This week we wanted to write something a little different, and give some industry tips on event promotion. Below are our top five tips for event promotion to get your event out there and selling tickets, fast.
Tickets
For your event to happen, people need to buy your tickets. You need to make sure tickets are accessible and easy to use; each event is different so it may be worth considering what type of ticket you think is best.
There are many ticket sellers out there who can accommodate your event, but luckily for you, we happen to know a really good one…
Email marketing
Email marketing is a great way to foster a customer base and increase engagement. Emails are still the most effective digital channel so use them! You could encourage customers to sign up for a newsletter, or use an email they have already provided. This could be information about the event, announcements or offers, such as a ‘tell a friend’ promotion or competitions. This will not only help build relationships with existing customers, but it could help to generate new customers too.
Social media
When it comes to social media, remember: it’s better to have a few effective channels than to spread yourself too thin. To know what socials to use, you must first consider your audience and what channels they will be on. For example, if your event is aimed at professionals, LinkedIn will need to be a focus. Other social media are good for different things; Facebook’s event tools are easy-to-use, Instagram is great for visuals, and Twitter is handy for live updates. Consider what you want to say and use different social media channels to portray this effectively to your audience.
Hashtags
Following on from social media, it’s important to use hashtags when creating social media content. Hashtags expand your audience as people who engage with related topics may have your content appear on their personalised pages. Personalised hashtags that include the name of your event will also link all of your content together meaning your audience can explore what you and others have posted using the hashtag, and contribute themselves.
It’s best to research which social media hashtags are getting high levels of engagement: use a few really well as opposed to a lot of irrelevant and low-performing ones. Research suggests that for smaller accounts (< 5k followers) the highest levels of engagement come from posts with five hashtags in the caption and another nine in the first comment.
Relevancy
While you may want to go out there and post anything and everything to make sure you gain follower’s attention, it’s always best to keep content relevant to your event or what you’re promoting. Irrelevant content can cause customers to unsubscribe or be discouraged from following your page or signing up for your newsletter.
So there are our five tips, but as we like you, we’ll throw in one small one as an extra: review, review, review! The digital landscape changes very often so, to promote your event effectively, it’s best to keep an eye on what’s working for you and what you can improve to reach customers and build levels of engagement.
We hope this helps you plan your next event! If you ever need a ticket vendor, you can find us here. One of our co-founders owns multiple venues, so we know what you need from your ticket seller as well as great customer service and loads of benefits for our partners, so don’t be shy!