Promoting Your Event - on Canada Events Calendar and Beyond

Make it easy to get the maximum mileage out of your event promotion efforts. With a little bit of foresight, you can have tools created and at hand to take advantage of all relevant channels for event promotion.

Your event promotion strategy depends on how large the event is going to be. Whether you are simply handing out invitations, or using social sites like Facebook or Twitter, or going full out and promoting on billboards, posters, brochures, and postcards, the first step is always the same first step of any marketing project: identify your audience.

1. Identify Your Event Audience

Who do you want to attend your event? The general public at large? A subset of the overall population like: children, doctors, business women, or CEOs. Make a list of the different types of people you want to attend your event, and describe them fully - what magazines they read, where they go online, where they hang out in person, where they shop, etc.

Understanding the interests and desires of the target attendees will help you assess the best way to get word out to them. Online, direct mail, word of mouth, PR/news articles, posters hung in key areas, postcards and rack cards, flyers - these are all

2. Plan Your Marketing Strategy

Now that you know who you want to reach and the most effective channels to reach them, it's time to plan your approach. Make sure that whatever you do looks first class - whether buying pre-made invitations or having posters/postcards/etc. custom-designed.

What is the key message that sums up the import of the event? Create a one-sentence description and a one-paragraph description in addition to the full length description of the event. Save these all in an easily-accessible file. You will find this handy especially when you start promoting the event online and you have varying lengths of text fields to use.

Remember to use the "inverted paragraph" style in your long description - putting the most important information in the first paragraph, especially the name, date, and location of the event. This way, if something gets chopped off the important part remains. Add a few quotes to rework your long description into an interesting and informative press release-

What image and colours would you like to represent the event? Typically, colours evoke responses based on a multitude of factors including shade, combinations, and the culture of the people involved. In Canada, for instance, red can be a warning, a sign of passion, the colour of weddings in Sikh culture, and happiness or luck to the Chinese. (This is why step one was to describe your target audience.)

3. Selecting Your Marketing Tools

Now that you have the basics nailed down, it's time to actually create the marketing materials. The more of these you have available, the more opportunities you will find to reach a wider audience.

Press Release:

As mentioned above, sending out a press release is a great way to promote your event - if it is actually newsworthy. Pick out the unique angle about your event and if you have high-profile participants, get a quote or two to make sure it is attention-getting. If your event is controversial, all the better.

Invitations and Postcards:

These are your standard, basic items that allow you to both hand them out or to mail them directly to key invitees. The advantage of postcards is they also double as items that can be pinned to community info boards or left in stores and community areas without looking strange.

Banner Ads:

While your designer is creating your invitations and postcards, have a set of banner ads made up at the same time. This way you can get additional exposure on key websites and blogs where this option is available. The standard sizes for banners are:

• 728 x 90 pixels - (Leaderboard)
• 468 x 60 pixels - (Full Banner - older size)
• 120 x 240 pixels - (Vertical Banner)
• 160 x 300 pixels - (Tower)
• 160 x 600 pixels - (Wide Skyscraper)

You can always check the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) website for the current specs.

Ticket giveaways/discounts/passes

If you can, set aside a certain number of seats or tickets to use as a way to cross promote with media sponsors, websites, and blogs. People who have solid mailing lists love having something to offer their contacts and a good contest or freebie (say, for the first 5 people who write in) is a great way to do that. Figure out how you can leverage that trend to get the word out about your event!

4. Create a Media Page on Your Website

Your event website always contain a media page with logo, photos (from past years or speakers/featured personalities), information block (in the inverted pyramid format), and banner ads. You might consider having a "mail a friend" function that allows people to easily forward information about the event without extra effort. The more convenient you make sharing information, the more people will do so.

TIP: Make sure your message/copy is live text (as opposed to being embedded in an image or flash). We cannot emphasize this enough.

Why? Many times we have been perfectly willing to add an event to the calendar and found all the vital text on the event website as images and thought, "I'm not retyping that. Next." Your designer may not get to use the font they want, but trust us, the trade off is worth it.

(FYI, search engines can't read text that is embedded in an image either, so it's hurting you twice.)