Your Social Media Event Marketing Plan in 5 Easy Steps
- by Alyson Shane
Event marketing can be one of the most time-consuming parts of event planning. Luckily, by breaking down your process into simple steps you can create a plan that saves time, sells tickets, and gets your attendees excited and talking about your event.
Even better: creating an event marketing plan means you have a repeatable process that saves time on future events.
Below are 5 easy steps you can take to start building your event marketing plan today:
1. Create a Website or Landing Page
The first step to promoting event on social media is to build a website or landing page dedicated to your event. It doesn’t have to be anything too complicated, but should focus exclusively on your event, what it’s about, who’s involved, and what attendees can expect.
A website or landing page also gives you a place to brand your event, optimize for SEO, and send visitors who may not have found the website if it were only listed as a footnote on your business’ website.
Link to your event page from your corporate website, since this will organically improve their search engine page rankings, and to ask anyone involved with planning and promoting the event to share the URL on their own blogs and social media accounts as well.
If the event is recurring, create a blog section on the website and post regular updates to build anticipation as you release the names of your speakers, talk times, session topics, activities, and more.
Each new post on your blog gives readers a new reason to visit your website, so don’t miss out on this valuable marketing opportunity!
Once these pages are complete, link them to your social media accounts and run your registration through them to create a seamless attendee experience from start to finish.
2. Promote Early Bird Discounts
One of the easiest ways to ensure commitment from attendees early on is to incentivize them with early bird discounts and packages.
Not only does offering early bird discounts help you sell more tickets, but it also gives those early bird attendees time to contact their friends, family, and colleagues to encourage them to attend as well.
You can also consider using marketing tactics like referral incentives, where an attendee earns a reward or deeper discount on their ticket if they refer a certain amount of people who also register to attend.
3. Develop a Content Strategy for Your Event
One of the easiest ways to promote your event is to lean on your speakers and their ability to promote it to their audience.
One of our favorite ways to leverage your speakers’ knowledge and skills is to invite them to publish guest posts on your blog, or to participate in an interview leading up to the event.
This will help position your speakers as thought leaders in their respective industries, and it will motivate other industry leaders to attend your event.
For example, most digital marketers would jump at the chance to hear Ann Handley talk about content marketing, just like most VR developers would bend over backwards to hear John Carmack talk about what Oculus is up to.
By empowering your speakers to promote their upcoming appearance at your event on their own blogs, social media channels, and newsletters, you can encourage their audience to register to attend your event and connect with an industry expert they love.
4. Use Social Media Contests to Build Excitement
Give your attendees even more reason to be excited about your event by hosting contests and giveaways on social media.
Contests can be as simple or as complicated as you’d like, but they should all share these basic qualities:
- Has clear rules for entry. By specific!
- Encourages engagement (Liking, commenting, @ mentioning, sharing) in some way.
- Has clear start and end dates.
- Clearly states what the contest winner will receive.
For example, you could host an Instagram contest where users submit entries by Liking, sharing the post on their own feeds, and commenting by @ mentioning someone they want to bring to the event as their guest.
A prize pack could include free registration for two, meal vouchers, and any other items or experiences you can spare to make the contest as appealing and exciting as possible.
5. Find the Right Partners and Sponsors
The people you partner with can make - or break - your event, so take care to choose relationships that compliment your event and attendees.
For example, choose to have your startup-focused event catered by a local restaurant instead of choosing a corporate catering company; or partner with local hotels to secure discounts on rooms for out-of-town attendees.
Include your partners and sponsors in your content marketing plan, and partner with them on contests and giveaways, if possible. Feature them on your blog, @ mention them on social media, and ask them to do the same in return.
Event Marketing Made Easy
By taking the time to develop your social media event marketing plan you can develop a repeatable and well-tuned process that saves time, sells tickets, and helps attendees feel excited and inspired to attend your event - and tell their friends to attend, too!
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