The Complete Guide to Event Advertising

Are you aiming to draw a crowd to your next big bash? Then pay attention because we have some crucial advice for you! The success of your event relies on one critical element: effective event advertising.

You’ve invested a lot of effort into creating an outstanding event, but what’s the point if nobody turns up? That’s why spreading the word and generating enthusiasm among potential attendees is essential.

However, here’s the deal: traditional advertising techniques won’t suffice in today’s ever-changing environment. You must get innovative and discover new methods to engage your target audience. Whether it’s via social media, email marketing, or influencer marketing, ensuring that your event advertising is captivating and impactful is critical.

Therefore, don’t waste all your hard work – prioritize event advertising and watch your attendance skyrocket, as it is a big part of the event promotion guide.

Event organizers have a very limited time between the announcement and the actual event to create an impression in the target audience’s mind. And the way to do this is by optimizing your event promotion strategy.

In this blog post, we’ll guide you through the methods you can follow in your event advertising in order to enhance your event marketing efforts for your buisness.

Basics of Event Advertising

Before planning for advertising any event, you must be very clear about the goals and objectives for your upcoming event. You will be able to plan event advertisements better if you are clear with your objectives.

In order to design a creative event marketing campaign, you must be very clear with the answer to the following questions. 

1. What is the idea behind organizing this event?
2. Who is your target audience?
3. Where can you find your target audience?
4. What incentive are you providing to your audience?
5. How are you different from other events? 

Event organizers often promote what they want to offer rather than what the audience is interested in. Being clear about your event’s objective will save you from falling into marketing myopia. 

You should develop an event marketing strategy in such a way as to reach a large audience, stimulate interest in them, remind them from time to time and reinforce them to register for your event.

Enter into the shoes of the attendee when planning your event advertising strategy.

How To Get the Attention Of the Right Audience?

Event ads are meant to capture attention the very first! And no one wants their audience to drop after watching the ad.

One of the primary reasons for the potential audiences not joining your event is the lack of clarity in your advertisements. Many times, clear information about – what the event is about, who it is for, and what is in it for me is not stated in the advertisement.

This lack of clarity creates a big question in the mind of the attendees – Is this event really for me?

You must highlight the following things in your event ads-

• What is the event all about?
• Who is it designed for?
• What value is the target audience receiving from the event? / Why is it important for the target audience to attend the event?
• What are the prerequisites (if any) for the event?

A few seconds of ad time is all you have to capture the attention of the audience. Cover all the essentials precisely in order to ensure that no one misses out due to the lack of information provided.

3C Framework Of Event Advertising

A lot many things would go into building a perfect event marketing campaign. But three things will be the most crucial for designing your campaign – Content, Creativity, and Channels.

These three pretty much cover everything that’s required for a successful advertising campaign for your event.

Great content combined with creativity, distributed in the right channels, will win you the audience for your event.

Keeping in mind the basics and focusing on constantly improving on these aspects will do wonders for your upcoming event. Let’s look at these three aspects individually in detail.

Content For Event Advertising

Content is the core of any promotional activity. Any ad without content will be like a body without a soul.

The essence of your ad will be lost if the content of your ad fails to deliver the message it intends to deliver.

Content alone can help you stand apart from the rest. If your content is strong enough, the potential attendees will choose your event over that of the competitors. In fact, if your ad content is very great, even your competitors will plan to attend it to check out what’s new in your event that they can follow.

Here are a few ideas you can incorporate into your event advertising activities –

1. Targeting pain points

The best event ads would always target the pain points of the consumer. Imposing a question that’ll make the consumer want to attend your event.

Showcasing what you have or the consumer in your ads is always good. But what is better is showcasing why it is important for them to attend your event.

How will the event change something about you that you always wanted to, or how is the event going to answer the question you were always looking for?

2. Art of Storytelling

The best way to interact with your audience is to tell them a story instead of simply advertising your event. Good stories would build great events.

In fact, the target audience recalls stories 22 times more than just simple facts. 

Event marketing is not about the tickets you sell but the story you tell. 

The story about your event’s advertisement should convey a message. It can be in the form of a need, creating urgency, telling them their story, or about how you came up with the event’s idea.

The more the audience is engaged with your story, the more they’ll be willing to attend your event.

Good stories would lead to better engagement with the potential audience, which would increase the likelihood of them attending the event, making the event successful. 

3. Mystery Event Marketing

Humans have a tendency to find the answer to questions that are deliberately left unanswered for them. And this is an excellent way of event advertising as well. 

Mystery marketing creates curiosity in the mind of consumers to know the unknown.

Marketing your event mysteriously can prove to be one of the most influential and creative ways to promote an event. It can generate interest like no other form of marketing. 

4. Create event advertising content that spreads like a virus

The content of your event’s advertisement will decide whether your event is going to witness a large number of participants or not. If framed creatively, the content is the soul of your advertising and will do the magic.

We all know that word of mouth is the best technique of marketing. If the content of your event impresses your target audience, they’ll start sharing your event ads in their own network, and the chain will continue.

And once they start sharing your event on social media, it’ll organically boost your post in the exploring tab.

Creativity For Event Advertising

The second “C” is just as crucial as the first. You must be creative to capture someone’s attention with your event advertisement. A creative ad is sure to perform well.

In fact, creativity sometimes outweighs content. However, combining creativity with powerful content is the winning combination.

Here are some innovative ideas for your event ads:

1. Fill your design with creativity

Infuse creativity into your design. Your event ads’ design is the first step in showcasing your creative efforts in event advertising. A well-designed ad will attract potential attendees.

Use creative colours, fonts, and infographics to capture your audience’s attention. Make sure your event advertisement aligns with your brand for easy recognition.

Utilize resources such as Dribble and Pinterest for design ideas, Freepik and Storyset for free templates, Envanto for professional templates, and Fiverr for professional freelance designers.

2. Make Impressive Invitations

Invitations (via emails or other channels) can be the first point of contact for most of your target audience. It is essential to engage your audience at the first point of contact.

Every event organizer must ensure that the impact of their invitation is impressive enough to generate a positive response. 

With changing trends, email invitations have also evolved. Event marketers are now getting engagement through creative invitations, which include decent colours, creative Gifs, and video invitations to promote their events.

HTML email templates have become very popular recently. You can design them according to the theme of your event and run your email marketing campaign with the same.

Want some free ready to use downloadable event email template?

AllEvents provides a variety of event invite templates that are categorized based on the type of events.

3. Let your audience participate in your event

You win the trust of the consumer by trusting them.

Featuring the audience in your event advertisements is a very creative move. In this way, your ad is bound to be shared in their network. On the other hand, the ad being a testimonial can win the trust of your target audience.

The best part about this promotional technique is that the attendee is motivated to attend your event and promote your event to his social circle. This is one of the low-cost yet effective techniques.

Engaging your audience by making them ambassadors could give you benefits in the long run. Over time, you’ll be able to develop your community.

You can leverage word-of-mouth promotion with the help of this technique. The ambassadors would spread the word about your event as they feel that they are important.

4. Organize contests as part of the event advertising

The best way to engage your audience for your event is to organize contests for them. It is very easy to conduct contests and competitions in offline events but comparatively difficult in virtual events. But there are a few ways in which you could arrange competitions for the attendees and engage them before your event.

These competitions would also serve you a lot of content for advertising your event and will spread the word in the audience’s social networks as and when they participate.

You could organize competitions like –

• Make art with the name of the event or from the theme of the event
• Guess the guests
• Review our event and win goodies
• Share and get a chance to win free tickets
• Get tickets and win a free ebook

Contests always boost your marketing efforts. The simple reason for that is that you can not reach everyone, but when your network starts sharing your event in their network, the cycle of word of mouth begins, enhancing your brand awareness.

5. Experiential Marketing

Experiential marketing, by the term, is self-explanatory.

This type of advertising is done in order to deliver users an experience. This experience can be in the form of delivering the experience of how the event will be, or the experience about the deliverables, or in the form of the previous events or the experience of some product or service or trade shows. Experiential marketing is all about content marketing in a very creative manner.

For virtual events, you can provide a 3D experience about the event venue, which might attract potential attendees.

It is also not always necessary to deliver something to the audience. Sometimes showing a video and imposing a simple question on the audience can also give them chills and force them to introspect. Such type of event advertising is also considered in experiential marketing.

Successful delivery of experience will ensure a successful event.

Channels of Distribution

You created the perfect content with a pinch of creativity, but your efforts would go in vain if it is not distributed to the right audience.

In fact, the very reason for the success of some events is the seamless distribution of their ads.

The entire purpose of your event is to invite the audience. You do that by creating ads. Imagine you create great ads but fail to reach the right audience. In that case, even by being creative and creating great content, you’ll fail to capture leads for your event.

Study the characteristics of the audience, find the channels where you can target them, set goals, and reach the maximum audience.

Following are some marketing channels of distribution where you’ll find the right audience for your event if targeted in the right manner.

1. Event Discovery Platforms

Event Discovery platforms are a great way for every event organizer to start promoting their event. Any person planning to attend any event would usually visit event discovery platforms like AllEvents to check the upcoming events based on their interest, geography, and schedule. You can win these attendees by marketing your event on these platforms.

These platforms segregate events based on criteria like event type, interests, geography, schedule, and offline online. 

Event discovery platforms are the best platform for event organizers to advertise to their Target Market. There are a lot of reasons for this channel is the best to market your event –

• The most authentic channel
• Dedicated to advertising and promoting events only
• The audience visiting these websites is genuinely interested to attend an event
• You get to serve those people who want to be served, unlike other platforms where your ad pops to the audience visiting some platform for another purpose.
• These platforms are also integrated with other platforms, so you can control all channels from one place.

AllEvents is one such platform where event organizers across the globe can create an event, present it and market it professionally. You can also integrate Event ticketing on your event website with AllEvents.

2. Social Media Advertising

Social media channels are the perfect place to advertise your event. But social media is a very large place. Advertising on social media is more about targeting the right audience and less about what content is being posted.

According to the data by AllEvents, 43% of event attendees buy their tickets through redirects from social media channels. In fact, you can engage with your audience post-event also.

Social media has become the hub of event advertisements these days. To make sure you reach the right audience with the right message, you need to be very careful. Target the audience where they are present. Many social media handles have a dedicated audience who might be interested in your event. Try to collaborate with those pages and try putting your event’s post on their pages. You can also indulge in influencer marketing.

Social media can win you the amount of audience you wish for, you just need the right targeting.

And with tools specifically designed for events, organizers must utilize them to their best advantage. 

Apart from paid ads, many things can be done to promote events on social media. 

3. Paid Ads to optimize the reach of your event

Any expenditure on advertisements is not an expenditure but an investment.

Paid ads are very crucial for the success of any event. Though organic reach is the best way out, reaching a mass by using the services provided by different media platforms is not bad.

Paid ads can be very helpful to you in reaching out to genuine audiences for your event who have not been exposed to your event through organic reach.

The following can be different channels for paid ads.

Google ads

Google ads can be the most effective way for your event advertising. Any and every type of event can be easily advertised on Google. Google offers many kinds of ads tools –

• Search Network campaigns – text format, displayed on Google search engine page
• Display Network campaigns – Text or Image Format, Displayed on websites or apps or emails.
• Video campaigns – usually 6 or 15-second videos

There are many benefits of using Google ads, some examples of them can be –

• Can be done on a limited budget- Pay only when they click
• Massive reach
• Accurate Targeting
• Can target the intent
• Analytics
• Automated suggestions

Facebook ads

Facebook, the largest social media platform, provides a plethora of opportunities to reach out to your potential audience and uniquely target them.

Paid ads on Facebook let you target a particular set of users for your webinar needs. It serves different purposes, like increasing engagement on an ad, directing the audience to your website, and generating more leads.

Special features of Facebook ads

• Create lookalike audience
• Interest targeting
• Behavioural targeting
• Retargeting ads

Instagram ads

As a tool for promotion, Instagram is recently gaining a lot of popularity. The youth today is more inclined towards Instagram than any other social media. Advertising events on Instagram is equally important as Facebook promotions. It provides you with a variety of options to advertise.

You can create an Instagram ad with a Facebook ad manager account only.

Linkedin is the HubSpot for professional networking. If you plan to host any webinar that directly targets any user associated with any business, it should be marketed on LinkedIn. In fact, 46% of B2B social media traffic is generated from Linkedin. The stats is enough to speak about the importance of this media for your webinar.

LinkedIn ads

LinkedIn, as a mode of marketing professional events, is the perfect place. You get a dedicated audience for business events. The network of professionals is just the right place for your paid ads.

LinkedIn ads are usually more expensive than other channels’ ads.

Snapchat ads 

With Snap Ads, you can create ads that are not only visually stunning but also showcase the unique features of your event in a creative and engaging way. 

Whether you want to target users based on their location, age, interests, or more, you can rest assured that your ads are being seen by the people who are most likely to attend and engage with your event.

TikTok ads 

TikTok’s advertising platform offers a range of features and tools to help businesses create engaging and effective ads. 

Some of the key advertisement features of TikTok include: 

• In-Feed Video Ads
• Brand Takeovers
• TopView Ads
• Custom Audiences

YouTube ads 

Whether you’re highlighting a special guest, showcasing the atmosphere, or simply inviting people to join in on the fun, YouTube offers a variety of creative options to capture the attention of potential attendees.

One of YouTube’s most popular ad formats is TrueView ads, which allow viewers to skip the ad after five seconds if they’re not interested. 

This means that you’re only paying for ads that are actually watched by people who are interested in your event.

4. Traditional media – Newspaper, TV ads, Radio etc.

Traditional media is here to stay. Even today, a lot of big companies spend a great chunk of their marketing budget on advertising in these traditional media.

You get a lot of coverage from these channels. These can be the best channels to create brand awareness for your company and promote events alongside. 

Retargeting Audience For Your Event

The audience that clicked on your ad or visited your landing page to check out the information about your event would be the interested audience for your event but somehow missed out on purchasing the ticket.

It is very important for any event organizer to make sure to retarget these attendees.

Retargeting the audience gives them a little push to complete the registration for the event.

Most of the methods to retarget your audience fall into the paid form of marketing category, like Google ads, Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, etc.

But some platforms allow you to retarget your audience for free. 

With AllEvents, you just need to list your event. We will help you retarget the audience interested in your event with the help of reminder emails and push notifications.

Wrap-up

Event advertising is a must for events, whether it’s in-person events or virtual events. However, you must strengthen your basics to create a successful event promotion plan. This includes identifying your target audience, creating compelling event details, and setting a clear event promotion timeline.

Follow the 3C framework while creating your advertisement for social media platforms. Great content, combined with creativity, is distributed in the proper channels, like social media ads. Content is the soul of any ad, so it’s essential to be creative in your content and create content that the audience can relate to.

Brainstorm and generate ideas for your event ads to make them more engaging and appealing to your target audience. For example, consider using visuals, catchy taglines, and social proof to attract more attention.

The distribution of your ads is equally essential to the content. Make sure to use a mix of channels, such as social media platforms, event discovery platforms like AllEvents, and email marketing, to reach a wider audience.

Remember to set a clear event promotion timeline and keep track of your progress. Successful ads will boost your ticket sales and lead to a successful event, so use effective event promotion strategies to achieve your goals.

 

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