Online Marketing Tools to Market Your Event
After the initial planning of your event is complete, it’s time to start marketing. In the past event marketing was offline, using magazines, sometimes newspapers and ads in industry publications to market your event. But today online marketing is a much more effective marketing tool.
Today, event marketing typically happens online using social media and other tools. Social media platforms allow you to talk directly to your followers. That conversation is important to keep people engaged and helps to market your event. Here is a list of potential online marketing tools.
Social Media Marketing
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and many other online venues have become tremendous marketing platforms. These platforms provide a great way to connect with potential attendees. You can share event schedules, pictures from previous events, speaker bios and white papers and much more.
The trick to social media marketing is building a list of followers that are interested in your event. Followers receive event information in their social media accounts. When your followers share your social media posts with their followers the reach and exposure of your event is amplified.
Group and Forum Marketing
Many online sites have online groups, for example on LinkedIn there is a online group for venture capitalists, so if your event is a venture capitalist event, that LinkedIn group may provide great marketing opportunities. Typically subscribers post questions, articles and connections in these groups and forums, so you can answer questions, post news about your event and build your list of followers and potential attendees.
Video Marketing
There are many online video platforms but the biggest and most searched is YouTube. The YouTube statistics are stunning;
• According to Nielsen, YouTube reaches more US adults ages 18-34 than any cable network
• Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube (source YouTube)
• More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month
If you have video from a previous event or video of upcoming speakers, creating a YouTube channel for your event and posting videos to YouTube with a link to your event landing page can be a very effective marketing tool.
Paid Marketing
There are a number of potential marketing tools that require payment. Paid marketing allows you to target your audience on Google, Facebook or other platforms, have your ad displayed on that platform and drive interested leads to your event registration landing page.
One of the most targeted ad platform for professionals is LinkedIn. LinkedIn ads can target a specific audience, drive them to your landing page and provide track the conversion results.
Summary
The most effective marketing strategy is to develop a comprehensive marketing plan and leverage your event management software to get people registered for your event.