VenueLook Blog Party and Event Planning Tips, Resources and Venues
We have our event plans all set and in motion, it’s now time for another extremely important task, it is time to start promoting the events!
Promoting events helps us attract the right audience and basically get the party started! Now event promotion and marketing can be something heavy on our pockets, so if some of you have the budget, there is a whole bunch of awesome, eye-catching tips to promote your event, however, some of you don’t have such deep pockets and budgets, so for those of you, we have put together a list of ideas which will keep you from getting intimidated and help you fit this expensive task into your budget.
Keep on reading to get some absolutely mind-blowing ideas for marketing and promoting your event!
P.S. Your event, whether at a venue or online, can be published and promoted on VenueLook.com as well.
Digital Marketing
With most things turning digital, we know that social media is a great tool for marketing, the best part is, social media marketing and promotions have a wide price range and therefore suit all pockets and budgets!
Let’s Get You Started:
1. Create an official event account
If you are an existing brand, you already have a brand name and logo, create an official event account for your brand and a hashtag to get more eyes on your brand. This does some amount of promotion to start with.
Pro Tip – It’s a good idea to add your logo as a watermark to your content, repetitive viewing helps the viewers remember you.
2. Tag and Tweet the Event
Tag and Tweet the Event to those who have already made it big in your industry, if you can, try and invite celebs to your event, if they do end up coming, they are going to share their experience on their social accounts and you can reach their audience this way!
3. Contest Giveaways
Everyone in the audience loves a giveaway! You can ask your audience to complete certain tasks in order to win the giveaway, for example, ask them to share + Tag 3 friends + comment on your post for a chance to win the prize.
4. Barter Shout outs / Likes / Shares
When people use your hashtag or tag you in relevant posts, offer them something in return, for example, a shout out or a feature on your stories or account.
5. Sneak Peeks
People love teasers and behind the scene shots, so make sure you share images/ videos and content a few days, perhaps even weeks before the actual event takes place!
6. Get Testimonials
It’s important to get testimonials for your events and to share these testimonials with the audience, testimonials are proof of authenticity and of how good your brand actually is! So make sure you get the testimonials, in fact, it will be great if you could get them from big names who are attending your event, adds to your credibility!
7. Meet event sponsors
Meet event sponsors and bond with them, once you’ve established an understanding, request them to share your events and promote them! You should give them images and guidelines so they can hit the nail when promoting the events.
8. Run Polls to engage your audience
Ask your audience to engage with polls and to vote for preferred sessions using these polls on social media platforms.
9. Ask Audience
To increase your engagement and reach ask your audience to interact with you and suggest new ideas for new events and discussions.
10. Use Social media marketing Tools
Try using social media marketing and promoting tools on Facebook, Instagram, twitter etc. they target audiences narrowed according to your target market.
Use Your Existing Resources Wisely
While promoting an event may have a completely different budget, it’s not an entirely separate branch, it’s part of your planning. Event promotion isn’t a wholly separate entity from the rest of your planning, it’s part of it.
11. Record the Event
Assign some of your co-workers, the task of recording and taking candid videos of all the planning and work that goes into having a successful event. This can be great behind the scenes video!
12. Record Food Tasting for the Event
While figuring out your menu and food tastings ask your caterer for permissions, and share these experiences online, either through live sessions, photos or videos. These are again great teasers and work as sneak peeks into the event! They also work really well to attract an audience, because we eat with our eyes before we actually eat the food, so the good looks of the food tasting will definitely increase your list of attendees.
13. Use Previous Events’ Images/Videos
Footage of your previous events makes for some awesome promotions content, make sure to use that!
14. Create Hype Around the Event
Create a hype around the other things one can do in the city your event is in. This gives people a reason to come explore your event and have fun in and around the location.
15. Plan Treasure Hunts
These are all-time favourite games and are suitable for all age groups! Hide an invite as the treasure or use low-cost items and place these around the city of your event. What a fun way to get started!
16. Do Email/SMS Marketing
Use your existing database and send out emails and/or SMS to existing clients, invite them for the new events. Don’t spam though, spamming puts people off.
17. Refer a friend
Give both the invitee and his/her friend(s) a discount for referring friend(s) and bringing more people to the event.
18. Interview a past Celebrity Attendee
Someone who loved your last event is a great go-to person for a quick interview/ podcast/ live session. Contact them and ask them if they could help you out with this and offer an invite in return for their help!
19. Invite Journalists and Influencers
Invite journalists, influencers and such known people to your event and cover all costs for them. They are one of the best sources right now in the marketing game!
There are a zillion methods to market your events at a relatively inexpensive cost. However, these methods take slightly more time and effort as you have to do a lot of the work, including research to figure out how to do this yourself. Whereas, if you have the budget, you can simply hire someone who already knows the ins and outs of this industry to do the work for you!
We hope this article helped you get insight and hacks to market and promote your events!
To find the right wedding/event vendors, visit venuelook.com.
Your event, whether at a venue or online, can be published and promoted on VenueLook.com as well.
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Very good read on promoting event.