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The Ultimate Guide To Event Marketing

The Ultimate Guide To Event Marketing

By Taylor Reaume

Caution: light bulbs exploding over head!

You have sent invites to your in-house database, put a link on your web site and even made a post on your company blog. That’s plenty of promotion for your upcoming event, right? Not anymore! Lately, I hear more and more event planners becoming increasingly frustrated with event marketing in the web 2.0 landscape. Given the current economy, even savvy event planners are struggling to find sponsors and speakers. Below I will illuminate some best practices for event marketing, with an focus on Internet marketing and online promotion. Promotion is a key aspect to planning an event. Without promotion, no-one will know about your event and you will have no registrants, no attendees.

This guide will cover event promotion, and provide insights on how to promote events online.

That said, here are some good starting questions to reflect upon:

1. Who is your target audience (including sponsors)?
2. Which online channels are they present on?
3. What is their concern that is being addressed by your event?

The goal is to find some cost effective marketing channels and spend as much as feasible on a promoting MIX that targets your perfect audience. That could mean social media marketing, custom ringtones, text messaging and viral video ( for those below the age of 30 or so ), or it could mean direct mail and print ads (for 40+), a TV campaign, a retail POS/sweeps promo, or it might be all those and then some.

Although this guide is centered at event/conference promotion, I think that the majority of these recommendations below are replicable for promoting other products & services (e.g. training).

The Ultimate Guide To Event Marketing Online

STEP 1: Keyword Research

STEP 2: Article Writing

STEP 3: Tags

STEP 4: Event Directories

STEP 5: Social Networking

STEP 6: Setup Event Blogs

STEP 7: Social Bookmarking

STEP 8: Video Marketing

STEP 9: Online Press Releases

STEP 10: Press Releases

STEP 11: Listing in Community Newspapers and Websites

STEP 12: Mailers

STEP 13: Leveraging Content (Photos, Presentations, and Videos etc)

STEP 14: Sponsors

STEP 15: Word of Mouth

STEP 16: Email Signature

STEP 17: Email Auto Responses

STEP 18: Vanity URLs

STEP 19: RSS Feeds

STEP 20: Instant Messenger

STEP 21: Find People with Lists

STEP 22: Do a Google Search

STEP 23: Event Posters

STEP 24: Print up invite cards, or ticket

STEP 25: Sponsor Mini Events

STEP 26: Event Evangelism

The Ultimate Guide To Event Marketing Online

STEP 1: Keyword Research: Find 10 keywords to target. Try to find low competition, high search count keywords utilizing keyword research tools

STEP 2: Article Writing: Write 10 articles about your event (1 article around 1 niche keyword) 500 words each and use “Theme” Words.

STEP 3: Tags: Develop 10 Titles and 10 Descriptions for each page, and optimze the page for SEO. Title can be 65 words or less, but more is okay (still index, still good) just try to include your important keywords in the beginning of the title. Write your event description with your target keywords in mind – not more than 250 characters. Write at least 3 tag keywords for each article. Now that you have a set of Titles, descriptions, keywords, you have a data set to use for social bookmarking submissions, directory submissions and link campaigns.

STEP 4: Event Directories: Go to the event directory web sites below, and enter your event. This is a general list widely accepts most events. However, it’s also a good idea to do a Google Search in your town, and find local event directories online for your area. Submitting your event to various event directories doesn’t cost you any $. It only brings new delegates and helps you improve your Search Engine rankings.

Eventful http://eventful.com
Eventful will allow you to search, create, promote and track online events in your local area. Search by location or category to make it easy to find the events you want to attend. You can also keep track of your favorite events by added them to your calendar. Eventful will also all you to create a profile, group, and friends list to stay in touch with family, friends, colleagues or industry leaders. I love this service because they send an email every week to people in your area with the events that are about to happen.

Windows Live Events http://events.live.com/
Although not as powerful as Yahoo! and Eventful, it can still give you a good deal of exposure.

Madeit http://madeit.com
Madeit is more of a web based events management software, that will allow you to create an event, promote it, and manage payments. Because they manage payments, they do charge a transaction fee. They make it extremely easy to get started by filling out some basic information about you and your event. They will also provide the tools to plan, manage, and promote your event, manage ticking and more.

Meetup http://www.meetup.com
Meetup is probably the most mainstream event website on the web currently. Meetups niche is allowing people to create local groups and “meetup” at local establishments in the area. Their goal is to create an environment that is easy for industry people and groups to meet, interact, discuss, and share topics that matter to them. Create your own MeetUp group or join other groups. Sometimes, if your event is really interesting, administrators of other groups will be happy to pass the word to their members.

Upcoming http://upcoming.yahoo.com
Upcoming, is a service provided by Yahoo! Create, manage and track your local events in your area. Upcoming makes it easy to become friends with people who share the same interests and passions as you do. You also have the flexibility to create public or private events, depending on what type of crowd you are looking for. Yahoo! can send you a lot of very qualified traffic. Take advantage of it.

Zvents http://www.zvents.com
Zvents is more of a broad local search, allowing you to search for restaurants, venues, performances, movies, meetups and more. Their goal is to allow people to discover all sorts of things to do in their local town, city, or state. With their advertising network, this may be a great opportunity to market your local listing.

Center’d http://www.centerd.com
Center’d is geared around connection people, places and plans. They want to make it easy for local people to interactive with each other. It is also extremely easy to organize all of your local friendly, events and plans with their simplistic navigation. Center’d is relatively new, compared to some of the other event sites, however they have already made a huge splash and are looking to keep add new features to the site.

Event Setter http://www.eventsetter.com
This site is for anyone needing to publicize events, and for finding places to go and things to do in cities around the world.

CitySearch http://citysearch.com
This local search engine is here to stay. It’s getting very popular and can make your event visible to thousands of people.

MeetingWave http://www.meetingwave.com
This is one of my favorite resources to promote events. Post yours for free and get ready for all the exposure that MeetingWave will give you.

STEP 5: Social Networking: Go to the social neworking web sites below, and start generating a buzz around your event. Social Networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn & Orkut offers numerous opportunities to promote any event. You can create & leverage a community (e.g. Facebook Page or LinkedIn Group) to promote an event or a conference. You can create and promote Events at LinkedIn & Facebook. The status messages at these sites (particularly Facebook) can really create a powerful personal buzz & engagement in the target community. Lastly, the core team can use their own network (by sending event invites; e.g. on LinkedIn) to spread the word about the event. *remember to use your target keyword phrases when commenting and using your social network. (use your target keyword phrases!)

LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com
Let all your contacts know about your event. In addition to that, you can join dozens of business networking groups based out of your city and post your event to their discussion boards.

Facebook http://www.facebook.com
Use Facebook to find groups and people in your area, and invite them to your event. You can also use Facebook Ads and deliver them to people in a certain location.

BizNik http://biznik.com
BizNik has a great feature to promote events. Be active and invite people in your area. Make sure that you write individual and unique emails to each of the people you invite.

Plaxo http://plaxo.com
Join groups and use their forums to let people know about your event.

Xing http://www.xing.com
Another cool social network. Join groups and post your event.

Orcut http://www.orkut.com
Orkut is a free-access social networking service owned and operated by Google.

STEP 6: Setup Event Blogs: Goto the following sites and setup free blogs. Every Friday, make a 300-500 word post about your upcoming event (use your target keyword phrases!) The blog is a very important part of a successful online marketing strategy. Not necessarily the traditionally-defined blog, but the ‘blog’ that has emerged from within the context of Web 2.0 as it exists today. Whether it’s a pre-event, during the event or post event, you can highly leverage both Blogging & Microblogging (e.g. Twitter). It’s a great idea to launch your event blog (may be even before your conference website) while you are launching the website/microsite for your event. In addition, you can leverage other relevant blogs (create blog badges like Proto did) to promote your events. Live conference blogging is a great tool to create valuable content for event promotion in addition to enriching the experience of the delegates. As a central platform, blog also helps you promote other social media channels & content (e.g. photos, videos, presentations, twitter).

WordPress http://www.wordpress.com
Starting a wordpress blog about your event is both free and easy. There are thousands of templates out there for word press blogs. Managing the content for an event is extremely easy with WordPress.

HubPages http://www.hubpages.com
Hubpages is another social network site that allows you to create a content online for free.

Squidoo Lens http://squidoo.com
If you haven’t heard of Squidoo yet, you might be living under a rock. This is a great place to post content online. The user interface is very user friendly.

Blogger.com http://www.blogger.com
This is one of the oldest free blog sites where you can post anything about anything. Start a free blog about your event, and post consistent updates 2-3 months prior to your event.

STEP 7: Social Bookmarking: Open up the document you made in Step 2 (10 titles, 10 descriptions, 3 tags each) Setup your free social bookmarking accounts. Every Friday, make a social bookmark using your target keyword phrases. 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 swiftly, but cheaply as well.

Here are the Top Bookmarking Sites

• Delicious
• Diigo
• Furl
• Google Shared Stuff
• Hatena
• Ma.gnolia
• Mister Wong
• StumbleUpon
• Twine

Other Important Social Bookmarking Sites

i89.us – Export to several formats, see popular & recent bookmarks, ability to shorten URLs.

AllMyFavorites.net – Create an organized page for your bookmarks that you can share with friends and family, access from any computer.

Backflip.com – Check out the most popular links each day, set “The Daily Routine” as your homepage so you can visit your must stop sites each day with ease.

BibSonomy.com – Public & private bookmarks, tag cloud, related tags, duplicate detection with the chance to merge their info.

BlinkPro.com – Dynamic folders, bookmark all links of a page plus all the usual features.

BlogMarks.net – Save your bookmarks, tag them with keywords for easy searching amongst your list, share with others.

Bluedot.us – Tabbed user page showing a network of friends, bookmarks, and related tags. Allows you to import contacts from all the major mail services such as GMail and Yahoo.

BmAccess.net – Bookmark a site, add tags, when you look up a tag, you get the names and a little thumbnail image of the site along with it.

BuddyMarks.com – Store your bookmarks online, share some or all of them, discover new sites to visit by searching the public bookmark area.

Chipmark.com – Browse random “chipmarks”, share them, sort, filter, and get personal recommendations.

Complore – 10MB of file storage, public & private sharing, tag cloud, popular feeds and more.

Connectbeam.com – A themed social bookmarking site for enterprise-scale business.

Connectedy – Import your bookmarks, batch edit them, check in on hot topics.

Connotea.org – A themed social bookmarking site specifically for researchers, clinicians and scientists.

Diigo.com – Highlight portions of a page, write on it like you would a piece of paper, share with your group, and search all publicly saved pages.

Excites.com – Organize your bookmarks by tags, add comments and notes, share publicly, subscribe to certain tags so you can be notified when a new site is added that may interest you.

Feedmelinks.com – All the usual social bookmarking goodies, but you can also add links via email.

GetBoo.com – Export your folders to HTML, import and remove duplicates, delete all bookmarks.

Givealink.org – Donate your bookmarks to this site to help them recommend sites and get a better understanding of how each person bookmarks.

Hyperlinkomatic.com – Import/export, categories, notes, sharing, block users, RSS, tags.

IKeepBookmarks.com – Folders, search folder names and more.

Lilisto.com – Ratings, notes, categories, smart categories and in-page editing.

Linkroll.com – Links open in new window, subscribe to tags, browse by archives.

Ma.gnolia.com – Discuss all the saved bookmarks in groups, see what the Featured Linker is all about, join discussions in the Hot Group.

Mister-Wong.com – Bookmark and tag, search for tags that interest you, make buddies with people who have interesting saved sites.

Netvouz.com – Save your bookmarks in folders, tag them with keywords, share them with others or password protect them.

Nextaris.com – Folders, tags, clippings; store up to 100MB for free.

Shadows.com – Share your already existing bookmarks, discuss and rate sites and see what you can find.

SocialBookmarking.org – User and global tag cloud, blogs, social networking, avatars and more.

StumbleUpon.com – Lets you “channel surf” the Internet and review sites; it learns what you like and recommends more of the same.

Unalog.com – A basic social bookmarking site, but with the ability to look back at specific days and see what was going on.

WireFan.com – You can vote on links as well as add thumbnails for sites.

Xilinus.com – Tags, rating, search, public & private listing, drag-and-drop sorting.

Yahoo! My Web – One button click adds your bookmarks to the search engine giants system, features duplicate detection to help you keep your bookmarks tidy.

Social Bookmarking Sites With Clipping

BlinkList.com – Save sites for later reading, share your list or keep it private, even send your saved pages to your blog for wider sharing.

Clipclip.org – Like an online scrapbook, you clip out the part of the site you want, then share it with whomever you want, and discover new places to visit.

Clipmarks.com – Allows you to clip just the chosen bits of a webpage, save them to the main website, or even insert them into your own blog. Think of it as fancy block quoting.

del.icio.us – You add your bookmarks and access them from anywhere. Check out what others are saving and see where it takes you.

Furl.net – Not only can you do the standard bookmarking and sharing, you can save archived versions of a webpage and even export all your saved pages to a ZIP file.

Linktopia.com – Keep private, share, mark as friends only, edit bookmark dates.

RawSugar.com – Can cluster your tags for you based on recommendations by other users.

Simpy.com – This social bookmarker does all the usual plus detects links that have changed, and distributes your bookmarks via your blog’s RSS if you like.

Spurl.net – You can upload your existing bookmarks to get started, add more for centralized access, check out hot lists and recommendations.

SyncOne.net – All the usual features plus the ability to add your own Google Ads to the top of your profile page.

URLex.info – Inbox, group creation, directory, all of the usual features, plus being able to send your RSS feed to the site.

Social News

Blog-buzz.com – Similar to Digg but for blog posts.

Digg.com – Synonymous with social bookmarking: you Digg a story, others Digg it, the more popular it gets the better chance it has of hitting the first page.

Netscape.com – A former contender in the browser wars, and the “mother” of Mozilla, it’s now a a social news aggregator with voting of stories similar to Digg.

Newsvine.com – Users can write articles on current news events, save links to external content; vote, comment and chat on article pages created by both users and by journalists.

Reddit.com- You vote up or down on a story making it move around on the home page.

Shoutwire.com – Similar to Digg, except instead of “Digging a story”, you “shout it”. Still a way to vote on unique Internet news stories.

Thoof.com – Add news stories you find interesting, anyone can “improve” the article by fixing the URL, editing the summary and more.

STEP 8: Video Marketing: Create a 30 second-60 second promo video about your event. This can be done easily in Microsoft Powerpoint, or by using Windows Movie Maker. Or you can go get a generic video from a stock video site like www.istockphoto.com and then load it in Windows Movie Maker to add a small intro and outro about your event. Video’s are a tremendous boost to search engine rankings, and will contribute to more trust and credibility at your web site. Video Tags, Video Title, and Video Descriptions can all be utilized to maximize your online marketing efforts. One of the benefits of internet advertising as opposed to traditional, physical advertising is the level of interactivity that can be reached at a relatively low cost. Technologies such as Flash have allowed marketing managers to include robust, high-quality audio and video in their advertisements without forcing consumers to suffer through long downloads or install third-party software.

1. Youtube http://www.youtube.com
   Put a Youtube video on your website about your event, and watch your ranking skyrocket. Another idea is to use Pay Per Click to drive traffic to your video page, which increases your Youtube Views, and your ranks on Youtube Search Engine.
2. Vimeo http://www.vimeo.com
   Vimeo is a high quality HD video site that has been gaining popularity rapidly, especially in the film world.
3. Google Videos http://video.google.com
   Videos are excellent for helping boost organic rankings for your event pages. Upload your event related snippets to a free Google Videos Account and watch your traffic levels!

Other Video Sites

• 12seconds
• Dailymotion
• Joost
• Seesmic
• Smotri
• Vimeo
• YouTube

STEP 9: Online Press Releases: Submit to PR WEB. I think the time for traditional, offline Press Releases is gone – many can’t afford it and for most of others, there are much better alternatives. Online PR is no more an option and given most of it is free; there is no reason why you’ll not leverage it. They don’t just allow you to directly reach out to global audience (if that is important) but also help you increase your Search Engine rankings. Writing press releases and distributing 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.

STEP 10: US FREE ADS: For some reason Google seems to allow this site to continue it’s proliferation of classified ads. Google seems to like them, which is great, but odd since they shun so many others. Use USFREEADS for very cheap event promotion.

STEP 11: 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 strategy works very well. Don’t be afraid to contact local newspapers and other publications to inform them about your event. In most cases, they will find this information useful and relevant, and they’ll be happy to share it with their readers. Journalists love writing about current events in the community.

STEP 12: Mailers: One of the old methods, sending event invites through mailers is still a viable means of reaching out to the relevant people. However, more than the message, it’s the database of the recipients, which determines the success or failure of your email campaign. While signing up for media partners (who promise to send your event mailer to their database), don’t just be enticed by the volume of their database – relevancy of their member base is much more important. Sending your mailer to the wrong audience can be a huge waste of time and money. One of the important areas which is often times ignored in the case of mailers is the ‘subject line’. E.g. consider the following distinction: ‘MY EVENT’ or ‘7 Days to MYEVENT- Join Now!’ (can you guess which ROI is better?)

STEP 13: Leveraging Content (Photos, Presentations, and Videos etc): Even today, most of the events don’t last beyond the day on which they happen. As such, there is an amazing opportunity to leverage the event content (in the form of session takeaways (an important reason for live blogging), photos, presentations, videos) to promote the event & the organizer’s brand – this can significantly contribute to the next year’s conference or other conferences by the same organizer. So, please plan to capture and use the wealth of content which gets created during the event. For e.g. Social Media Channels – Speaker Presentations, Event Photo Galleries, Session Videos have driven thousands of views for various events. Case in point – check out is NASSCOM’s SlideShare channel – over the last 2 years, it has received over 150,000 views across various event presentations.

STEP 14: Sponsors The relationship with your sponsors is incredibly important when 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.

STEP 15: Word of Mouth Simply put, talk about your event with others. Information spreads rapidly 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. “Word of mouth” marketing, i.e. the water cooler effect, is very poweful and is often ignored during event planning. If an influential person at a company or in a group likes something, they will tell their friends. So, create ways to influence the influencer. Reach employees while they are at work with special offers for entertainment events looking to move distressed inventory or special VIP packages. One common influencer strategy is to host a group of our most influential customers and treat them to the event for free during the early stages of the event and an off night where the tickets would have gone dead anyway. By turning what would have been a lost opportunity (a seat that would not sell) into a marketing tool, you have the opportunity to influence many influencers who then share their experience with employees at their corporation or group, thereby generating word of mouth publicity.

STEP 16: Email Signature: Update your email signature to include a blurb and a link to the event (especially effective for the sales and marketing folks)

STEP 17: Email Auto Responses: You’re going to be out of the office this week, but still need a few more registrants. How about adding a link to your email auto response? Something to the tune of “I am currently out of the office and will return Friday 5/4. I hope you can join us on May 8 for our upcoming Webinar titled “How to Create a Successful Email Campaign.” Register Today!”

STEP 18: Vanity URLs: If the URL for your event registration is long and confusing, create a short “vanity” URL that will redirect people. Make it something you can easily write down if you want to jot it on a business card, flyer, napkin, etc.. Traditional media (including a pen and paper!) can still work in your favor even if it’s an online event

STEP 19: RSS Feeds: You’ve added a post to your blog about the upcoming webinar or event, but consider adding an extra push just to the RSS feed as the event gets closer.

STEP 20: Instant Messenger: Love it or hate it, instant messengers exist in the workplace. Make yours work for you by adding a short promo in your “status” message.

STEP 21: Find People with Lists: I can guarantee that there are at least 100 people in your area that have email lists of other people in your area. Offer them an incentive –sometimes it’s not even necessary, and ask them to let people know about your event through a blog post, a short announcement in their newsletters or a simple email. Offer them a small incentive, like a free ticket perhaps. (insert sound effect: lightbulb exploding)

STEP 22: Do a Google Search: If you live in New York, search on Google for “New York Events”. There are hundreds of niche-websites that revolve around events in local area; they can give your event great exposure. Try these as well:

STEP 23: Event Posters: Get signs or banners up at the venue space. Posters should match all direct mail on online media

STEP 24: Print up invite cards, or ticket: A hard copy on paper works the best. “You are invited” or “VIP Invite” Email invites can supplement your efforts.

STEP 25: Sponsor Mini Events: One cost-effective way to raise awareness about your event is to simply go on-site to organizations and companies and create a fun afternoon focused on the events you promote. Raffle off tickets to the events to generate awareness amongst hundreds or thousands of potential consumers.

STEP 26: Event Evangelism: When talking about your event to potential buyers, talk about the experience they’re going to have as opposed to standard promotional talk. Many times you will need to completely re-write copy given to to you from the event because you want it to talk to the customer in a way that helps them understand the experience. Customise the copy to talk to the target audience-get inside the conversation in their head. For example, if your event promotes a Broadway star who isn’t in the mainstream media, you might consider shifting your focus to place more attention on the storyline if the crowd isn’t theater savvy. You should remember that interest and attendance is really driven by demand. Don’t get wrapped up with thinking the event is “great” and then not understanding why no-one is coming to it. Another really good approach if it is an event that is going on over many weeks or more or one that may be yearly is to survey the audience and understand clearly what folks like and what they don’t. Have the objective to really understand the demographics of the people who respond positively and negatively so you can constantly tweak marketing to focus on the people who are most likely to show up. Most events have a budget and large or small, a focused approach using data and analysis will help maximize the marketing dollars spent. The above is mostly for longer running events, but there are ways to adapt the above to a one-day or shorter event. To do that, you want to generate word-of-mouth selling around the anticipation of the event or the “buzz” of the event. This is a tougher as you are relying on the event topic or presenter to hold the event. Bottom line you should try to spend the time really creating the value proposition and focusing intently on your taget audience.

It is important to remember that while these all are very effective ways to promote 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. I hope this guide to event marketing online has helped you develop a better understanding of event marketing and promotion.

About the Author: Taylor Reaume is a fortune 500 SEO Consultant from Santa Barbara, CA. Services provided include: ethical search engine optimization, internet marketing courses, Google search marketing, SEO copywriting services,
seo consultation, seo positioning. The Search Engine Pros, founded by Taylor, is a professional seo firm that offers several search engine optimization packages to help build web site traffic. Visit www.TheSearchEnginePros.com to learn more about this professional SEO firm.

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