One of the biggest issues for companies launching an event today is the majority of their marketing dollars is being wasted on people who wont attend their event. I want to help you market your event the right way.
A lot of seasoned companies led by those older than 40 don’t understand how Facebook and Instagram could truly benefit their marketing dollars. This is a HUGE marketing opportunity that is often times missed.
Why is that?
Adults are set on how they viewed marketing when they were growing up. TV Ads, radio ads and newspapers brought about what was going on each day. But those things are dinosaurs in comparison to how quickly you can find out news on Twitter before news stations can report it.
Most events struggle to adapt their events to social media platforms and really engage people to attend.
We now live in a mobile friendly world where Americans check their phone 80 times a day.
Even knowing this, companies still don’t understand how to leverage social media to better market their events.
1. Leverage Social Media Organic Reach
While you may not have the traction of a Coca-Cola or Amazon event, that doesn’t mean you cannot have organic reach. For those companies it’s easier to gain attention for their events.
How are you leveraging those who believe and follow you? Are they engaging with your event and sharing that with their followers? If not, that’s a place to start. Having more people doesn’t always mean having more traction if you don’t know how to gain the attention from a smaller audience.
When you are talking with your ideal audience, are you letting them know about your event? When you send out regular work emails, does it include a link to help market your event?
Each time you connect with someone, your event should be brought up as an FYI. It sparks curiosity.
Have you ever heard of the $1.80 rule by Gary Vaynerchuk?
Gary applied this strategy to growing Instagram followers, but you can also apply this to growing your event audience. This way when you launch ticket sells, they are ready to purchase.
Here’s how it works:
Using Instagram or Twitter you engage with the top 9 posts that resonated with your audience. Say you are looking to host a food truck event this summer. Research hashtags around
#foodtrucks
#foodie
#foodporn
#instafood
#foodphotography
Photo: Kevin Wolf
The top 9 posts you should like and engage with. Just make sure they have a decent amount of comments and likes already.
Why?
These top 9 posts on each hashtag represents your top audience. These are the people who have the same interest as you and your event.
When I state engage, that means like and provide meaningful value to their page. Leaving comments such as “That’s cool,” “Great Post,” “I Love That,” isn’t adding value.
The last step is doing this over and over each day you get on a social platform. Time consuming yes, but set aside time on your calendar to focus on this and get your team involved. I promise you’ll see traction.
2. Create Fun Content To Market Your Event
Photo: Burtst
I live in Washington, DC and I can tell you that on any given day you can walk to the National Mall and find dozens of events taken place.
Why does this matter to you?
Everyone is looking to grab hold of consumer’s attention. Your event won’t be the only event looking to fill it’s seats with your target audience.
Creating content that is specific to your audience helps to ensure people attend your event. There are big companies out there that have the marketing dollars to only create a small amount of content per year. Even if you can dish out thousands of dollars, is there a need to?
Creating content that is narrowed down to who you want to attend your event verses creating broad content, ensures you don’t waste time or money speaking to people who won’t attend.
Example: I love red velvet cake. If a company created content around cake and also tied in traveling, I’m sold. They are connecting two pieces of interest that I love. You have to create content that is specific to who you are trying to attract.
Lastly, your content needs to be created year round. You cannot count on generating content 3 months before your event and think that will be enough. You want people engaged in who you are every single month. Use top of mind to your advantage.
3. Create Innovative Events That Are Social Worthy
You’ve pushed out hundreds of pieces of content, you’ve engaged on social platforms and built traction for your event. It’s now time to produce your event and it falls short.
If you are not putting as much attention into what your event looks like, you will fail your audience and not live up to their expectations. It’s much more work to get a second chance than to make a epic first impression.
Your event should tailor to social media sharing. This will help you market your event to those who did not attend and may want to attend the next one. Create visual aspects that will cause people to want to take photos and share them. Engulf them into activation type experiences.
If your best ideas is to repeat what you did years ago, you have already gone down the wrong path. Social media can also be a helpful tool to see what is trending. I don’t want you to replicate that, but push the envelope beyond the trends that you are seeing.
Example: I use to be head-over-heels about photo booths. Now I’m not. Why? Because video booths are far more fascinating.
4. Allow Ads To Take You Beyond Your Reach
While major brands may have more money than you to place on ads, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use them as well.
I encourage you to use ads to market your event by narrowing your reach to only focus on your true audience.
In the wedding world I joke all the time with colleagues about ads because people just don’t understand what they are doing wrong. Facebook has a Narrow Further option which is highly recommended.
If I place in my ad that I’m trying to reach someone who has weddings as an interest, do you know how many people that will hit? It will reach fellow Wedding Planners, Photographers, Bakers, people who commented on a wedding post that aren’t engaged. List goes on.
I just wasted a ton of money of people who are not my true target audience.
As much as it may hurt, you have to narrow your audience down and only focus on them verse a broad group who may not attend your event.
Ok enough about marketing and trying to make your event epic. Please leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts.
Still need help with planning this epic event you have brewing? CLICK HERE and we can schedule a complimentary consultation with you.