How to Market Your Event & Reach More People
Event marketing strategies are essential to attract more attendees, boost engagement, and ensure your event reaches its target audience effectively.
Do you have a big event in the future that you want to be a smash? Marketing your event is crucial to attracting the right audience. To achieve this, it requires careful strategizing to ensure everything proceeds smoothly.
Planning a big event involves making sure that you achieve a successful guest count. After all, every event is more exciting when there are large crowds. As an event planner, one of your first steps is to create an effective marketing plan. You can use these steps to market your event to a broader target audience that attracts more people.
Establish a Strong Brand Identity for the Event
Branding is a critical component of marketing campaigns. You can use it to make sure each element of the messaging aligns with the overall theme. For instance, focus on emphasizing compassion and philanthropy for fundraising events and galas. Meanwhile, you can focus on professional development when you are planning a corporate dinner. Zkipster outlines the steps to create a successful corporate dinner.
Use a Targeted Email Marketing Campaign
Email automation makes it easier to send a diverse range of messages to a wider target audience without overwhelming people’s inboxes. As you develop your email marketing campaign for an upcoming event, consider adding these types of messages to your plans:
- Initial announcement and save-the-date message
- Follow-up email with signup information
- A helpful how-to guide with tips for transportation and arrivals
- Event updates to generate excitement, such as entertainment announcements
- Promotional content
- Early bird discounts
With a targeted email marketing plan, you’re sure to get more people interested in your event, which in turn will likely result in them attending.
Promote Your Event on Social Media
Social media marketing is a cost-effective option that you can use to increase awareness about the event. Start by exploring which platforms your target audience spends their time on the most.
For example, posting on LinkedIn is ideal when your event is targeting professionals within a specific industry. Alternatively, use Facebook to advertise an event that focuses on serving the community.
With social media platforms, you also have the option of using free profiles and posts. Or, you can opt to use pay-per-click advertising that can further expand your reach. With all types of social media marketing, remember to check out the available analytics tools.
Analyzing data, such as view counts and interactions, enables you to adjust your marketing campaign as needed. Sometimes, subtle adjustments make a huge impact when you use data to guide your decisions.
Interact With Potential Attendees
Engaging on social media and through email are two effective ways to maintain momentum and generate interest in your event. Schedule time in your day to review social media posts for comments and likes. If someone asks a question, then answer it to provide details that could impact their decision to attend.
Updating posts with new information, teasers, and helpful tips helps to create a trickle effect that gets people excited to see what you’ll post next. If possible, have a few posts pre-planned to make it easier to put up a quick update. As you do, pay careful attention to the times when your target audience is online. Adding a new post or snippet of information is more likely to have a more substantial impact when people are interested in engaging.
Partner With Other Organizations and People
Cross-promoting is a technique that allows you to connect with people who may not typically be part of the primary target audience. For instance, you might work with the catering company to collaborate on promotional content sharing.
Influencer marketing is another option for collaborations. Look for influencers within your industry or those that align with the brand to reach out to with opportunities to spread the word about your upcoming event.
Conclusion
As you begin planning your marketing campaign, remember to take some time to enjoy the process. Hosting a large event provides you with the chance to make new connections that you can use to further your career. Whether you move forward with developing an email marketing campaign or posting on social media, each step you take helps you reach a new level of professionalism as you market your event.
