Top Five Ways to Promote Your Event
65Promotion is one of the most imperative aspects of planning an event. Without promotion, no one will know about your event and you will have no registrants, athletes or attendees. This article will cover promotion, and the first topic we will cover will be the top five ways to promote your event.
LinkedIn.com has many discussions about the best ways to promote your event, and after viewing a couple, I have put together the top five ways to promote your event. There are many others, and I suggest viewing the discussions to get a more detailed idea of all of the promotion tacticsthat are available to you: http://www.linkedin.com/answers/conferences-event-planning/event-marketing-promotions/CEP_MAP/238507-7365049?searchIdx=1&sik=1212419344236&goback=%2Easr_1_1212419344236.
#1: Word of Mouth
Simply put, talk about your event with others. Information spreads easily through people talking with each other. Individuals are more likely to attend an event if their friend is going and speaks highly of it. It is important to make your event sound interesting and unique when talking about it with others so that they will in turn pass the information along and get more people to want to come to the competition.
#2: Press Releases
Writing press releases and sending them to television and radio stations, websites, specialized magazines, and newspapers is a great wayto get your event promoted to a larger audience. Depending on whether or notyour event is more localized or on a national or international level will determine which media to contact, but regardless of who it is it is a great way to have people read about your event. In addition to sending out press releases to the media, it is also a good idea to invite journalists to the event so that they can report on it and your event can receive publicity afterward. Check out www.prweb.com, it's an inexpensive distribution channel.
#3: Social Networking Sites
As previously discussed in the event website installment, social networking websites are one of the best ways to promote to people. YouTube.com, Twitter.com, Facebook.com, Gather.com amongst hundreds of other sites are easy ways to generate a lot of buzz quickly. Plus, promoting your event via this outlet is generally free or low cost, so not only will you be able to publicize your event quickly, but cheaply as well.
#4: Listing in Community Newspapers and Websites
In addition to writing press releases and contacting media for publicity, simply listing your event in the "Community Events" section of newspapers and on community websites is a simple and effective way to reach your audience. Many people tend to read the "Events" section to quickly see what is going on and so this tactic works very well.
#5: Sponsors
As it has been stated previously, the relationship with your sponsors is incredibly vital in organizing a good event. While you help your sponsors by promoting them to your event attendees, they can also assist in promoting your event. This can be done on their website, in store by displaying fliers and posters, and even through their newsletters and mailings. Sponsorship is a two way street and can be very effective in promoting your event to people that would be interested in attending.
It is important to remember that while these all are very effective ways to advertise for your events, it is usually necessary to mix these tactics to reach your target audience.
Also be sure your event software has promotion tools like email marketing to previous attendees.
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Note about this article: This article is part of a newsletter series from Compete-At.com. Compete-At provides online event management and online registration software for sports.
