Wednesday, December 3, 2014
By CallFire, Follow me on Google+
Negotiating the tight budgets and narrow profit margins of the events industry can be a headache. Sometimes you wish you could spend a little more time and a little less money on your marketing strategy. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to generate free publicity for your next event. Check out our top four easy-to-implement marketing tactics for events organizers:
Write a guest post
You have expertise in the world of events organization, so why not share it with others and promote your business at the same time? To prepare the way, start a relationship with relevant blogs by commenting on articles and emailing the administrators. Once you have established communication, start offering them free content. You don’t have to be a gifted writer, just offer some insight into events management that may be useful to their readers.
Push your hashtag
If you don’t have a hashtag for your event, get one. Use it in all your social media and email communications, and make sure it’s also added to event flyers and brochures. Ask sponsors and partners to mention it whenever they talk about your event.
Engage with the industry
Commensurate with point one, it’s imperative that you build relationships with others in the business. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, helping ‘competitors’ do their job reflects well on the industry as a whole – plus, they’ll return the favor later on. Be pro-active. Start visiting and commenting on popular events blogs; answer queries about events management on sites like answer.com and Quora; contribute to the most important LinkedIn groups. Become a ‘thought leader’. It’ll not only raise your profile, you’ll get some valuable backlinks out of it, and people will start referencing you as a person-to-watch in the industry.
Trivia!
Why not create an entertainment-themed quiz? If it’s challenging enough, your followers on social media will play it even if there’s no prize on offer. Of course, upping the stakes by offering a prize to the winner will cost you money but it’s worth it for extending your reach - especially given the low cost of disseminating the contest via Facebook or SMS.