How to promote an event

Choosing the advertising for an event or designing its dissemination plan are two of the actions that take up the most time when planning a meeting to bring the brand closer to its audience. Knowing how to promote an event is, perhaps, the most complicated part of organizing an initiative of this type. However, discovering all the secrets involved in doing it well is very beneficial for the company and allows it to differentiate itself from the competition.

In the following lines I invite you to review with me why it has so many advantages and how to achieve it without dying in the attempt. Keep in mind that, although right now, most events are paralyzed due to the COVID-19 situation, but in the future they will be necessary to reactivate sales, they will find new formats and will once again be an important asset in marketing strategies. marketing.

Importance of an event for the brand

Holding an event is one of the actions that can give the best results in a marketing strategy . In addition to reaching your audience in a direct and entertaining way, and creating good memories for them, creating an event can help you establish fruitful contacts for your company .

Advantages of having a good event dissemination plan

By properly planning the promotion of an event, the expected results are achieved, which are associated with advantages such as:

• Position yourself as experts in an area.
• Increase brand visibility.
• Improve the brand image, both for internal and external customers.
• Expand the company’s social network, with private and professional profiles; from a networking that begins in the digital field and moves to the traditional one to return again to the online environment adding prospects to the business database.
• Educate leads, thanks to the quality information that will be shared with them in posters, brochures, presentations or live exhibitions.
• These are some of the strong points of launching an advertising initiative of this type, but, for all of them to come to light, the first thing to do is know how to promote an event correctly. That is, be clear about how to reach as many users as possible .

In reality, there is not just one way to achieve it, but up to 10 different ones. Would you like to discover what they are?

How to promote a corporate event in 10 different ways

Corporate website

The first thing you have to do to properly promote an event is create a website . Nowadays everything revolves around the Internet, so there is no doubt that the best thing is to capture what you are going to do on a web page.

In it you can share topics of interest to your audience, both to encourage those who have already confirmed their attendance at the event and for those who need more information to decide to take the step.

In addition to this post, you can download the Checklist on how to organize an event that we have prepared or consult this post about how to do a free webinar .

At a minimum, the following must appear on the website:

• The agenda.
• The venue.
• How to sign up.
• The speakers who will attend the event.

As you can see, all this information is focused on creating interest in potential attendees . In addition to all this, you should try to promote the event through the information that you put on the website, so it would be advisable to indicate everything that the attendees are going to learn at the event and give importance to the speakers by explaining who they are, why They are so well known and all the information that helps you see that they are specialists in the sector, as well as links to their websites and social networks.

It must be taken into account that until the website is ready to launch it is not possible to promote the event. Therefore, you must plan the creation of the website sufficiently in advance to be able to launch it in time .

Once you have the website, it is time to start promoting the event. To do this, we are going to take our annual event as an example : the Inbound Leaders.

Emailing: how to promote an event by working the database

No event dissemination plan should lack a strategy that allows working, in a combined manner, the company’s existing database and the new additions, brought from the event website.

In addition to focusing on personalization, we must focus on simplicity in terms of content. It is important that the most important key information is not missing, nor data on offers or discounts that may be of interest to those who consider participating in the event.

Continuing with the example I was mentioning, the first step we took at InboundCycle to publicize the event was emailing.

It is very important that you make the event known first among those who are already your clients/subscribers, since this will help to further strengthen the company-client bond by offering them exclusive information.

The use of a good email strategy, combined with lead nurturing techniques, will allow you to send event information to those contacts in your database with the most interest.

You may be interested in : How to protect your corporate event from legal liabilities?

Event promotion platforms

Another way to promote the event is with the help of event promotion platforms . There are many different ones, and one of the best known is Eventbrite . This specific platform has the easiest operation. If you choose it, you just have to create the event and use all the tools available on the web to achieve the maximum possible diffusion.

You can even link it to your CRM with tools like Zapier and have the database draw directly from this platform. This will allow you to greatly streamline management, not only of the event but also of all the communications you establish with your records.

Have you thought about designing an app as a complementary element to your event? Companies like Meetmaps have positioned themselves in the sector as the perfect addition to energize and increase the value of your event from the palm of your hand.

Speakers

The speakers can also be a key factor in making the event go viral . Surely the speakers who attend your event have a large social mass that is aware of everything they do, so asking them to promote the event both on their blogs and on their social networks can help you gain great reach.

You can even establish collaborations with them to provide discounts to their respective databases through an affiliate program or coordinate audiovisual materials in which you get quality content where the speakers themselves do the dissemination, with your corporate image.

Paid campaigns

Paid campaigns can also be very useful for reaching a very specific audience thanks to the segmentation power they offer. In the case of promoting our event, we chose to carry out pay per click campaigns in both Google AdWords and LinkedIn Ads , the latter being very effective in finding professionals in the sector.

Press release

Another action that works very well is to make a press release and send it to all possible media so that they can report on the event .

Of course, sending the press release indiscriminately is not going to help you at all. To do this, it is best to study which means of communication adapt both to your business environment and to the territory in which the event is going to be held and focus the efforts to get them published in them, since the return will be much greater.

Social networks

Social networks have great power to viralize news . Creating an event and encouraging users to attend is very simple. We tried running a contest on Facebook using Cool Tabs in which we raffled off tickets to the event, and the response from our audience was truly unbeatable. Contests and raffles usually give favorable results on these channels.

Retargeting works very well with custom audiences on this social network, although it is not the only one you should focus on. Think about what your target audience is like and what channels they prefer. Do not try to cover all social media, it is preferable that you focus on those that are truly essential for your audience.

In addition, you can also use social networks to strengthen those potential clients for your event and get new ones, so we recommend that you read this PDF guide .

Don’t forget to take advantage of the media contacts where your brand already has a profile and share posts with information about the event in groups, accompanying them with a personalized message that expands the information about the initiative. And, if you can invest, do so in paid campaigns on social networks after segmenting your target audience.

Create a hashtag for the event that is easy to recognize and use and allows you to monitor all the content that will appear on networks related to it. Nowadays it is very important to measure the impact that the event has had on social networks and how you can achieve that desired Trending Topic (TT).

Influencers

There are those who are reluctant to have the participation of this type of profiles in their events. However, although their fees may represent an extra investment, their ability to attract participants to your initiative can more than compensate.

It is important that you choose well. Make sure that this influence exists and that the profile you invite to participate aligns with the principles and values ​​of your brand .

Partner network

We live in the era of collaboration and, in recent months, we have seen alliances between organizations multiply. This collaborative approach is not only a valid approach to ensuring business survival, it is also an option chosen by those who know how to promote an event successfully.

In exchange for including the logo of a company that wants to cooperate with your initiative, you can multiply the effectiveness of the dissemination plan for an event , of any type, as long as it fits its strategy, too. Thus, by generating relationships with other companies, you both expand your network of contacts and gain relevance.

Personalized proposals and in-person invitations

Although we live in the digital age, there are traditional methods that still work and give good results. Visiting universities, companies or associations in person and offering face-to-face invitations to those you visit can have a very positive effect on that audience. Telephone calls to contacts in the database who have not responded to emailing campaigns are another alternative to consider.

The personalization and closeness that you achieve with these actions leads many people to consider participation when, otherwise, they might not have considered it. Of course, you have to keep in mind that it will take you more time than editing an email and sending it to a list of 20,000 people.

Multiply the reach of your offline event online

The era in which we live allows you to take advantage of the dissemination power of digital tools, before, during and after the celebration of your event . Before the date on which that meeting, fair, launch or congress will take place, you can use these online channels to announce that it will be held and give details that are of interest to those who consider participating in it.

While the event takes place in a physical space, digital channels can broadcast it in its entirety or focusing on different aspects (interviews with participants, speeches from speakers or messages from product stands). In this way, those who have not been able to attend in person will be able to live the experience in an alternative way. It is a good opportunity to encourage interaction between participants.

After the event, when it is concluded, recordings of the best moments, the most applauded interventions live or backstage can be shared. With these actions you prolong the relevance of the corporate event and reach new audiences .

And you, what strategy do you follow to promote the events you organize? Is there something that always works for you and you would like to share it with us? We continue in the comments!