So you’ve booked the venue, planned your event, sorted out the entertainment and even chosen the reception drink. There’s one vital component: guests.
No matter how amazing the event you’ve organised is, it won’t sell itself. You need to come up with a compelling event marketing strategy which promotes it effectively to your target market. Using an adhoc approach whereby you scattergun out some social media here, a press release there, and send out emails to all your friends hoping they forward them on might work to a limited degree – but to truly drive ticket sales, you need to take a logical approach which slowly builds on each promotion.
Read on for our guide to pre-event marketing:
Rule number one: don’t market your event too soon! In all the rush and excitement of setting up your event, don’t go live with an events page before you’ve got all the vital information set. Better by far to launch a ‘pre-event’ page which can help you capture early interest and gauge reaction. You can use this page to launch your social media hashtag, which you can use to…
Promote: there are so many social media platforms these days that you don’t just have to stick to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Try using different platforms to engage with your potential audience. You might even be able to find yourself the perfect event…
Partnership: these can be crucial to the success of your event. Think about complementary brands, media partners and collaborators – all of these can help you to make your event a success. Start sending out feelers long before you send out your first eshot as the right partner can help transform your event marketing and help you reach even more of your target market, all ready for your event…
Launch! Once you’re into a steady cycle of content creation (not too salesy, remember), promotion and engagement, all supported by regular emails, then you need to launch. That’s just the start of the conversation though; you’ll need to maintain your momentum. You’re running a marathon, not a sprint. This is the hardest part of pre-event promotion – in the words of one of our favourite Disney characters, now you just need to keep on swimming, swimming, swimming… all the while keeping all the rest of the event management plates spinning.
Good luck and don’t forget – the Amazing Tents team is here to help. Call us to find out how we can help you with your event in 2017.
