Your Event is Live, What’s next?

We’ve all been there. The euphoria of finally getting the details of your event finalized and approved and the event page published has worn off and panic has set in. What if no one finds the website? What if no one buys tickets? What do I do now? Don’t stress. You’ve got this. Your marketing plan is next. 

Hopefully, as you started the planning of your event and thought through your strategy of execution, you also spent time thinking about how to market it. If you did, you’ve probably already started promoting your event. Just keep at it but increase your output and your reach. 

If not, no worries. You’ve still got time. Let’s create a down and dirty marketing plan that can be implemented quickly yet effectively to drive ticket sales. It’s all a matter of asking a series of simple questions.

• Who would be interested in attending your event?
• What about your event would interest them?
• Why would they choose your event over others like it?
• Where are your prospects looking for information about an event like yours?
• How can I reach these prospects?

If you can answer these questions, you have the beginnings of a marketing plan. It’s easiest to do this in a grid form so that you can mix and match your answers to build a tactical plan. 

Here’s an example of a fictional business conference for women in digital marketing:

If you need help in answering these questions, check out our blog. We’ve got lots of helpful information on researching past attendee information to learn more about future prospects and developing event.
marketing messaging strategies.

The Eventzilla platform can also help you research and implement digital marketing tactics such as email campaigns and ticket promotions. 

Once your grid is complete, it’s just a matter of choosing an element from each column and building a targeted marketing campaign around it. Start with the answers across each row because these are your strongest marketing campaigns. However, if you are truthful with your differentiators and your market research, it is also relevant to mix and match the answers because of the What and Why details will be impactful to everyone in the Who column.  Just make sure the Where and How details make sense. 

Here’s an example of a marketing campaign using the marketing grid above. The event planner for the women in digital marketing conference decided to target digital marketing managers with a series of SEO enhanced blog posts about some of the research that will be presented at the event as well as the innovations that were presented at past events. She will include positive testimonials from past attendees in each blog and make sure to finish with a strong call-to-action to subscribe to the e-newsletter. When they do that, she then starts an email drip campaign in which she periodically sends more relevant information about the event and a link to buy tickets. Of course, she also includes a very visible Register Now button on your blog. This campaign is simple to execute and will touch digital marketing managers at many parts of her marketing funnel, from awareness to conversion. 

It’s important to be as specific as possible when thinking through your intent for any marketing campaign. You don’t want to throw good time, resources, and money away.  

So, there’s no need to sweat the time between event ticket site launch and that first sale. You’ve got plenty to do to keep you busy! Marketing and promotion is an ongoing and cyclical process, you can’t let up for a second. The more you do, the shorter that time before the first sale will be. Good luck!