Promote Like a Pro: How to Get More People to Come to Your Event

Promoting an event is often a struggle for many organizations. It’s difficult to get an event’s message to the right audience. Yet, without people in your event, all the efforts and planning costs can go down the drain.

As an event marketer, your primary goal is to get people to come to your event. You don’t want to wake up to an empty hall on your big day. That is the scariest thing that can happen after you invest in an elite venue and top listed speakers.

As scary as it may seem, a poor turnout is one event marketing fear you can encounter. Keep reading for a range of tips on how to get people to come to your event.

Promote the Event on Facebook

With over 2.45 million active users, Facebook is one of the best places to promote your event. Your prospective guests use the platform to interact and access the latest news. But you need to use the right tactics to get people from it.

You can create a Facebook event or post-event updates to your company page. How you design the pages, determines if you will get people to come to your event.

Make sure your Facebook event page has a relatable name, a catchy photo, and its category matches your event. Choose shorter event names to increase mobile searchability.

Also, remember to add popular hashtags in your industry. For example, if you’re hosting a fashion event for your clothing line, you can use tags such as #fashion, #apparel, or #fintech.

Unlike a Facebook event, events posted or created on a company page are timeless. On the left side of your company page, there’s a tab named ‘events’. You can create and list the event to allow sharing and generate interest. Tag co-hosts, use keywords and define the targeted audience before activating the event.

Use Podcasts

Americans listen to over 21 million hours of podcasts per day. The numbers explain how podcasts have become so preferred for marketing. Podcasts are incisive and can help you with how to get people to come to your event faster.

If your company already owns a podcast, you can create the event’s content right away. Your podcast may also be new or lack enough following. Either way, you can pursue other podcast hosts in your niche and seek to use their audience.

Popular podcasts already have engaged people that you can swing to attend your event. Podcast listeners perceive events ads from a podcaster as trustworthy and non-manipulative.

Rely on Videos to Build Hype

Conventional content like text and pictures may not be effective for ticket promotion. If you’re frustrated on how to get people to come to your event switch to videos.

Videos are engaging and more immersive. If you want to stay ahead of competitors, it’s time you use them.

Your event videos should captivate, engage and convince viewers to book your events. It would be great if the videos provide clear information on the why, what, where, and how of your event.

Here are more tips to make your videos more effective:

• Use facts and figures to explain the event’s benefits
• Show using stories what makes your event unique
• Let your audience know why they should attend the event and what they’re likely to miss on by skipping out

By presenting your event’s unique benefits you can compel more people to come to your event. Besides, videos are affordable. Even the rise of smartphones makes the videos accessible to everyone.

Use Event Promotion Sites

For event creators, the internet is a goldmine with vast promotional sites. These sites allow you to create and promote events. Many people use the platforms to get updates on current events and industry trends.

Some top distribution sites you can use to promote your events include:

• Spotify
• Eventful
• Goldstar
• Bandsintown
• Eventzilla

These event promotion sites are essential for promotion and selling tickets. You can have your event listed on all the sites for a start. Then allow visitors to buy tickets from the sites.

Make ticket buying as straightforward as possible if you want to sell event tickets online.

Maximize Your Speakers and Partners Followers

You’ve created events and allowed online ticketing, but how do you get people to come to your event? It’s time you engage your speakers and partners to act as your event advocates.

Your speakers and sponsors have a loyal audience and can introduce to your event. The speakers are part of your event, and they would love to share and promote their next performance.

Provide them with image posts and videos they can share with their followers. You can also encourage them to share your posts or leave comments.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is an affordable, fast and simple way of promoting your event. To get more people to your event, you need to send emails regularly to your subscribers.

Your subscribers are people who have interacted with your brand before. You can personalize emails to regular followers to gunner more attention.

The email messages need to be mobile friendly as many people use their phones to read online. Use short messages, limit images use and use larger fonts to increase readability. With a low open rate for business mails, it’s essential to test your email headers.

Use more captivating headers such as questions to increase open rates. After some time, send reminders to the subscribers who never read the emails. Analytical tools can help you to track the unopened emails.

Use Retargeted Ads

People can open your ads and leave-taking no action. You can use cookies to track user behavior and re-target ad viewers.

Sometimes, a potential guest can quit booking because of distractions. Your website might slow down and prevent a user from completing their booking.

Retargeted ads help you to win back people who failed to buy a ticket. The ads can be in the form of emails to customers who left their details or the usual event ad.

Now You Know How to Get People to Come to Your Events

There are plenty of ways on how to get people to come to your event. Facebook and event distribution sites take your message next to many people. Meanwhile, videos and podcasts are more compelling and can work with many mediums.

You can also use emails and retargeted ads to convince undecided web and ad viewers. These tips can be the difference between an empty and a full conference hall for your next event. As long as you understand your audience, you can find the right strategy to use.

For more tips and advice on event planning, check out our blog.