You’ve probably planned a perfect event concept, booked the perfect venue and the biggest speakers on the scene at the moment. At first glance, your event is destined for success. However, no matter how well your events are planned and organized, it is doomed to fail if you can’t attract enough attendees and the right types of attendees to ensure maximum engagements. In this increasingly crowded event industry, effective event booking campaigns to ensure you drive interest in the right target audience is crucial to make sure you are spending your resources and time on those that actually matter.
Below, we will share some of the most effective event booking campaigns you can try in 2021 and beyond to ensure you are driving high-quality event engagement consistently. Without further ado, let us begin:
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Having a well-designed pre-event page
Don’t underestimate the importance of having a dedicated pre-event page for your event. Even if you’ve already got a strong enough social media presence with a substantial number of followers, your social media profiles are not direct replacements for a professionally designed and functional event page.
This event page should function as a central hub of information containing:
- All sorts of information related to the event: venue details, date/time, speakers/talents, venue maps, and so on
- Intuitive online registration function. Make sure it’s as easy as possible for them to register for your event
- Well-taken photos and videos, including teasers for keynote speakers and/or talents
Optimize this page for SEO, and leverage this page both for capturing leads (for email marketing purposes) and converting visitors into actual attendees.
2. Time-based ticket discounts
Early bird ticket discounts, pre-sale discounts, “last call” discounts, and any other types of time-based ticket discounts are popular for a reason: they are effective. This type of discount sparks a FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) phenomenon among your target attendees: “if I don’t purchase this now, it will be more expensive later!”. Since they feel they will lose out on something valuable if they don’t register right away, it will actually convince more people to commit.
Also, the buzz generated by the early-bird campaign or similar ones can attract even more people and generate curiosity about your event.
Design your marketing efforts in “phases” from a pre-launch, early bird, until the last few days before the event, and support your time-based ticket discounts with the other marketing channels in each respective phase.
3. Influencer marketing and social proofs
Too often, many “marketers” put too much focus on promoting their products or services (in this case, the event) rather than using the platform’s main function: to socialize. You should leverage social media platforms to connect with relevant influencers and people with a strong presence that might help you promote your event to their audience. Build relationships, and aim to create a win-win partnership so they’ll also benefit from your event.
70% of the younger generation depends on influencers or peer recommendations in making their buying decisions, including the decision to attend an event. So, look for the right influencers who work in your niche, reach out to them, and aim to build long-term mutual relationships.
4. Share your event press release
Even in this age of social media, don’t underestimate the power of traditional and local media. With a formal and well-written press release, you can reach out to relevant media, websites, and even influencers so they can help spread the word about your event to their audience. When your event is featured in relevant media, you can also gain more attention from influencers, other relevant media, potential speakers/talents, and especially, potential attendees.
5. Email marketing
Email marketing, despite the presence of newer technologies and marketing channels, continues to be a very effective marketing channel with one of the highest ROIs, and email marketing is especially effective in promoting an event. If you’ve hosted (successful) events in the past and have collected your attendees’ email addresses, then you can send them an email to promote your upcoming event. However, this is your first event, you should launch lead generation campaigns to collect contact information, or alternatively, you can purchase email databases from third-party sources (won’t be as effective as your own list, but worth a try).
6. Partner and sponsor outreach
In event marketing, securing sponsorships and partnerships can be crucial to your event’s success. Sponsors won’t only help in funding your event, but they can be a very powerful ally to help promote your event to their audience. Simply ask them to promote your event on their social media profiles and other available channels. Since they’ll also benefit from your event’s success, they won’t mind doing so.
Also, ask partners and speakers/talents to promote your event to their followers. If you’ve secured big-name talents to headline your event, this can be a very powerful event booking campaign.
7. Utilize paid advertising channels well
Although traditional advertising, both online and offline, have gained somewhat of a bad rep in the past few years, you’ll still need them to promote your event, and when done right, these paid promotion options can still be effective. There are two main considerations to ensure success when using paid advertising channels: targeting, and budget management.
Make sure you are targeting the right people with your paid campaigns. This is where thorough market research is very important. Second, monitor your budget usage carefully so you don’t lose money instead. An effective approach is to concentrate your paid advertising spendings on a couple of weeks leading before each early bird/time-based discount offer and the event’s launch itself to maximize reach and impact.
Wrapping Up
Using these 7 event booking campaigns we’ve shared above along with event marketing solution can help maximize your event’s success by ensuring you are focusing your promotional efforts on the right target audience. While this is not an exhaustive list, and there are definitely many more marketing tactics you can try, you can use these 7 as your foundation in creating a more comprehensive event promotion strategy.