If you don’t have the resources right now to hire a PR professional to promote one of your upcoming events, then take initiative and start doing everything in your power to promote your event on your own. Whether you’re hosting an upcoming webinar, speaking at a national conference, celebrating a business anniversary, launching an ecommerce site, or hosting a product-launch party, an organized and effective promotion plan is a must if you want to gain exposure and increase conversions.
Below are 5 of the best practices for promoting an upcoming event:
1. Write a press release: The fundamental element to any great promotion plan is a well-written press release. A press release is directed toward the media, not your target market. The whole point of a press release is to encourage media professionals to write a story or feature your brand in their publication—whether it’s online or offline.
The key to crafting a successful press release is knowing what medium your target market is apt to use prior to pitching your release. This will allow you to structure your press releases toward specific mediums where your target audience is likely to be.
2. Create an event landing page: The best way to inform individuals about an upcoming event is by creating a landing page for visitors to view additional information about the event, purchase tickets, or register—depending on the type of affair you’re hosting / offering. Having a landing page also makes it extremely easy to promote your event since you can use the landing page URL in your press release, social media marketing, email marketing campaigns, etc. This one-stop destination allows people to get all the information they’re looking for to attend the event and share it with others, if they wish.
3. Create social media events: According to Facebook’s Press Room statistics, Facebook has more than 500 million active users with 50% of these users logging on to Facebook in a day. And, each month, users spend more than 700 billion minutes on Facebook. Actively promoting your event on Facebook is a great way to get in front of your targeted audience and increase exposure for your event. You can then take your Facebook event, and share it on your personal profile, as well as Twitter. For LinkedIn users, creating an event and sharing it with your circle of contacts is another way to spread awareness about your upcoming affair.
4. Launch a blog contest: Get people involved in your event by hosting a blog contest. For example, if you’re hosting a paid, upcoming webinar you could write a post that asks contest participants to leave a comment on the blog post, telling you why they want to join your upcoming webinar. You could also give participants additional opportunities to enter to win, such as telling them to publish a tweet or Facebook post mentioning the webinar. The grand prizewinner could then receive free access to your event
5. Send out emails to your list: Email marketing has proven time and time again to be one of the most successful ways to encourage participation and action among email subscribers. When done right, an email promotion plan has the ability to increase conversions and enable you to get in front of past customers.
Send an email to your list informing them about your upcoming event with a call to action and a link to the event registration or information page. And, if you have an ezine, place information about your upcoming events in an obvious location on the newsletter.
What promotion tool do you find to be the most successful for your business?
