With the help of the right PR and marketing strategies, companies can drive more awareness for their events, and boost the attendance of those events. The best strategies for this include identifying the right target audiences and knowing how to reach those audiences. It's important to promote an event beforehand in order to build awareness through media outlets and encourage event attendance. This strategy also gives businesses additional opportunities for other media coverage in the future.
Social media
Companies can leverage their social media accounts such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter to promote their events. As long as a business has already developed a decent following on social media platforms when it starts promoting an event on those platforms, it will reach out directly to people who are interested in what the business has to say. Companies should talk about their events on those platforms,and share behind-the-scenes details about it; details such as the planning of the event. Companies should also inform the audience on social media platforms about the activities or speakers at their events.
Companies can use the power of their email contact lists to boost event attendance. As long as a company that's hosting an event has a good database of email contacts that it knows will be interested in the event, the business can send out invitations via email. The same people can also be informed about the benefits they'll get from attending the event, and even get early access to tickets. They can also learn more about the event itself via email, such as how they'll be interacting with the business, where to ask questions, and more.
Local outlets
Many local news outlets have a calendar of upcoming events where companies can include their events Companies can submit their event to the calendar listing of media outlets, whether they are a local TV station or a big national newspaper. This will help companies spread the news about their event and inform the followers of those outlets on them, even if the businesses holding events don’t have a news hook or a newsworthy story for their events.
Event Hashtags
While hashtags aren't too useful in every single social media platform, they're pretty popular on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. To succesfully promote an event, a company should have an event hashtag or a branded hashtag. Once social media followers start picking up that hashtag and using it themselves, businesses can generate more discussions about the event, as well as buzz for it, which generates free advertising that can potentially go viral. The more that the hashtag is used, the more hype it is going to create when people find out about the event, which results in a boost in event attendance.
