A guide for anyone who hates promoting themselves, by Brass Bee Marketing.
📣 It's often our confidence that holds us back when it comes to promoting an event or workshop. Follow these steps to overcome your fears, spread the word, and successfully sell those tickets!
PLANNING YOUR EVENT:
→ Show up on your socials all year round, not just when you have an event you want to sell tickets for. If you've not posted anything to your socials for months, it might be worth planning your workshop for later on in the year to give you time to warm up your audience again.
→ Set a date for your event that gives you plenty of time to promote it steadily over several weeks (or even months!) to take the pressure off.
→ Avoid dates and times when people are busy e.g. Mother's Day, during half-term, in the middle of the school run.
→ Hire a venue that's well known, accessible, and easy for people to get to by car and public transport.
→ Sharing photos of the venue or the room can help people visualise themselves attending the event - is it easy to get hold of these? Will the venue let you take photos beforehand?
→ Charge a price you FEEL CONFIDENT with. Charging people money can often affect your confidence, and its better to set a price that you feel comfortable promoting, than to set a high price that stops you from telling everyone about your event. If you do feel confident charging a high price, that's amazing - just remember to tell everyone WHY it's costing more, and remind them of the value you're bringing. NEVER set a price that's too low - if you set your price too low, it can actually have a negative impact on the success of your event, as people will wonder if it is cheap for a reason.
PROMOTING YOUR EVENT:
→ Launch your event and ask everyone in your close network to share your content to give those algorithms (and your confience) a boost.
→ Explain WHO the event is for, WHAT it involves, WHERE it is, WHEN it is, WHY you're running it, and HOW much it will be. If you're offering different prices for different people e.g. students, NHS discounts, make it really clear what the price for everyone else is.
→ Feeling nervous? Focus on how your event will HELP people, or how it will make people FEEL, or both! Keep reminding yourself of the reason why you're doing this when imposter syndrone starts to rear its ugly head.
→ Don't forget to remind everyone (and yourself) of your credibility. What makes you the best person to run this event?
→ Create a Facebook event and share to local Facebook groups to help new audiences find you!
→ Always give clear instructions in your posts to show people how to book. Should they email you? Leave you a message? Or book using Eventbrite?
→ Make it as EASY as possible for people to book and to pay for their tickets.
TO SPAM OR NOT TO SPAM?
→ People are busy and forgetful, so you DO need to post about your event regularly. One to two posts a week is a good amount, and won't come across as spammy.
→ Sharing a variety of content with lots of videos, photos, and engaging graphics about your event keeps people's attention engaged. Sharing the same content again and again could start to make things feel spammy.
→ Make sure you still share value and helpful information in your other posts - don't just make it all about your event.
BE STEADY AND CONSISTENT TO THE END::
→ Don't feel disheartened if you don't sell tickets at first, stick with it and keep promoting!
→ If your event is selling successfully, let everyone know it's popular. Share updates on how many tickets are left. People like to book if they know there will be other people there to meet. If tickets are not selling, DON'T make the mistake of telling everyone it's a flop.
→ If you're not selling tickets, then take stock and try to assess what could be putting people off. Ask people you trust for honest feedback. It could be something really simple that just needs tweaking to get those sales coming in.
→ A last-minute flash sale can help you make those last few sales!
→ You may get a flurry of bookings up to the day or even the morning before your event - people make last-minute plans, so keep promoting right up to the last moment.
DURING THE EVENT:
→ Take photos or videos during the event which you can use to promote the next one! Try and encourage your attendees to have big happy smiling faces when having their pics taken to show what a good time they're having.
→ Give your attendees plenty of opportunities to take photos and videos while they are at the event, and encourage them to share to their own social media profiles. Again, this helps to create some hype around your event and will ensure you get more bookings next time.
→ Email everyone after the event and invite them to share their photos with you for marketing purposes, and leave reviews on your social media pages / Google.
Need help promoting an upcoming event? Sometimes talking it through with an expert can be the thing you need to skyrocket your event to success. That's why we offer 1-2-1 power hour sessions to help businesses get clear and focused on what they need to be doing when it comes to social media marketing.