An ideal world would be one in which, after coming up with a concept for an event, we would immediately have a ready list of participants, all of whom would surely show up for our event. Unfortunately, the reality is quite different. Attracting participants and promoting an event is often one of the most difficult aspects of organizing an event. It requires the right marketing efforts and, consequently, often an outlay of funds. However, there are also ways to attract a wider audience to our event without spending a huge amount of money. Which ones? Let's find out.

Organic promotion

These are all activities that we have "off the shelf," that is, which use the resources of a particular company or organization.

Website

We live in the 21st century, where most businesses have an Internet domain. It would therefore be a sin not to take advantage of this and not advertise the event on your website. This is also a good solution, as it will go straight to the right group of people, i.e. those who are ultimately interested in the content we are promoting. So let's take advantage of this and include information about the event on the site. This can be done in the form of a graphic, banner or link, which will refer the user to the registration landing page or directly to the event.

Social media

This is a very broad topic, as we can promote our event on both corporate and personal profiles. We can advertise our event on Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram, Twitter and even TikTok, and each platform offers different formats. On TikTok and Instagram, we can create short promotional reels featuring ourselves, or create an interesting animation about the event. Twitter, Linkedin or Facebook, on the other hand, will work better for descriptive creations, where we can tell more about the event.

Emails

An everyday tool that can also prove reliable when promoting an event. Here we can use traditional ways, such as sending emails to a selected number of participants. We can also use new technologies, which are special email marketing tools that send us a well-prepared mailing to a selected target group. Almost every one of these tools offers a free package that allows us to send a certain number of emails to a specific number of people in our base. These types of tools also include statistics, showing, for example, the open rate of the email. An alternative option is also to directly send invitations to your personal contact database from your private or business account. This will make such an invitation perceived as more personal, however, it should be noted that with this form we have no information about whether someone will read it.

Phone contact

The most time-consuming, but also the most effective way to invite a potential participant. Taking the initiative and contacting someone by phone makes the other person feel more obligated to attend the event. And let's not fool ourselves - when a representative of a given company specifically calls us to invite us to their event, this is simply nice and it's hard to turn down such an invitation.

Paid

Social media

Well, there they are again - but this time in the form of effectively planned and targeted campaigns that give us the confidence to reach the right participants. The options to choose from here are numerous, as practically every social network provides such an option. With a small budget, the best option is to choose formats aimed at generating traffic to the landing page or at conversion, which in this case would be filling out the registration form.

Mailings from industry associations

Our mailing base is a bit "too thin" and will not provide us with enough participants? This is nothing, as industry association mailings, i.e. using someone else's mailing base, come to our aid. If, for example, our conference is a medical conference, we can get our attendees by applying to a selected mailing base provider in this field with a request to send out a note about the event prepared by us.

Opinion leaders and industry experts

In today's world, opinion leaders are very important in terms of how much influence they have over at least our purchasing decisions. When organizing an online or hybrid event, it is worth thinking about whether to engage an opinion leader or industry expert with even a small reach (3-5 thousand followers) to promote it. In fact, it is such people who have the highest engagement rate among their followers, as well as are seen as more credible.

Remarketing

In addition to the paid social media campaigns mentioned above, we can also include remarketing in Google Ads. What is it about? Remarketing is a way to reach people who have already come across our company's activity (for example, by visiting a website). Google Ads, in turn, is an advertising tool that is often used for remarketing. A GDN banner campaign will work well here, targeting these audiences as a form of invitation to our event.

Checklist:

Organic Promotion:

✔️ Website

✔️ Social media

✔️ Emails

✔️ Phone contact

Paid:

✔️ Social media

✔️ Mailings from industry associations

✔️ Influencers and industry experts

✔️ Remarketing