You have a great event planned, you are using the best online registration company in the world, now you need to get the word out. What do you do? While the phrase “Build it and they will come” may apply to the movies, getting people to come to your event may not be as simple (unless Kevin Costner is there).
Here are 6 ways you can elevate your marketing plan for your event to get the word out.
1) Create a Marketing URL Redirect To Your Registration Page
Instead of always promoting your website and having people hunt through links and navigation, try buying a domain for your event. Such as MyAwesomeEvent.com that goes directly to your registration page. You can buy a domain name for your event for about $9. Once you have bought the domain name, set up a forwarding redirect rule that will re-direct visitors to that domain name straight to your website. If a particular name name is not available, just try adding the year to the domain name (ex: MyAwesomeEvent2016.com).
2) Preset the Image and Description That Is Displayed On Social Media.
Did you know that Facebook and other websites will grab any random image and description when people share your event? You can actually control how Facebook displays your event online. For example, make a social media title such as, “Wow, I Cannot Wait For My Awesome Event This Year”. When people share your registration page, that text will appear when shared. Also, set a specific image that is eye catching so that as people scroll, they will notice your graphic. Here is how to set this up in your event registration page.
3) Paid Search and Conversion Tracking
We live in a world where everyone is sharing practically everything about themselves online. You would not believe how you can target a post or an ad on social media. For example, if you wanted to target all the people on Facebook who are between the ages of 18–65, who live in California and who like the movie, “Field of Dreams”, you can. Using Facebook’s ad manager, I found there are 27,000 people who meet this criteria. You can track these clicks and conversions using our advanced analytic tracking.
4) Email Automation
Using our communication center, upload your newsletter list, customer list, or past registrant list into our communication center. Send them an invite from the communication center to your event. Our system will track the delivery and opening of your email and even show when that recipient has registered for the event. Be sure to send 2 more follow-ups to people who didn’t register for the event, or you might miss out on interested people who simply forgot. With just a couple clicks, you can send follow-up messages as a reminder to people who have yet to register.
5) Event Sponsors and Partnerships
To give your event a little extra promotional push, consider adding adding a few event sponsorships. Instead of just asking for their money, ask them for their endorsement. Would they send information about your event to their customers? Ask companies to share, tweet, post and promote your event in exchange for an event sponsorship. You can easily add their logos into your registration page as well as include it on your confirmation pages and emails.
6) Incentive Social Sharing
The power of social influence is a terrific marketing force for your event. If you see that a close friend is attending an event, you may consider it yourself. You can encourage this on a massive scale by utilizing the Share and Save feature on your registration page. Simply reward your registrants with a $5 discount if they share your registration page online with our Share & Save feature.
7) Utilize Remarketing Ads
Have you ever gone on Amazon to find some new shoes and then it seems like everywhere you go online, you see ads for those exact shoes!? That’s called re-marketing (sometimes called re-targeting). It’s an incredibly affordable and simple way to get customers to come back to your registration page. Here’s how it works. When someone visits your registration page, you can include a snippet of code that will let other major ad networks know of when your potential customer is browsing their affiliate sites. Then when your would-be customer is browsing their favorite website, there you ad appears again. You can even turn these off after they register. Companies like AdRoll help you set this up and the pricing is extremely reasonable.
These are strategies used every day by the world’s largest brands to drive massive traffic to their site. Whatever your budget and skill level, these are things you can do right now to get the most people to registration page and attending your event. Good luck with these strategies and let us know if we can help you.
