Over 100 ways to promote your event

NETWORK MARKETING – over 100 ways to promote your event or gig

By John Winkler, Jazz Smugglers band, www.jazzenthusiasts.com jazzsmugglers@yahoo.co.uk 07533529379

Some of these techniques of event promotion are very old – theatre and gig managements since the Middle Ages have followed these principles. Since then we have just become more sophisticated.

Most event promoters and venues have established successful routines for bringing in the crowds to a gig. A few become very active, and enjoy filling out the hall. That is the fun for them.

I’ve based this on smaller Events staged somewhere such as in a Village Hall serving a community, but it could as easily be a Golf club, or a small local theatre group. Please cherry pick from these techniques, and modify to suit.

This is just a list of techniques as a guide for event promotion. None of these is difficult to do. If any appeal to you, then you can contact me by email and I will try and help. This was me in the old days, www.john-winkler.com My own email address is jazzsmugglers@yahoo.co.uk

BROAD APPROACH

1 Target those groups who can send several people to your event

2 Use the pub to sell tickets for your event, or the tourist office, or the local shop.

3 Events do much better when they are part of a sequence, say once a month a similar event is run. You build a loyal audience.

4 Everywhere they look people should see your event promotion, put up road signs everywhere.

5 Make sure your venue is registered on website directories, which will also publish your event.

THE DETAIL

PRICING These schemes start with the pricing structure for your event. Don’t price it too low

GETTING OTHERS TO SELL YOUR EVENT TICKETS FOR YOU

Suppose you use a standard Ticket price of £9. You can then have a “special” price of, not advertised, of say, £8; a Concession price of £7 for groups; You advertise only the main price, and the group price. We usually give 2 for the price of 1 for our band associates or other special groups. We can offer this in the press as well. It costs us no more if more people attend and it makes for a much better event. It is simple to administer as well.

You can then give a local sports club, or a charity, or social clubs that use your hall £1 off every ticket their members buy. They need to email or notify their members about your event. Charities will put this £1 into their funds. As an incentive, they can also offer their members a “special” price of £1 off the Ticket price, so their members and families actually buy them for £8 each.

It is worthwhile your reducing the money you receive per ticket to £7 (£9 - £1 - £1) but only so long as they will produce bulk ticket sales which you would otherwise not get. Groups which might be interested in this could include.

Sports clubs, all kinds

Schools

Churches

Hospitals

Women’s Institutes

Rotarians

Business

Social clubs

Larger employers

Pubs

Leisure centres

Residential home staff

You can adapt this idea in several ways. The local pub can offer special price tickets to its customers after putting an event promotion poster on the wall. You collect all the names from them, and the people can pay at the door by having their names ticked off the list.

THE BIGGEST PULLER OF ALL IS TO HAVE A LOT OF DISPLAY SIGNS ON ALL THE ROADS.

Put them up for two weeks, make them very simple, eye catching, and take them down the day after the event. Very simple design, placard typeface, very few words just price location date- don't use colour on colour. Drivers have a millisecond to see them and register the details.

PAYING SOMEONE TO SELLING TICKETS AND DO DOOR TO DOOR DROPS

You can advertise that advance tickets can be bought from someone, (a local shop, café, individual person you know, perhaps) and you give these sellers £1 per ticket sold. The right person selling your tickets might be willing to do door-to-door leafleting, getting the enquiries back to themselves and they then get £1 for every ticket they sell.

HIGH PRICES

Never be afraid of setting higher prices, if there is quality being offered. Events are not so price sensitive as people imagine.

FREE EVENTS

Offering events free is a bad idea only because they become tainted with the idea of having no value, or poor quality. Just use it for offers such as “Buy 5, the 6th comes free”

LAST MINUTE

The last week before the event is very important. Have a plan in mind to get the word out again to everyone in the week. Many people make up their minds late – they need a reminder. Using text messages on the mobile phone, Facebook, and your own email list is excellent for this. You will sell the majority of tickets like this, on the second round of publicity. If the event has not sold well you can advertise that you have a few last minute concession tickets left.

TIE IN YOUR EVENT WITH A BIG NATIONAL EVENT

For example, Guy Fawkes night, Valentine's night.

WEBSITES

YOUR WEBSITE

Put the event on your high traffic index page, not just on your events page. Link from your index page to the inside Event page. A week before the Event, blast it all over the index page. People come to your website to look for your event.

OTHER EVENT WEBSITES

More and more people are using Event websites to find out what is going on in their area. These will allow you to post the details of your event on their site for nothing. Responses are weak at the moment but they are increasing. http://www.wegottickets.com/ This is a very ethical web site to sell your tickets at no cost to you. Ticketmaster also have an online sales agency. Take care with other ticket selling online agencies, many of them are scams. You can list your venue and event for free on these following which are the leading websites for local events.

In order of marketing power, we use:

http://www.westsussex.info/whats-on.shtml This is a very good private site.

http://www.wherecanwego.com/whatsonengland/Sussex/events.aspx This site has a lot of traffic and covers a wide range.

http://www.gig-guide.co.uk/ A big very popular site for venues, artists and events

http://www.allgigs.co.uk/ Another very good well used website for venues, artists and events.

http://www.reverbnation.com/main/overview_venue Venue and events and artists are listed free.

http://www.ents24.com/web/ Another good site for artists, events, and venues

http://www.http://wozzon.com/ Not so sure about this, but others swear by it

BUILDING EVENT MAILING LISTS

Your most responsive market will always be the people who have come to your events before. With their permission you need to maintain them on a mailing list, an email list, a Facebook list, a mobile phone list (for text messages)

LETTERS

Older people prefer to receive letters, they have authority. Mailings cost more £50 per 100 so they must be targeted to people who can influence a lot of business, Chief executives, Local Authority chiefs, high level Professionals by name. Emails don’t carry authority, but they can be friendlier.

EMAIL LISTS

To build your email lists just Google all the clubs in the areas around you. Websites of local communities close by will usually list their clubs and societies, with links to their websites. You can also use Google search to find the club websites. Frequently they will publish the name of their Secretary, or Chief Executive. The websites will usually have a general email address or link. You can often use the web Directories of, say, Golf Clubs to find the email addresses of each club secretary all on one page.

WHAT TO SAY IN YOUR EMAIL

Make it gentle and easy. Just email them asking them to post the email on to the right person or give you a name. You will find that 20% of the email links on the websites will be wrong, and reject your email, 40% will not reply, but the rest will help. If you are aggressive then they will put you on their spam filter, so take care.

FACEBOOK

40% of people already have a Facebook account, and a third of them are avid users. You will be amazed at the reception you will get if you open a Facebook account of your own. It will increase the hits on your website, you can specifically advertise your events on it to your “Friends” you can invite their Friends to become Friends of yours, and you can end up with a big following with active response for you. You can set up a permanent Group Page or Event page on Facebook. We have not found Twitter to be of much use except where the event has a national reputation.

SPONSORSHIP

Approach the Chief Executives/Owners of the local businesses for sponsorship. But you need to do something for them in exchange. They will be saying to themselves, but not to you, “What is my organisation getting out of this apart from a nice warm feeling?” Can he bring his customers as VIPs, can he put up a display, are the people attending in his own market, will his company name go into the title of the event?

Think small, too. Will the local butcher chip in some money, if he supplies the hog roast? Look at your suppliers to your organisation. Make a list of them, even the plumbers, decorators, stationary suppliers, and approach them to help in return for publicity. They can email their customers for you, or put up a poster. They supply things to you after all. Use them.

A good idea for a big event such as a Music Festival, for example, is to invite the Advertising department of the local paper to run a special feature half page, with editorial about your forthcoming event. They will sell the advertising to your suppliers and the contacts you give them. That gets you free large scale publicity and your sponsors get publicity too.

PROMOTING EVENTS AND GIGS IN THE LONG TERM

VOUCHERS for repeat business. Instead of giving away £1 per ticket, you can give away a voucher for a half price ticket for your next Event. You could give everyone in the audience a £1 Voucher for the next event.

PUBLIC RELATIONS FOR GIGS Look at the local press for the page which Lists the local events each week. It will have a specialist person hired to do it (from home). Ask the paper for their name and contact number and they will be delighted to hear from you. They want to publish all your events and they need your information. People read them.

CELEBRITIES Local ones are good for press, television and radio, just ask them to help.

LIST THE JOURNALISTS covering your area and send them an advance press release. This itself will generally not appear in advance, but if you follow it up with a photograph and news report afterwards then it will usually go in. This builds your reputation for the long term, and they get used to receiving information from you.

If you have an unusual photo idea related to the event and send it to the picture editor, that might go in before your event happens.

RADIO This works well for unusual human interest stories involving people. Just ring the radio station with the story and they will respond often with a phone interview. These two will list you on their website and may mention you.

http://www.spiritfm.net/contribute/whats-on/ Very helpful to local organisations. They list you in their local events guide, but you'll need to have a special angle for radio.

http://www.heart.co.uk/sussex/events/events-sussex/ Good one for listing local events free.

TELEVISION, WHY NOT? They want unusual local stories with a strong visual moving element. Just telephone their editorial department.

REACHING OPINION FORMERS

It is very valuable to establish connections with important Opinion Formers in the area. An invitation as a personal guest is very useful - they’ll pay for any friends.

The long term advantage is that they will spread the news by word of mouth and your reputation grows.

Councillors, officers

County, District and Parish councils

Business owners

Chief Executives

Professionals

Accountants

Solicitors

Architects

Church leaders

Journalists

Happy eventing.

John Winkler, Jazz Smugglers band

www.jazzenthusiasts.com

email jazzsmugglers@yahoo.co.uk

07522529379