Event Advertising: 9 Key Strategies for Increasing Attendance
Event advertising is a crucial aspect of event planning.
It doesn’t matter how good your event is – if you want more people to attend, then you need to be able to show your audience why your event is amazing.
If you’ve finished planning your newest event and it took months of planning and networking to accomplish but you finally got there.
You open up the ticket sales and, to your dismay, the response isn’t quite what you had hoped for.
If you’ve found yourself in this position or are afraid that this is how your next event will play out then you’ve come to right place.
However, if your main forte is event planning, then it’s going to be tough to come up with marketing strategies.
Don’t worry; we’re here to give you the boost of inspiration that you need.
We’ve compiled 9 of the best event advertising strategies that you can use if you want to bring in more attendees to your event.
Click on the event advertising ideas below to jump to that section:
1. Use social media properly
2. Create event advertising strategies that suit your target audience
3. Highlight the main attractions of your event
4. Don’t give away all your surprises at once, instead, leave a breadcrumb trail
5. Influencers will help to boost your attendance
6. Giveaways are excellent marketing strategies
7. If you want to build a strong community, you’ll have to develop a personal relationship with your audience
8. Post content updates regularly so you don’t lose the audience’s interest
9. Bloc is a surefire way to increase your attendance
1. Use social media properly
It’s no secret that social media marketing is one of the best ways to promote your event. However, if you want to convince your followers to attend your event you need to make sure that you’re using your social media platforms properly.
So, how exactly do you do this?
It’s simple.
Make content that your followers can interact with.
There’s only so much that you can do with posters.
To make sure your audience is interested in your content, you will need to think outside the box.
Polls are a great example of this type of content.
But they’re only the tip of the iceberg. Why not try something more adventurous like making a hashtag to promote the event?
Ask your followers to tell you what feature they are most excited about and tell them to tag you by using this hashtag.
This way, you’re building a relationship with your followers while generating more buzz around your event.
Once you get started on social media you’ll soon realize the possibilities are endless.
Always remember to work with the algorithm and not against it.
Let’s use Instagram as an example.
Their algorithm recommends posts to the viewers based on the type of content that they look at. So if you want your posts to be recommended to someone who loves food, then make posts around that theme.
It takes some time to figure it out but once you get the hang of it, you’ll gain an invaluable marketing tool.
2. Create event advertising strategies that suit your target audience
When you’re thinking about what strategies you want to create, don’t make the mistake of coming up with a generic plan.
If you try to please everyone, then you’re going to end up missing your target audience.
You need to look at what niche your event fits into and focus your event advertising strategies around this niche.
Let’s say that you’re trying to organize a food event with a special focus on French cuisine.
This event is going to have chefs that specialize in French cuisine, so you want to target that audience.
You could market this event as an ordinary food event.
Although you would be able to market your event to a lot more people this way, most of them wouldn’t end up coming to your event as it doesn’t appeal to them.
Whereas, if you broadcast your event as a french cuisine food fest, then you’re more likely to get the attention of people that are actually interested in the cuisine.
Remember that your ultimate goal with these advertising strategies is to convince people to attend your event. So don’t waste your time trying to market to people that aren’t interested in your event at all.
3. Highlight the main attractions of your event
To showcase your event properly you must market the best features of the event.
These features are what make up the main essence of your event.
A common mistake that you can make is to take the easy path with regard to event advertising.
Remember there’s a lot of events out there that are similar to yours, and all of them are targeting the same audience.
To get people’s attention, you’ll need to show them why your event is amazing.
If you have any pictures or videos from any of your previous events, then be sure to post these photos on all of your promotional material.
Maybe you could ask your audience to share their favorite moments from the event and get them involved in the process too.
Whatever way you choose to showcase the highlights, make sure that every person that visits your website knows exactly why they should come to your event.
4. Don’t give away all your surprises at once, instead, leave a breadcrumb trail
If you want your audience to be invested in your event, then you need to keep them guessing.
Especially with event advertising, you want to make sure that you save the best for last.
Because events take so long to plan, it can be difficult to decide when to begin the marketing campaign.
It’s a good idea to start advertising as soon as it is possible.
You could start by putting out a teaser post that hints at your event.
Next, begin dropping more hints as the big day approaches. After you’ve created interest and intrigue around the event, you can finally reveal the dates.
Then you can slowly begin showing your audience all the exciting features. Once you’ve got them intrigued, finally reveal the main event to blow them away.
Remember you need to think out of the box if you want your campaign to be unique. Don’t just show your audience why your event is good, but construct your advertising campaign to be an interesting experience for them.
5. Influencers will help to boost your attendance
Managing to get a popular influencer to get involved with your event will draw in a lot of people.
Celebrities and influencers will add a lot of legitimacy to your event.
Check out an influencer’s account and look at the comments below.
You’ll see that they have a dedicated fanbase that trusts them deeply.
If you want to gain the support of these fans then you’ll have to get the influencer on board with your event. However, bear in mind that you’ll need to make sure to build up trust with the influencer before you work with them.
For example, if you’re hosting an event to promote a fashion brand that was recently launched, then you want to collaborate with a famous influencer.
But if you want to be certain that their audience participates in your event then a mere shoutout from them on their post won’t do.
Instead, do a bit of research to find out what their audience likes. If they typically make content that involves reviewing clothes then send them a few items to review. Show them why your brand is good and they’ll be happy to promote your items.
Try to work with the influencer in whatever way you can to make sure their audience is happy. Remember that the influencer knows their audience best so if you get them invested in your event, they might even have a few tips for you.
6. Giveaways are excellent marketing strategies
Who doesn’t like free stuff?
Incentives are always a wonderful way to draw more people in.
As soon as you announce a giveaway you can be sure that your audience will grow. However, you will need to use these tools properly if you want them to be effective.
Always ask yourself, “How will this increase the number of people that come to my event?” before setting up any giveaway.
If it’s not going to make people want to come to your event then there’s no point in holding a giveaway.
If you want to use your giveaways properly then tailor it to your audience.
For example, let’s say you’re trying to target a younger audience that is probably still in college.
Ask some of your younger relatives what they would want to see in a giveaway and use their suggestions to come up with the perfect offer.
Discounts are also a good way to get people interested in your event. Maybe you can offer people that attend the event a special bonus that no one else gets. Or host a contest where you give all the participants a small discount on their ticket purchase. Remember to do your research before starting any giveaway and you should be good to go.
7. If you want to build a strong community, you’ll have to develop a personal relationship with your audience
When trying to come up with an event advertising strategy, your primary goal is probably going to be to make the most engaging content that you can.
This is indeed a very crucial part of the strategy, but if you want to build a long-lasting customer base, then you need to make a community for your event.
A brilliant way to do this is to make your website as community-oriented as possible.
You could ask your audience to share their favorite moments with you and make a blog highlighting those posts.
Host Q & A sessions to give your audience a way to familiarize themselves with your team. Or you could just ask them for their honest feedback about the event.
Use the criticism that you receive to make your event better. If you show people that you care about their feedback then you’re guaranteed to gain their trust.
8. Post content updates regularly so you don’t lose the audience’s interest
Getting people to pay attention to your event is a tough task but making sure that they stay interested is a much more difficult task.
There’s just way too much content out there and it’s easy for your audience to lose interest. Audience attention is a fickle thing so if you want to keep it then you need to give your audience regular updates.
Think about it this way, would you want to go to an event that has an account with stale content?
The event could seem very interesting but if there are no updates on the accounts then you’re not going to know enough about the event to risk wasting your time and money by going there.
Besides helping to keep your audience interested, content updates will also give you the chance to get feedback from your audience. Look in the comments to see how people react to the update. You will generally be able to figure out what the audience consensus is. Use this information to make your event better.
9. Bloc is a surefire way to increase your attendance
Even though these strategies will be sure to help you increase your attendance, there’s simply no guarantee.
Your success will depend entirely on how well you execute these strategies.
But what if there was a way to guarantee the success of your event?
Well, there is.
We’d like to introduce you to Bloc.
This is an app that suggests events and venues to people based on their location. However here’s the best part, whenever a customer uses Bloc to find a venue they get stars that they can exchange for money.
We’re paying customers to attend your event.
We are so confident in our app that we offer you a free trial with no strings attached.
If you want to join our app after this trial, then you only have to pay us for each customer that you get through our app.
And if you don’t want to pay for advertising we also have a blog called Bloc Nearby, where you can list your event for free.
Final thoughts
At the end of the day, bear in mind that event advertising is not easy.
You’re bound to stumble a bit and make mistakes. However, if you take the time to put in a bit of effort to learn this skill, you’ll be able to gain a crucial skill.
If there’s one tip that we can leave you with then it’s this, don’t be afraid to get creative!
Take a few risks every now and again, you never know when you might strike gold.
If one strategy fails, just scrap it and try something new.
After you get a bit of experience with event advertising, you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t. However, if you want to gain experience then you need to start at the bottom.
We hope that all of the strategies that we’ve offered you can help you to make your next event a huge success.
You have our best wishes for your future endeavors.
Consider using Bloc to promote your next event. We can assure you that you’ll love the results.
Just give our free trial a go and see if you like it, you can always back out if it’s not for you.
