The most important event planning task is promoting the event. After all, you can organize the most fun and informative event of the century, but if no one shows up, it will feel as if the event never happened. Promoting the event is not as easy as posting it on Facebook and tacking up a few fliers, either. Informing people of and enticing them to your event takes a thoughtful approach. Take time to plan how you will market your event.
Instructions
1. Establish your marketing budget for the event. Set this money aside into a separate account, or earmark the money within an existing account. Split these dollars among the different types of marketing media later, after you decide which to use and how often.
2. Begin promoting your event six to eight weeks in advance. Start planning event promotional about three months before the event date. This gives you four to six weeks of promotional planning before you begin advertising.
3. Identify local community calendars that allow free posting of events. Submit your event to the calendar the day you begin advertising. Other organizations that are planning events refer to these calendars and may decide not to plan an event for the day you posted to avoid a conflict of interest.
4. Know the habits and preferences of your audience. You need to know your audience's preferable medium of contact, such as email, snail mail, social media or brochures. You also need to know your audience's formality level. An audience for a golf tournament, for example, usually requires a more formal tone than a snowboarding audience.
5. Use all forms of media, but put the most effort into the medium most used by your audience. Develop a strategy for each type of media. Begin using social media eight weeks in advance of the event. Mailings should go out one month beforehand. Newspaper stories and ads should run one or two weeks before the event.
Tags: your audience, your event, before event, begin advertising, eight weeks