When it comes to marketing and promoting events, I’ve got the receipts. 

I’ve been in events marketing for over six years – ever since I got into marketing.

I’ve been learning all the way, developing how best to market an event – I’ve made mistakes, found some brilliant marketing strategies and activities, and smashed event targets.

Before I launch into Events Marketing 101, I want to stress that I don’t believe in a formulaic way to market anything, especially not events.

So this isn’t exactly a checklist, but different ways to market an event that have worked for me in the past, and a loose process that I follow, with some modular additions, depending on your event.

This guide works for both virtual and in-person events (at the time of writing, we’re amid the Covid-19 pandemic, so virtual events are everywhere), as well as both B2C and B2B events.

Brace yourself, this is going to be a long one – but you can pick and choose what works for you.

Experiment with each of these, and see which ones you can do well, and make a positive impact on your event.

Let’s go.

Set your objectives

Before you lay out your event, design your stand, which speakers to invite, or even which members of staff to attend the stand, you should set your objectives – so you know what a successful event means for you.

Is your aim simply to sell tickets?

Or are you converting them to members of your community?

Are you selling products at your event?

Set yourself a clear goal so you can determine whether the event has been successful for you.

Make sure your goal is SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based.

You can set several goals for your event, particularly if you have objectives of delegate sales and other sales while at the event.

Prepare to launch

Before you launch, you need to make sure you have all of the information you need.

Now, this is an ‘ideal’ situation, because I’ve been in a place where the lead time for an event campaign is a matter of weeks (as opposed to months), and I’ve had to launch without all of the information I would rather have confirmed ahead of time.

Here are the things you should have confirmed before you launch and before you even start planning your campaign:

• Objective (as mentioned above)

• Name of event (try not to change the name of the event partway through the campaign)

• Time and date of the event

• Location of event

• Programme – even a rough programme

• Ideal audience

• Price for delegates

• Price for sponsors/exhibitors (if applicable)

• ‘Elevator pitch’ for the event – one or two sentences to describe the event

• Top three key themes

• List of benefits and features

It seems like a long list, but, honestly, most of it’s basic, so shouldn’t be a problem.

Benefits over features

This goes for all marketing, not specifically events marketing – focus on benefits over features in your marketing messaging.

Why should your leads attend?

Features aren’t in themselves a reason to attend.

Use the ‘so what?’ method to determine the ‘ultimate why’ for each of your features, and use that to emotionally shape your marketing messaging.

For example:

Imagine you’re a beauty influencer, and you see an advert for a new cosmetics conference.

The event boasts “Over 20 speakers from leading organisations in the cosmetics industry”

This is a great feature, but what would persuade you to attend would be the ultimate benefit.

Over 20 speakers from leading organisations in the cosmetics industry

↓

So what?

↓

Viewpoints from different people in cosmetics in one place

↓

So what?

↓

You don’t have to do your own research into those viewpoints

↓

So what?

↓

You save time

↓

So what?

↓

You can use that free time to further develop your influencer brand.

This final point speaks to you on a more personal, emotional level – this shows that the marketers of the cosmetics conference know their audience and can tailor their message to each segment within that audience.

Early-bird offers

This is a staple in the events sector – most events offer this at the start of the campaign.

The key here is not to run the ‘early-bird’ for too long. 

Obviously, it all depends on how long the campaign is running for, but if your early-bird ends a week before the event, it’s not much of an early-bird and doesn’t give people much incentive to book earlier.

The reason why early-bird offers are so popular is that they can boost sales at the beginning of an event campaign, rather than having a mad rush at the end of the campaign to reach the desired target.

The early-bird discount amount can vary, depending on the price of the event, and your financial target.

Another way of doing a different type of early-bird offer is to have a set number of tickets sold at a discounted price.

If, for example, your target amount of attendees is 500, you could have a limited amount of tickets available at a discounted price.

Then, instead of a countdown to the end of the early-bird discount, you simply have a countdown of those limited-edition tickets available.

These sorts of countdowns are so effective in event marketing – or most other types of marketing – because they create a sense of urgency to persuade the consumer to purchase, then and there.

One thing I will say about this marketing tactic is not to abuse it.

As with all other marketing activities, you need to be genuine.

Consumers aren’t new to these tactics, they usually know when they’re being lied to, thanks to the internet age.

So have a set deadline or number of discounted tickets, and stick to it. 

SEO

You need to use SEO as part of your events marketing strategy.

If you’re new to SEO, or you’re not a digital marketer, the idea of SEO can seem daunting.

Honestly, it’s not as scary as it seems.

You don’t need to be a Google-accredited, analytics whiz to benefit from good SEO.

For basic events marketing, you simply need to make sure that your event landing page on your website can be more easily found by your target audience.

To do that, you should use key search terms throughout your page (without compromising the readability of it), and produce relevant, decent content to drive your audience to your page or site.

It’s all about producing relevant, decent content for your audience, and writing in a way that resonates more with them.

Of course, this is super-basic SEO, so if you want to get the most out of your SEO for your event marketing, then check out my dedicated guide: 8 SEO Basics You Should Know.

Press releases

I remember when, back in 2015, I had to write my first press release.

I’d never even seen a press release before, but jumped at any chance to learn something new.

It was so much easier than I thought (sorry, press friends)!

A press release for an event only needs to be about 1 page long, a general overview of the event, who you’re expecting to attend, any speakers you have lined up, the venue, topics to be discussed, and any other bonus things you’d like to mention.

It should be written in the third person (i.e. “Night Sky Creative is proud to announce their first marketing, branding and design conference…”), and use the terminology you’d like journalists to use when writing about your event.

Stay on-brand, be promotional, but not using marketing jargon – don’t say it’s a “fantastic event”, instead explain in more specific terms what it’s about and why people should attend.

Approach influencers

The word ‘influencer’ seems to be pretty stigmatised at the moment, but it shouldn’t be.

Influencers are just people who are known in their career (yes, even blogging and Instagramming is a career), and have a following of people who listen to what they have to say.

No matter what sector you’re in, you’ll have influencers you can approach to attend and help promote your event.

Even if you’re in B2B, there will be people who are key players in your industry.

Contact them individually, offer them a ticket, speaking opportunity or sponsorship of your event, and provide them with the assets and information they need to promote your event on their own channels.

Create assets for your influencers to use: for social media channels, email banners, adverts for their website (if they have one)... anything that they can share more easily with their followers – just make sure your event has pride of place in those assets, and both your branding/logo and (if possible) your influencer’s branding/logo.

You’d be surprised how much sway influencers can have – do your research, and you’ll find people you can contact, even if they don’t think of themselves as influencers.

Incentivise referrals

For most event campaigns, the objective is to reach a certain amount of delegates, or as many as possible before you reach the venue capacity.

Referrals aim to encourage those who are already attending to bring their friends, colleagues, and followers who the event might be interested in attending.

One referral tactic I’ve found is easy to implement but doesn’t see much uptake is to ‘share this email with a colleague/friend’ – if you’re going to encourage them to share your event, you need to incentivise it.

What can they get out of sharing your event?

Even something like a small free gift when they share a post to their social media or email their friends can increase the number of people who do share.

Plus, having copy already written for them makes it even easier for them to share, and increases your reach.

If you want to try out the ‘share this post on social media’ activity, here’s some advice: don’t just write copy that says something basic like “I’m attending the NSC BrandCon, come join me!”.

It’s not exactly inspiring and persuasive copy.

Write this shared post as though you were writing for your own social media – focus on the benefits, and don’t make it too promotional, otherwise, they’ll be less likely to share it.

Another way to get more ‘bums on seats’ is to create group offers, and to promote those to people who have already booked: “Bring a friend for 10% off for both of you and free Champagne on arrival”.

People are more likely to be persuaded to purchase something if someone they know recommends it, so referrals can be a huge missed opportunity for event marketers.

Prioritise your mailing list

This is essential if your event is specific to a certain segment of your audience, and if you have a large mailing list, because:

• You don’t want to bother people in your mailing list with an event that they won’t be interested in.

• You don’t want to exhaust your mailing list so they’ll be less likely to open future emails from you.

• You can use these segments to send content relating to specific parts of your programme, certain speakers, and individual benefits of attending – beauty influencers will want to attend a cosmetics conference, but so will beauty manufacturers, and they’ll both require different marketing messaging.

One of the most effective ways to segment a list, which I use both in my 9-5 role and my personal mailing list, is to have subscribers select what they’re interested in at the point of sign-up.

That way, you have useful analytical information that you can use to create relevant content, and they’ll get more content and information that they’re interested in – win/win!

Social media

There are so many ways you can use social media to promote your event – chances are, you’re already doing some of these, but here’s a handy list so you can try out a few other techniques that you might not be aware of:

• Create an event hashtag, and use that whenever you’re promoting your event, and encourage attendees, exhibitors, speakers and sponsors to use it too. That’ll make it much easier for you to pull together relevant user-generated content to re-post throughout your campaign

• Follow your event venue on social media, and tag them – they may well share it, and it’ll further increase your reach.

• Post behind-the-scenes photos during the set-up, it shows the human element of your brand and event and reaches your audience on a more emotional level.

• Host built-in polls on social media – people always want their opinions to be heard, and you can use those insights to further craft your programme, and even share the results at your event.

• Shoutout to sponsors and speakers throughout your campaign – highlight their company, what they’ll be discussing, and the benefits to your attendees. Just like tagging your event venue, they’ll likely re-post it and boost your reach.

• Don’t be afraid of video! Video content is fundamental to seeing true success on social media right now, so get in front of that camera and talk to your audience about your event. Why not host a mini Q&A with one of your speakers?

• Even at the event, you should be live-tweeting or posting to Instagram stories. Especially if you’re going to host other events in the future – generate that #FOMO feeling with your audience.

Try each of these, and see which ones work best for you – it might be that not all of these work for your type of event, and your audience, so experiment to see what clicks.

Content marketing and blogging

I’m a writer: I love content marketing.

Any chance I can get, I’ll be creating content.

And you know what? It works.

Content marketing is essentially a less invasive type of marketing – you’re not screaming “Buy this!” to your audience en masse, instead, you’re showcasing what sort of expertise you (and your affiliates) can offer to them.

Content marketing is such a vast topic, so I recommend reading my guide, 6 Tips for Quality Content, if you’re a content marketing newbie, or want to have a quick refresher.

And just because I love a good list, here are some useful formats of content marketing that you can use to promote your event:

• Infographics: who attended last year, what sort of topics will you be discussing, industry-specific topics and insights.

• Checklists: what you need to bring as an attendee, topic-specific checklists like “15 essentials you need as a dog owner” for a dog show event.

• Q&As with guests, speakers, sponsors and exhibitors, in video or text format (just make sure your video has subtitles for the hard of hearing and deaf community).

• Blogs on relevant topics, and guest blogs from speakers.

• Free webinars with speakers for a quick run-through of the basics on their chosen topic.

Paid promotion

In my 9-5 role, I use LinkedIn paid promotion fairly regularly in my events campaigns – I work in B2B, so LinkedIn is the most effective social media platform for us.

You don’t need to spend much on paid promotion to see results, although it does depend on how much you’re charging attendees for your event.

I can’t give you a formula as to how much to spend on paid promotion, because it does depend on your event, your general budget, your objectives, your promotional post, your audience, and your expectations.

It’s relatively simple to create a paid promotional campaign, particularly on social media, and they have their own built-in guides and tutorials on how you can get the most out of your campaign, so it’s best to rely on the platforms themselves to tell you how to create the campaign on their platforms.

However, I will say that you need a clear CTA (call-to-action) on your paid promotional ad.

Your audience needs to know why they should click on your advert, and the most effective way that I’ve found is to actively offer them something.

It could be a discount on their ticket, access to the programme, a glass of bubbly on arrival (believe me, it works, and it’s surprisingly cheap to arrange!), access to an exclusive infographic or report… the possibilities are near endless.

Then, you need to convert them so they purchase a ticket to your event.

You could direct them to your event website for them to purchase a ticket, or create a dedicated landing page (either within your own CMS or using a third-party site like Unbounce).

Personally, I tend to use a dedicated landing page for the paid promotion, so that I can tailor the content, copy and format to the audience who would click on that ad, and make it as simple and clear as possible for them to purchase – removing as many potential barriers as possible.

In the end, the specifics of paid promotion can be so variable, so it’s worth experimenting as much as possible to see true results.

Just when you think it’s over…

After the event, the work isn’t done.

If your event is annual, you should start marketing next year’s straightaway – even at the event.

These sorts of event campaigns should be perpetual.

The event should be promoted throughout the year, as a product that can always be purchased.

It sounds like it’s more work to promote your event, but if you give it a longer lead time, you’ll vastly increase the likelihood that you’ll reach your targets, and you’ll find that you don’t have to actively promote it as much.

Ultimately, the longer the lead time, the less ‘packed’ your campaign will need to be, the less ‘work’ it will be for you, and the more time you’ll have to create quality content and experiment with these event marketing tactics.

That’s it for Event Marketing 101!

I trust that this guide will prove useful to any events professionals and marketers, but please feel free to contact me if you have any other suggestions, or if these techniques work for you, too.

Happy eventing!