discussed more in-depth. Just make sure the content relates to the event in some way.

4. Get Bios Out Now
People attend events because they get something there that they can’t find on their own. You’ve likely brought in experts to conduct the event or you’re focusing on personal expertise to make the event a success. The bios of you and/or your speakers and organizers will help to establish the niche expertise and lay a foundation of trust that will start a mutually beneficial relationship later on down the road.

5. Create a Brand
An event with a brand is more likely to succeed because it is more likely to be remembered. Because there is so much information floating around in people’s heads today, visual branding is the most effective way to go. The image of your event will be recognized and then the details of your event will re-enter the memory stream, compelling a choice to attend or not to attend once again.

6. YouTube Yourself
If you’ve got videos of past events that you’ve done, get them onto YouTube or another video sharing site immediately. This gives evidence to people that you can turn perceived value into real value and you may even find your videos are getting embedded into websites and blogs that are industry related, further increasing the perception of niche expertise.

7. Be Careful About Email
Most people will open or delete an email based solely on the information that is in the subject line. If you’re relying on a good open rate for attendance, be smart about what you include in the subject. If it’s seen as linkbait, you’re getting deleted and that person won’t attend. If it leads to value, however, then you increase your odds of a registration.

8. Know Your Timing
People are more keen to look at information about an event during a break or on the weekend rather than during normal business hours. The key to providing this information is in the timing itself, which is why an assist from a program like AudiencePoint can really help. You’ll target peak internet usage times when an email received is often an email opened.

9. Get Social Media Involved
If people have attended your event in the past, give them a discount for sharing pictures from the event on their social media networks. Make sure that you’re using hashtags so you can search for images or get alerts that you can then target 1-on-1 for better results.

10. Eliminate Confusion
Be concise with your message across all your platforms so you’re not creating confusion with your sales funnel. Confused leads won’t become attendees! If you’ve got event planners, include this standardization with their promotional efforts as well so their networks will want to plan on attending your event as well.

11. Begin an Affiliate Program
The only thing better that affordable self-promotion is allowing others to promote you for a commission on every sale that they make. A worthwhile affiliate program will quickly spread news about your event across the sphere of the internet and that may quickly lead to an event that is fully funded and packed to the brim with attendees.

12. Offer Loyalty Discounts
To encourage past event attendees to come again, offer them a specific discount upon signing up so that they’ll feel like their investment into you in the past will pay off again. You could also apply this type of discount to your affiliate program, a street team if you’ve got one working for you, or other targeted demographics that will spread the word about your event.