There are many ways to boost the outreach of an event. In this article we will show you the key points to obtaining a greater impact and achieving a more effective transmission of the message.
Tips for increasing the outreach of your event
Everything must therefore be aligned with a solid marketing strategy, with actions designed to strengthen the channels which we know to be the most effective, depending on our type of event. Do we want to develop the outreach by word of mouth? Is our public a professional one? Does our potential audience have an online presence? In what form? Let us see which channels we can attack through an outreach plan for an event.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez at Unsplash
Offline outreach of an event
When we talk of offline promotion of an event, we mean all those marketing actions which we call “traditional“, that is those that do not include the presence of the brand on Internet. Under this heading we have traditional publicity methods such as printed adverts, radio and television or direct mail. Press notes are also to be found in this category, along with sponsorship actions.
- Traditional publicity in magazines, press, hoardings, television and radio usually have great impact. The biggest disadvantage is their high cost and in some cases an imprecise segmentation of the public.
- Press notes: Writing a press note is one of the most profitable ways of appearing in the traditional media. If the event is sufficiently important and can be of interest to a wide group of users, the media may be open to publishing the celebration of the event.
- The promotion of an event via sponsorship is a great way to reach more people and have them attend. This consists of having a presence in another event, and displaying the logo of the brand in several places of the event: tee-shirts, signs, even using audiovisual material. The advantage of this option is that it has a good capacity of segmentation and moreover, it benefits from the pulling power of the sponsored brand and all their previous outreach actions.
- Flyers or leafleting are practices which can be done but are nowadays in disuse. This also represents an unsustainable method given the quantity of paper used. In fact, we explained in a previous post how to organise a sustainable event. It is however, fairly economical.
Online outreach of an event
When we speak of online promotion we refer to all practices which involve the presence of the brand in one way or another on Internet, including digital publishing, social networks, mailings… Let us take a look at the key points of this area.
- Web page: If your event is going to be promoted on Internet then the creation of a web page is essential.It can be a section of the website of the brand dedicated exclusively to the event in question or a new website can be created.
- Newsletter: If you have a database and the permission of those contacts to send communications, a newsletter is a good way to guarantee that at least your close contacts know about the celebration of the event. If in addition, you want them to have access to the content in depth then make sure that the email is attractive enough to make people want to read it.
- Digital publicity: You can make use of the publicity in search engines like Google to increase the outreach of your event. You can do this with display campaigns which will show the event to your target public when they are surfing the net, or it will appear in the first search results for the key words which potential attendees may use to find an event similar to yours. You can also use videos, images..
- Social networks are a very interesting arm for promoting an event.. Firstly for the followers of your brand. They are probably the first people interested in attending the occasion. Social networks are also the digital “word of mouth“, the channel with the greatest capacity of spontaneous diffusion of the users, and which if handled intelligently can be very successful.
- SEO: If the event is a recurrent one and the web which publicises the occasion has the intention of remaining over a period of time, then it is worthwhile optimizing the site for particular key words which can attract quality visits to the web. The SEO is specialised work which you can outsource to a specialist agency.
Tips for improving the outreach of your event
Measure, measure and measure: While it is simpler with digital promotion than in a traditional context, having a system of performance indicators will allow you to know if your plan was successful and above all, to take decisions based on real data.
Monitoring the brand: There are tools which allow you to measure what the impact of your promotion plan was, how many people are talking about your event or what they are saying in forums and social networks. In this way you will know what you are doing well… and what you can improve.
Do not be invasive: Nowadays, users receive a great number of publicity impacts: via traditional channels, email, on social networks… on their mobiles. They have the power of decision of what they want to see and what they do not. If you are too probing depending on the action, then this can cause rejection not only for this event but also for future ones.
Prepare the event: You can produce interesting content to offer small tasters of what the event will be like. This can be in the form of photos of the preparations, videos with the speakers or guests who will be in attendance, little giveaways or draws for the first to register for the event…
So you can see that there are many options available for actions which improve the visibility of your event and which can be very effective. At Grand Luxor Mice we do not just offer celebration spaces for large and small events, we also advise companies and Event Managers by means of our specialist staff. They can serve as the support needed so that the outreach of your event is a success. Contact us and find out how.