Online marketing tools make it inexpensive and easy to promote your events. If you want to expand your business and offer webinars or in-person events, these eight tools will create buzz to a worldwide audience. When interacting online, always be polite and courteous – don’t spam invitations around the clock. Use common sense and put your best professional foot forward.
Set up a Facebook event
Set up an event on Facebook and invite your friends and followers. Don’t send unsolicited invitations to people you don’t know. Facebook makes it easy to create events and reach diverse audiences.
Create a hashtag
A short, unique hashtag that describes your event (for example, a webinar) creates buzz and generates interest. Include it when posting pictures and updates, and use the same hashtag across your other social channels so people can find your event when they search.
Use LinkedIn as a resource
Create an event and post it to your LinkedIn groups. Invite your personal connections, colleagues and former co-workers – but don’t blast invitations to people you don’t know, as they could report you as a spammer.
Send email invitations
Skip the paper invitations. Create a simple, visually appealing email invitation and send it to your contact list using a free online invitation tool. It saves time and spares you the tedious follow-up RSVP calls.
Advertise on free event listing sites
Free event-listing and calendar sites are very helpful, especially for a large event in a big city – many let you list by city, region and postcode. It’s worth checking which listing platforms are popular in your area.
Write a blog post about your event
Write a short blog post and link it to your Facebook and LinkedIn event pages. Don’t oversell – keep it brief and bullet-point the key benefits, speaking to your readers’ pain points: how will your event help them and what problems will it solve? If you’re taking online registrations, include the link.
Add a banner to your website
Advertise a visually appealing banner on your website or blog to quickly capture attention. Stick to the basics – date, time, location, cost, contact details and sign-up links – and make it easy for attendees to register directly on your site.
Take advantage of cross-marketing
Build relationships with other industry leaders and promote each other’s events – their reach may be larger than your lists. Develop a genuine, solid relationship first; it’s considered rude to ask an influencer to promote your event, especially if they don’t know who you are. Put these tools to work and you can expand your event marketing to a large audience, grow your attendee list and increase sales.