It is absolutely natural for Event Planners in NYC to worry about how many people will show up to an event they put a great deal of effort in to plan. Event pros also tend to worry about how they can help their guests get the most out of the event.
In other words, there plenty to consider when it comes to event promotion, but Event Planners in NYC shouldn’t let it overwhelm them! In this post, we will provide some simple steps to help you create a marketing strategy.
Use the following steps to create your event’s marketing plan.
Step 1: Event Planners in NYC Need to Set the Event Goals & Budget
Your event’s goals are what your marketing plan is based off of, so you must absolutely set them before moving onto the next steps. Ask yourself this - Do you want your event to reach a palpable goal like attracting 700 attendees, or an impalpable goal like solidifying relationships with your association affiliates or business partners through the event? Just make sure that your team is on the same page and chasing the same goal.
Step 2: Set Event Content Creation and Management Tactics
Event Planners in NYC need to keep the event goals in mind, prepare the marketing content such as the event schedule, speaker list, and key messages to highlight (e.g. benefits of attending the event, keynote speeches, testimonials or a video from the previous event).
However, it’s worth ensuring that you have a good content management plan before you move ahead to the next step and create an event website, event app, and spread the word. It will help avoid tons of manual tasks and time spent. As not all event information is available at once, you may have to manually and repeatedly update event websites, registration pages, and many other materials such as an event app.
Some recent event management tools like Agenda Center automate the time-consuming tasks and reduce human error. For example, once you upload the agenda to the dashboard in a spreadsheet, it creates a sleek agenda table that you can easily insert in your event websites and any other web pages.
Step 3: Promote an Event on the Right Places
For Event Planners in NYC to properly identify their target market, they’ll need to define it through attendee’ demographics such as age, gender, and industry as well as psychographics such as usage of technology, interests, and motivation to attend your events. You can first analyze attendee data collected from previous events.
Most importantly, use of technology will tell you what channels and tactics are effective means of reaching out to them. While older folk may be better informed through more traditional methods, young adults are almost exclusively found through digital channels, such as social media.
In general, event listing websites such as Eventful, Hey Event, and 10times, are good places to promote your event, regardless of the age of your attendees.
Step 4: Develop Personalization Tactics
It is important to tailor your messages in a way that attracts people’s interests. If your invitation will go out to previous attendees, you can mention this to engage them and add statistics, videos, or pictures from the previous event. Add the upcoming event’s highlights like keynote speakers, opportunities to learn and connect with people, and discounts for early-bird tickets.
If you use an event management software (here are organizers' favorites), see if it provides useful templates for emails and announcements particularly targeted to event audiences.
Step 5: Establish Last-minute Promotion and Engagement Tactics
When it comes to marketing, the final stretch before the event is a stressful one as you not only try and get attendees to go last-minute, but also raise excitement for those who are already going. It’s a good idea to create buzz on social media in an organic way. Set a good event hashtag and drive registrants to tweet their excitement.
If you’re an Event Planner who specializes in event marketing, we’d love to hear from you! Please contact us to be featured on our blog as a guest blogger that can contribute a valuable article for event professionals.
