How to Effectively Draw Attendees to Your Event

Events are a great way to connect with potential customers clients or to network with valuable connections. They can help boost brand awareness, enhance brand loyalty, introduce new products to your target market, bring in revenue, and much more.

The right people need to attend your event to achieve any of these things. This makes a stellar event marketing and promotion strategy essential.

Here are the 12 steps to market and promote your event and entice your target audience to attend.

1. Outline your event goals
   Before you start thinking about promoting your event, you need to figure out your event’s goals. Is your aim to introduce a new audience to your brand and/or products? Is it to build relationships with existing clients? Is it to bring in additional revenue?
   Whatever your goals are, they will inform your event marketing and promotional strategy, from the marketing channels you lean into, to how much you spend and where you spend it.
   For example, if you want to reach new audiences, then you might focus on paid ads more than email marketing to your existing customers. However, there are many ways the goals of your event may influence the minutiae of your event marketing strategy.

2. Define your target audience
   You need to figure out who they are to attract the right people to your events. Are you trying to draw a particular age group or gender? What kind of interests does your target market have, and what kind of events do they usually go to and why?
   After answering these questions, you can build a marketing strategy that specifically appeals to your target audience, allowing you to reach them on the channels where they typically spend their time.

3. Figure out the ‘why’.
    In other words, you need to be able to answer the question: Why would your target audience want to come to your event?
   This answer will involve your event’s USPs. Maybe you have a coveted speaker coming to your event or live entertainment that your target audience would enjoy, or perhaps attendees will get to try a new technology they’re excited about.
   Your ‘why’ will guide all marketing messaging within your promotional strategy. Suppose you know what your target audience will find exciting about your event. In that case, you can write messages that tap into this and make them more eager to buy a ticket, from writing exciting email subject lines to social media posts and paid ads.
   Understanding why your target audience would want to buy tickets allows you to tailor messages that appeal to this desire.

4. Choose your channels and allocate budget.
    Now that you know who to target and with what messages, you can begin strategizing where to allocate your budget.
   If you have a younger target audience, most of your budget should probably go toward social media, where this demographic spends their time. In contrast, middle-aged and older people spend more time on traditional media channels.
   Different ages and genders have certain media preferences, too.
   
   Instagram is a great place to target Gen Z and millennial women. In contrast, having a gaming YouTuber promote your event through their video will appeal to teen boys and men in their early twenties, while boomers are more successfully targeted on Facebook, TV, or via newspapers.
   Think about where your target audience will likely spend their time online and off to make the most of your event marketing and promotion budget.

5. Start early
    A popular maxim in marketing is that it takes customers an average of seven exposures before they purchase.
   While there isn’t much research that indicates this specific number as the sweet spot, it’s a fact that most customers need to see a message multiple times – and at different points in time – to think about spending money.
   In the customer lifecycle, this is called the ‘awareness’ stage, and it’s an essential step to moving customers towards the ‘buying’ stage of their journey.
   It’s a huge advantage to start marketing your event early – even before you have all the details finalized – to sell more tickets. Consider announcing the upcoming event on your social media and website to kickstart the awareness stage of your event marketing strategy.

6. Create an event website
    Once you’ve created some buzz around your event, people need somewhere to find out more and buy tickets.
   Your event website should contain all the information potential attendees might want, from the entertainment, activities, and guests at the event to pricing, time, and dates. It should also be incredibly easy to find and buy tickets on your site; the less resistance there is on the journey to purchase, the more likely a potential attendee will buy a ticket.

7. Use a ticketing platform(s)
   If you’re selling tickets to your event, it’s a good idea to delegate a proportion of your tickets to a ticket platform and sell them on your event website.
   By working with the right platform, you may benefit from some extra, free marketing since many ticketing platforms push the events of tickets they sell.
   Ticketing platforms may be able to reach an audience less accessible to you. People often trust these platforms more than event sites, especially if they’re less familiar with your brand.
   This makes collaborating with ticketing platforms a great way to boost event attendance.

8. Make the most of social media
    Social media is one of the most powerful tools to promote your event.
   You should create an event page on social media and make it shareable to get real-time updates on how many people are interested in – and planning to attend – your event. When people share your event, this is a free way to get it in front of new eyes (the social media followers/friends of those who share it).
   Make sure to post your event’s teasers on your event page and across your brand’s social media to stay in your audience’s consciousness until the big day.
   Posting media like images, videos, and polls is a good idea to pique viewers’ interest. Consider posting clips of speakers or influencers you’ve invited talking about the event or perhaps holding polls about the kind of entertainment your audience wants to see. Focus on posting anything likely to increase engagement and get people talking about your event.
   
   Lastly, most of your online paid ad budget should go towards social media.
   For those who aren’t likely to come across your event page – but are still in your target demographic – social media allows you to target the people most likely to be interested in your event with their paid ads. Create an add that excites and entices viewers to find out more.

9. Leverage influencers
    Aptly named, influencers can be pivotal in making your target audience come to your event with pre-event promotion.
   Not only can influencers spread the word about your event so that more people are made aware of it, but an influencer’s audience often wants to emulate aspects of their lifestyle and trusts their opinions – including on the events they should attend.
   So, if an influencer promotes your event, their audience will see it as a must.
   What’s more, after inviting influencers to your event, you can expect them to post about your event and brand on their social media, promoting awareness of your brand.
   Their audience – which can span thousands or even millions – will associate the incredible event they saw on the influencer’s social media with your brand and be more likely to interact with your company in the future.

10. Use psychology
     Most people get FOMO. In other words, Fear of Missing Out. By using messaging that indicates others’ excitement for the event, that there are limited spaces thanks to its popularity, and highlighting other reasons why this event is not to be missed, you can increase people’s urgency to attend your event.
    You can also invoke social proof psychology by using media captured at previous events in your marketing. Showing event attendees having a great time with images or videos proves to your target audience that your event is worth attending since others had a great time.

11. Engage with sponsors
     Working with a sponsor can help you to build an even better event – thanks to the extra funds you’ll have to play with – and reach a greater span of people with comarketing,
    In return, your sponsor’s branding and/or products will be associated with the event, which may even improve your event experience. Sponsorship represents a symbiotic relationship between your brand and another that benefits both sides.

12. Create a buzz with UGC
     Another way to spread awareness about your event to a greater number of people is to encourage the creation of User Generated Content (UGC). In other words, content created by your customers/the public a.k.a. no one who works for your brand.
    You can do this by running a contest or giveaway – the terms of which should include sharing info and/or creating content about your event/brand – or simply creating a trend that people want to contribute to, using a hashtag that connects people’s content to your trend and your brand/event.
    The more content is created and shared, the more opportunity people can find out about your event.

With a comprehensive event marketing and promotion strategy, you can use events to reach new customers, re-engage old ones, encourage important connections and much more. Follow the above steps to ensure your event’s success and achieve your company’s goals.