Written By: Shannon Briggs

Welcome, fall! The season behind all the best f-words: football, festivals, …fumpkin spice lattes? That second f-word may be my most favorite of all. I love attending fall events, and they’re also one of my favorite marketing projects to take on. Who doesn’t love to promote FUN? Yet, in order for festivals to pull off all this fun, an incredible amount of behind-the-scenes work goes into making them the best they can be. Marketing an event requires tons of planning and action. Here are six tips to get you on the right track.

Start Early

I cannot stress this enough. Event marketing needs to begin a minimum of six weeks ahead of your event date. Depending on the type of event, it could be months earlier. You need time to gain traction and visibility, sell tickets, and continue to be on the top of people’s minds. Especially in the fall, the competition is stiff for places to be and things to do on the weekends. Starting your marketing campaign early can put you ahead of the competition in terms of brand recognition and save-the-dates on calendars.  

Cohesive Strategy

When it comes to getting the word out about an event, a website plus a Facebook post just won’t cut it. You need a more comprehensive marketing strategy. Your website should be the home base of all information about your event. Then, consider a press release and media campaign, regular social media content, an email marketing campaign, and paid advertising to spread the word to the largest number of potential attendees. All of these tools work together to simultaneously boost each other up, which in turn boosts your presence as a whole.

Paid Social

Speaking of paid ads, social media advertising campaigns are going to be the best bang-for-your-buck advertising available and will help you reach a highly targeted audience outside of the people you currently reach through your social media pages. Get your event in front of the people who are most likely to attend, but don’t yet know about it, with Facebook and Instagram advertising.

Engaging Content

Having a social media presence is a start, but creating content that people actually want to see is the next level up on how to truly take advantage of these platforms. Create hype videos to release on social. Interview key players at your event. Create contests and giveaways to drive engagement. Promote your media coverage as a credibility indicator. Most importantly, make sure your Facebook event is set-up and share it far and wide!

Consistency

Along with engaging content, you want to create consistent content on a regular basis. One post or news article will only go so far. Develop a strategy to keep your  content visible and engaging all the way  up to your event. You may also want to increase the amount of social media posts and media coverage as event day draws closer. Creating a calendar to plan your content ahead of time will help.

Live Posts

Lastly, have an on-the-ground team whose sole job on event day is to post on social media. You’ll create hype and interest during the event, causing FOMO among non-attendees. Additionally, you’ll have tons of photo and video content after the fact that will be perfect to use in promotions for future events. Bonus points are awarded for hiring a professional photographer and/or videographer to capture great content for future use as well.