Beyond the Billboard: 5 Tips for Online Event Marketing

You’ve done it. You’ve put all of the pieces together and organized your superstar event. Now it’s time to tell the world about it! The way you promote your event directly impacts how successful it will be. Where can you start? With just a few keystrokes, using the internet to help out in your promotion has become easier than ever and is relatively cost-effective. Here are five online marketing ideas that you can try for your next event.

1. Social Media

You could tell this one was coming. Harnessing the power of everything that social media has to offer is one of the best ways to promote your event online for free. It’s time to learn how to use these platforms to your advantage!

At first glance, social media can seem overwhelming. To avoid spreading yourself too thin, you need to choose which platforms to invest your time and effort into wisely. Make this decision based on where your intended target audience spends most of their time. If you’re looking to attract a younger, Gen Z audience, then look into TikTok or Snapchat as your primary focus. If you’re trying to reach an older audience or one composed of working professionals, try Facebook or LinkedIn.

When creating content to post, take advantage of the unique shareability aspect of social media. With billions of posts being sent out each day, what makes yours stand out, and even further, would entice someone to share it with their family and friends? Find out what’s trending now, engage with your current audience, and include photo or video content to increase your chances of it being shared.

Tip: You don’t have to do this all on your own! Ask any speakers, talent, or players who are attending your event to also share about it on their social media pages to get even more fans excited. You can also recruit the help of influencers to help reach more people in your area.

2. Email Marketing

With 4 billion people scrolling through their email inbox daily, email marketing is still a valuable way to drive attendance to your event. But how do you make your email stand out among the hundreds of others competing for attention? Simply put: boring, visually unexciting, and chaotically structured emails simply won’t make the cut. When crafting your email, having a subject line that hooks readers right away is important. Think about the audience you want to reach, what you want to say, and, most importantly, what do you want readers to do as a result. This will help guide your messaging and create an effective purpose for your email. 

Email marketing is useful beyond sending one singular announcement about an event that’s coming up. Here are a few other ideas of emails that you can test out:

• Exclusive offers, like “early-bird” pricing for tickets
• Confirmation after a guests purchases their ticket with extra information about the event
• Reminder emails about important information for the event
• A "thank you" to guests after the event is over

Tip: Personalize your emails as much as you can, even if it’s just including the receiver's name in the subject line. This detail may be small, but it goes a long way to increase trust, make a connection, and tell your audience that your emails are worth opening. Learn more tips about growing your email marketing list here.

3. Digital Advertisements and SEO

Wouldn’t it be amazing if Google showed your event when someone searches in “Events near me?” 

Putting out digital advertisements can help you achieve this. Before diving in, there are a variety of different ad types that you can dig into and figure out which works best for your event. Look into display, social media, native, search, video, and email ads.

In your copy, use keywords in your event description that help Google point relevant people to your page. There are plenty of free keyword research tools out there, like Keywords Everywhere, to help you find out which are the most popular match for your event. You don’t have to become an expert overnight, but also learning some basic tricks about search engine optimization (SEO) will help you reach more people across the web. While this all requires an upfront investment, it may help to generate more interest in your event. 

Tip: Continually test a variety of different graphics and copy variations to see which one performs the best and resonates with your audience. This will help your ads gain better traction.

4. Let Journalists and Bloggers Know About Your Event

Conducting media relations is a great way to reach people in a specific area who can be potential attendees to your event. Look into what publications, blogs, or online magazines you would like to be featured in and then get to pitching your event! The most common way to do this is through email. Reach out to writers in your niche who might be interested and offer them some kind of added incentive, like a discount code they can share with their readers. Give them even the most basic details of your event, including: name of the event, date and time, location, price to attend, where to buy tickets, and highlights of the event. To increase your chances of getting covered, you can also add a press release to your pitch or include additional assets like photos, videos, or infographics. 

Tip: Timing is everything in media relations. Start doing your research early, then conduct outreach one month before your event. The more time you give a writer beforehand, the more likely that your story will be published.

5. Build Your Own Website

Not only does having your own website for your event make you look more professional, it also makes you seem more trustworthy. There are plenty of free resources online that can help you build your own website. From there, the process is straightforward: insert a landing page with a contact form and start collecting information on your potential attendees. 

Another aspect you can add to your website is a blog page. Blogs are useful as an online marketing tool because they’re seen as a reliable source of information and further awareness, loyalty, and recall for your event. Publish posts regularly in the weeks leading up to your event. These don’t have to be super in-depth articles or time consuming– just quick updates to the schedule and guest speaker profiles are enough to keep your readers interested and boost engagement. As with digital advertising, using keywords and capitalizing on SEO is key here to help a new audience find your pages. 

Tip: Creating your own event page on Passage can act like your own website! Forget about having to pay for hosting or doing any complicated coding with design. You can easily include all of the information your guests need to know along with photos, video clips, and graphics. Schedule a demo with our team to learn how you can set this up!

Wrapping Up

Getting into promoting your event online can be tricky at first, but following these tips will help you reach a larger audience. If you’re looking to strengthen your offline marketing efforts, check out the first part of this series which discusses five ways to boost more traditional tactics. Do you need more tips for planning your event? Download our event planning checklist: