Attendees. Audience members. Participants. Seats filled. Tickets sold. When you’re holding a public event, you know you need certain numbers to make it worthwhile. In most cases, getting those numbers takes a lot of hard work, creativity and expertise.
Marketing a public event requires a multifaceted effort that reaches potential attendees on a range of fronts. When you reach them, you want to make the most compelling case possible to them to convince them to attend. Fryed Egg Productions has an extensive background of attracting crowds to a wide variety of public events for our clients, getting them the all-important numbers they need to ensure their efforts add up to a stellar success.
Here are some of the ingredients necessary to attract a crowd.
Targeted outreach and a strong message
An integrated marketing campaign is your best bet to drum up interest in an event, and that starts with carefully targeting your intended audience and reaching out to them through a variety of methods, including traditional ads, digital ads, social media, and email lists. In addition to targeting individuals, reach out to businesses, associations, schools and other organizations that might have large audiences interested in your event. Once you reach your audience, you must make a powerful case to them to attend the event. That makes identifying what makes your event special and finding ways to emphasize that hook in the foreground of all your messaging. People should hate the idea of missing your event.
An online presence
In today’s digital age, a memorable online presence is a must. If you have a site or a page devoted to your event that appears cheap or uninteresting, then potential attendees will think the same about your event and stay away. Similarly, the tone that your site conveys will be the one that people will project to your event -- for instance, don’t create a site with lighthearted content if your event will be a more sober state of affairs. Your online space also represents an opportunity for you to post images, videos and written content that make potential attendees want to attend.
Make a media push
You will want to pursue a media relations strategy that promotes your event on multiple fronts. To start, research any event calendar resources that your local media outlets provide. Get your event listed. If an outlet offers a route to showcasing your event, including a paid option, explore whether that makes sense for you. In addition, determine news hooks for your event and pitch that as a feature story possibility to targeted outlets. For instance, if your event has a featured performer or speaker, see if your local newspaper is interested in an interview with them to run in the days ahead of the event. With any media pitch or press release, make it easy for media members to publicize your event by including detailed information and images or videos.
Employ your partners
Don’t try to do this all alone. Consider how your partners in this event can help promote it. If the event has sponsors, work with them on the best ways to communicate with their audiences. Similarly, team up with your speakers, panelists, performers, exhibitors, and other participants to help them use their contacts to help drive traffic to the event. For this approach to be effective, provide them with all the resources they need, while also sharing messaging and clear guidance of how they can best promote the event. You’ll want to remain aligned in your message for best results.
Follow through to the end … and beyond
Your promotion of your event shouldn’t end too early. Keep marketing throughout the day of the event, taking advantage of social media to share photos and highlights. If you have an all-day or multi-day event, you can attract newcomers who will see what they’re missing and make their way to you. Continuing to promote the day of the event also will help to lay the groundwork for marketing subsequent events. Similarly, producing social media posts and other online content after the event will help to raise the profile of your events and encourage others not to miss the next one. That’s also a reason to attempt to get media coverage of the event itself. All that work will pay dividends in the future.
At Fryed Egg, we develop comprehensive, integrated marketing strategies to build and strengthen brands, including to help drive traffic to their crucial events. If you want to see if Fryed Egg is the right agency for your marketing needs, contact us at (813) 478-0494 or [email protected] or visit www.FryedEgg.com.