Marketing Your Event
Marketing Shmarketing.
Have you ever hosted an event and not had the turnout you were hoping for? How about creating endless hours of marketing and hearing nothing but crickets in return? Maybe you threw an event on the calendar at short notice and didn't market it very much at all; or just the opposite and threw everything you had at it in a short amount of time - and still nothing.
How do you start to change that?
Liz and Jessica recently jumped onto our Instagram account to give some helpful tips about Marketing Your Event!
Liz Agudelo, our Marketing Strategist, has been so busy this year helping brilliant companies launch retreats, conferences and workshops - and finding out how the world of event marketing has drastically shifted over the last few years!
We broke our chat down into a "5 W's" approach, like we love doing for almost everything we teach in marketing. The Who, What, Where, When, and Why/How of Event Marketing. Read on to hear what some of those tips were, or scroll to the bottom to watch the replay of the chat on our Instagram account!
WHO:
It is so important to take the time to properly identify your audience, as well as who is going to do the marketing for the upcoming event so you know WHO you are speaking to for potential attendees, as well as who is responsible for creating that vision to pull them in and engage, with the culture of your business at the forefront.
If you are hosting a partnership event with presenters or sponsors other than yourself, put the time in to encourage your speakers, team members etc to share. Create and send out marketing packs to presenters, partners/sponsors with neutral marketing visuals they can easily utilize within their own branding, current links for registrations and caption suggestions or outlines so your marketing is all presented cohesively across the board and social accounts/websites.
WHAT:
What kind of visuals are you using for your event?
Choose visuals that resonate with your ideal attendee! Making sure you put in the time for the first step of understanding your 'Who' will make this step seamless.
Choose photos that are engaging, encouraging, and uplifting! Some key images that always perform well:
Eye contact
Movement
Humour
Positive over negative! Allude to a hopeful outcome or solution from attending your event
Community or connection - groups of people
Identifiable and applicable landmarks or people
Keep text on visuals to a minimum and large enough to read with a quick scroll.
WHEN:
When should you start promoting your event?
Optimal lead-up time?
It takes multiple exposures to create a 'buy-in' mentality from your attendees/audience. Algorithms also rely of human behavioural patterns and this takes time to build and expand your reach and visibility. We suggest 3 months - 6 weeks as a minimum for lead-up time in order to create a proper campaign and ideal turnout!
How short is too short?
Anything shorter than 6 weeks sets your event up for a 'quick and dirty' marketing approach. This pivots your marketing to factual efforts and you end up sacrificing the connection/relational appeal aspect.
How long is too long?
Anything over 6 months is too early to start a full campaign lead-up, but teaser reminders are welcome at this point.
WANT MORE FREE TIPS ABOUT MARKETING YOUR EVENT?
Watch the entire replay below!
Not working in your browser? Watch the replay of the chat here.
