You’ve planned your event, got the date and time agreed and booked a brilliant venue – now you need to get people to sign up! Every event planner’s biggest nightmare is planning an event and having hardly anyone turn up to take part, resulting in profit losses, embarrassment and having a lot to explain to your bosses! Rather than letting it be a total flop, take a look at our seven steps to marketing your next event and let us help you get the success you’ve been looking for!
Step One – Plan Your Marketing Strategy Effectively
Failing to plan how you are going to market your event is the key to failure! Take the time to think about and map out the best channels to use to market your event and educate potential consumers on what they will get.
There is a wide range of tools that you can use to help you, including process mapping, survey data and focus groups. Once you have the information you need about your audience, you can then map out a strong marketing plan that will help draw in more attendees than you could hope for!
Step Two – Create a Robust Event Website
Even if you already have a business website, it is vital that you create a brand new website for your event. This website can just consist of a well-designed landing page if time is of the essence but it should have everything your consumers need to be able to decide if they want to attend or not.
Your website will give you a valuable opportunity to explain exactly what your event is, who will be presenting and what attendees can expect to get from coming. You should also have easy links to register and book accommodation, helping you to secure sales in the simplest way.
Step Three – Draw up a Social Media Plan
There’s no doubt that social media is popular with consumers and so finding a way to use it to your advantage could help you increase your sales. From creating bespoke and targeted adverts to sharing updates and photos of the event planning, you can provide your audience with relevant information and keep them interested in the event.
You can even get key influencers to share your event on their social media accounts to help widen the number of people that hear about your event. Plus, if someone remains undecided about whether they want to attend or not, you can use social media to show them what they’d be missing out on!
Step Four – Create Email Marketing Campaigns
Even with the popularity of social media advertising on the rise, nothing can yet beat the strength of email marketing when it comes to greater conversion levels and getting more people interested in what you are doing.
The other great thing about an email marketing list is that you should already have one in place for your business, meaning that you can just use that to contact everyone about your event. Start by sharing snippets of information as it becomes available and think about offering an exclusive discount to email sign-ups, helping you to grow your email list and secure more delegates for your next event.
Step Five – Tap Into Word of Mouth Recommendations
There’s no doubt that word of mouth is a powerful tool in business-oriented environments. Use past attendees or selected individuals to share the benefits of going to your event. When someone shares their attendee perspective, more people are likely to believe it and trust what they say.
To make it even more valuable, you could offer a unique discount code to specific individuals who can share it with their closest business contacts and get more people to sign up. The great thing about word-of-mouth recommendations is that they can be shared digitally as well as in person, helping more people see what others have to save about you and your event.
Step Six – Think About Giveaways
Whether we like it or not, human beings are designed to want to win and this desire could be the perfect marketing strategy for your next event! Creating giveaways and competitions not only helps you get more people following your business but also allows you to highlight your event in a positive way. From free tickets and upgrades to hospitality and accommodation, there are plenty of ways to market your event and reward your winners.
If you are really savvy, you can use the competition to get people marketing your event on their own social media accounts, drawing in a bigger audience than you could manage on your own. Just remember that a successful giveaway needs to work for you and the consumer, otherwise it won’t pick up the momentum in the way you had envisaged.
Step Seven – Create a Hashtag
It’s common practice to create a unique hashtag for your event, allowing people to follow it and access up to date information on what’s happening and what they can look forward to if they attend. With hashtags, the simpler the better but take the time to make sure that the name of your event is used as this gives you free advertising and helps you to monitor the hashtag to see how popular it becomes.
The great thing about a personal hashtag is that you can also use it during the event to get feedback in real-time and to highlight how people feel about the event with those that chose not to come.
Get to Work on Marketing Your Event Now
With seven simple steps to follow, there is no reason why your event can’t be the success you want it to be, especially when you pitch it to the right audience at the right time. Take some time to plan out how to execute each piece of advice and look forward to increased sales and greater interest in what you have to offer – the result will be increased sign ups to your events and a wider reach across multiple platforms.
