10 Event Marketing Tips to Increase Your Event’s Reach

Have you planned a great event and are now wondering how you can spread the word? Then you’ve come to the right place. In this article, you’ll find 10 event marketing tips that will help you increase the reach of your event.

Whether digital, hybrid, or on-site, those 10 tips can be applied to all types of events. From valuable tips for your event website content to emails and social media to classic SEO, you’ll be sure to find a solid way to market your event. 

Your event marketing strategy aims to promote your event and your company and to increase your reach. You want to make sure that you reach the right target group and that they are interested in your event. But today’s abundance of events makes it difficult for organizers to stand out from the crowd. 

To attract potential participants to your event and successfully convince them to attend, it is necessary to optimize your marketing strategy. By following those 10 event marketing tips to market your event, you’ll be sure to reach potential event attendees.

Event marketing 101: our 10 favorites tips

1. Write a clear and compelling event description

When starting to market your event, the first thing you should focus on is the description of your event. You can attract as many people as you want to your website and social channels, but if they don’t like the content or you don’t package it interestingly and appealingly, people will not want to attend your event.

The event description should be short, and concise and contain all the key information that your event attendees will need to know i.e. topic, time, place, and target group. Make sure that the description is appealing to people so that they feel personally touched by your message, and tell them clearly what they gain from participating in your event: what’s the value you’re offering?

Adjust the description to each platform you’re posting it on. A description on Instagram, for example, will be completely different than the one you wrote for your website, or the one you wrote in your company’s newsletter. The content and idea remain the same, of course, but a caption without emojis or hashtags often automatically looks boring on Instagram. We’ll talk more about social media in a moment.

2. Create relevant content to promote your event

Of course, a basic description of your event is not enough to generate enough participants. This will only be the first impression that the potential visitors get to see. Once their attention is caught, it is important to give them enough content and information about the event. 

Here it is first important to be more specific about the theme of your event. Share it with your attendees, and make it interesting for them. Tell them why you choose this event theme and what it means to them. Use it as a basis to create your content strategy around

It is also nice to show your participants the history of your event. Why does your event exist? Who is organizing it? Who are the people behind the event? Sharing these details will bring the event make the event more interesting for people. They’ll be able to glimpse “behind the scene” and get to know the organizing team. 

If you’re doing a recurring event, make sure to share pictures and videos from previous events, so that future participants can have an idea of what to expect.

3. Don’t underestimate the power of emails

Emails are very classic and yet they are still crucial to the success of your event marketing strategy. You should make sure to come up with a solid outreach strategy, with multiple emails to promote your event to your mailing list. The biggest challenge is to come up with an exciting and eye-catching subject line to make sure that your email won’t land directly in the trash with all other emails. You need to stand out!

Maybe you will want to reach out to your target group on the weekend to make sure that they have time to pay attention to your email– so long as you’re not trying to reach out to corporates. In this case, try to send your email just before opening hours during the week: your email will be the first that they’ll see in their mailbox! But keep in mind that not all target groups are the same and you know your target group best. 

Don’t forget that 80% of emails are read on smartphones nowadays. Therefore you should use a smartphone-friendly format for your mail. 

4. The world of social media

Depending on the type of event that you are planning, social media will be more or less effective, but not something to overlook. Whether it’s LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or Twitter, you’ll be sure to reach your target audience via one of them.

There are multiple ways to use social media to promote your event that we could write a whole article about it, but here is what you need to know in a nutshell.

• Post about your event: Letting people know that your event is happening is the first and most obvious step. Post from your personal profile and your company’s. Ask co-workers and business partners to share about your event. The goal is to increase people’s awareness.
• Follow and interact with the accounts of people that might attend your event. Use the hashtag search to find new accounts that are part of your target group.
• Use hashtags to reach more people. But more is less: use a few quality hashtags rather than a ton of unrelated ones to make sure to reach enough people. 
• Link your event’s website in your account’s description. This way it’s easy to find people that visit your account. 

5. The good old search engine optimization

No article about event marketing tips would be complete without mentioning SEO. This is the best way to allow your event to be found via google search. 

• Use keywords: For example, a combination of the topic of your event, the word event, and the location, be it on-site, digital, or hybrid, is good here. It’s important to allow your event to pop up in search results when people are searching for it, or a related topic.
• Make sure your website is optimized. Mobile-Usability, loading speed, and content size are all part of the criteria that google uses to rank your website in search results. Ask your web developer for tips on how to optimize your site. 
• Don’t forget to optimize your images for SEO: Set a relevant meta description, give a proper name to your images, set a description… All of those criteria are important for ranking. 

6. Online registration and ticket sales on the website itself

Have a clear call-to-action (CTA) on your website. Set multiple registration touchpoints across all website pages. Of course, you should not overdo it, but it is important to use it in selected and frequent places. The moment your content is convincing, visitors to be able to sign up easily. It is best to position this button both in the header and in the footer of your website, so that it is never far away, but also does not restrict the view of the actual content. 

The date, location, price, and any additional services should be clearly stated on the registration page.

7. Use an online event marketing platform

A good way to organize your event marketing in a coordinated and clear way is to use an online event marketing platform. This takes over many of the already-mentioned points for you and simplifies the entire process, especially if you do not have a large team on your side. However, most of those platforms are a service you need to pay for, so keep that in mind if you’re on a tight budget.

8. Stay active during the event

The day has come, and your event is starting, but your job is not over yet. Now it’s time to be active and share content about what’s happening during your event to get your audience actively involved. 

• Share what your can about the event setup process. Share tips and let your audience know what is happening behind the scenes. This will attract extra attention and excitement before the event start. 
• Stay active on social media during the event. Tweet, post, and create content that your audience can participate in. On Instagram, you can do this by voting in your Stories, for example, or encouraging a discussion in the LinkedIn comments. A dedicated chat specifically for event attendees is also a wonderful way to do this, especially if the event is digital or hybrid. 
• Host a contest or giveaway. Audience members love to be able to take action themselves and let’s face it, all of us like to win something. Even if you have a small budget, invest in a small prize. Trust us, it will be worth it. 

9. Continue to engage with your community after the event

Your follow-up actions are as important as the preparation. after the event, publish the most important summaries of presentations, etc. on your website. Maybe you even recorded them? Great! You should edit them and publish them on Youtube, Vimeo, or a platform of your choice, which fits well with your target group. 

Create a gallery of the photos you took at your event. This way you offer your visitors the possibility to remember your event. In addition, new prospects can get a feel for your event. 

After the event, send an email to all attendees and speakers thanking them for their participation and sharing the content that is available for them (On-demand videos, downloadable content…). 

10. After the event is before the event

If you host regular events, it’s even more important to stay present for your audience all year round. Share content about your previous events on your channels at regular intervals. Stay in the minds of the people who have participated in your events and expand your reach at the same time. So that you can directly address even more potential visitors next time. 

The Bottom Line

Follow these event marketing tips and your next event will be a complete success! Once again, make sure to build a community and feed it with sustainable content regularly. Choose the most relevant channels for your target group and expand them constantly. 

We hope you enjoy planning and developing your event marketing concept.

Do you need support in setting up your event? Then let us advise you in our event conception workshop. We’ll help you define your goals, create an event concept, and create a strategy to implement your event. 

Written by:

Isabelle Hermann
PIRATEx Marketing Manager