How do you promote an event today, in a world saturated with information and invitations?

Creating an event is already a challenge. But getting the word out is where everything is decided. Promoting an event is a strategic art, far more than a simple social media campaign.

Clear objectives, powerful messages, the right channels: use this article as a checklist for successfully promoting your professional event, and make your key messages heard above the noise.

4 prerequisites for promoting your event effectively

First of all, it's impossible to promote a professional event without putting these prerequisites in place.

Set the objectives for promoting your event

Every event project necessarily starts with setting your objectives.

Whatever type of event you're organizing, decide whether your objective is rather to:

  • Maximize registrations or ticket sales
  • Boost the awareness of your brand or of the event itself, for example if it's a first edition
  • Generate engagement and interactions on social media
  • Attract a specific type of audience: decision-makers, partners, qualified prospects, etc.
  • Fill a quota of sponsors or exhibitors

Rank your priorities in terms of objectives. Would you rather increase your visibility, or boost conversion? Attract a qualified audience or rather the general public?

Study your target audience closely

Setting up your event communication and promotion strategy requires a deep understanding of your audience. The goal: take its characteristics and expectations into account to reach potential attendees.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself to analyze your target audience:

  • Who are your ideal attendees? Detail their profile in terms of socio-demographic criteria, geographic areas, industry sector for B2B events, etc.
  • What are their needs and expectations at a professional event? Networking, finding partners, learning, having a differentiating experience, etc.?
  • Which channels do they use to find out about the events available to them? Social media, newsletters, word of mouth, trade media, etc.? Further in the article, you'll discover in detail the different channels to consider, and the innovative tactics for using them.

Create two or three representative audience personas to guide your strategy.

Determine the key messages to promote

Planning your promotion revolves around key messages, which you'll spread across different channels. If your event is already planned internally, you should already have them in mind.

Put them down on paper, to make sure you apply them correctly throughout your promotion plan:

  • What is your event's value proposition? In other words: what will your attendees get out of it?
  • What are the differentiating elements of your event? Exclusive speakers, an innovative format, access to valuable resources, etc.?
  • What tone should your communication take? Corporate, or rather casual? Inspiring or rather formal?

Define the promotion timeline

The idea here: set up a reverse-engineered event communication schedule, with milestones, to communicate effectively throughout the event project.

For example, you can break down your communication plan into five stages, as follows:

  • A pre-launch phase: teasing and awareness building, a "save the date" campaign.
  • A conversion phase: first the rollout of early-bird rates (meaning selling tickets at a competitive price in advance), then an announcement of the headliners and major highlights.
  • An intensification phase: stronger calls to action ("last spots", countdown), additional announcements, and favorable rates for last-minute registrants.
  • A day-of communication phase, to engage guests and maximize the impact in terms of awareness.
  • A post-event promotion phase, to give your event visibility after it's over.

"Your attendees' experience begins well before the big day. A smooth event website, personalized emails, a clear registration area. These details, managed from a dedicated platform, radically change the perception of your event. And using an event management platform also means gaining efficiency at every stage: promotion, registration, follow-ups. That lets you focus on what matters most (the attendee experience), while improving your ROI.", Joy Grand, Marketing Manager at Digitevent

Which communication channels should you use to promote your event?

Now let's look at choosing your different promotional channels, and tips for successfully using them to spread the word about your event on a large scale, and maximize your attendance rate.

Organic channels

Here are the main organic levers to activate, with the indicators to track for each:

  • Event website: traffic, conversion rate, session duration, bounce rate
  • Organic social media: impressions, engagement, clicks, followers
  • Press relations: media mentions, web traffic generated, press coverage
  • Email / newsletters: open rate, clicks, conversions
  • Strategic partnerships: leads generated, partner traffic, indirect registration rate
  • Contests (no budget): engagement, shares, web traffic
  • Teaser videos: views, completion rate, clicks
  • Referral program: registrations, shares, conversion rate

1 - Create an event website

A well-designed event website lets you share all the key information about your event, while also converting your targets by getting them to buy their tickets online.

Optimize your site for SEO around keywords your target audience searches for. It should also be optimized for viewing on all devices (desktop, mobile, and tablet). Make sure it has a design that highlights your brand image, the event's value proposition, and its detailed program.

On the content side, make sure to add new content regularly, and check that your site's pages are indexed properly, so it ranks well in search engines.

Innovative tactics to encourage conversion:

  • Include a countdown showing when registration closes, or the number of spots still available.
  • Showcase content from previous editions on the site (photos, videos, attendee quotes, etc.), to spark visitors' curiosity.
  • Offer flexible payment options, such as installment payments.

Good news! With Digitevent, you don't need to be a web development expert to create an attractive website for your event. Easily add your content and brand guidelines to the platform, to get a custom white-label website.

Discover our event website builder.

2 - Use social media

Social media has quickly become an essential channel for promoting an event. Target the social platforms your target audience actually uses: Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, etc.

Vary the content formats you share in your social media strategy. Alternate between static visuals, carousels, motion-design videos, and videos featuring real people. Also create an official hashtag for your event, to bring together all the posts made by your company and your attendees.

Innovative tactics:

  • Bet on authenticity. Show, for example, the behind-the-scenes of the event preparation, to create an emotional attachment to your event.
  • Play on serialized content. Create a series of speaker profiles, or gradually reveal the themes and activities you'll be offering.
  • Publish interactive formats. Polls or quizzes in stories, and live streams to introduce your team or speakers before the event, are good ways to build engagement with your audience.
  • Build and run a pre-event community, where attendees can exchange ideas with each other on the event's theme.

3 - Develop press relations

Press relations can give your event strong credibility, broaden the reach of your communication, and reach qualified audiences through recognized channels.

Effective tactics:

  • Write a clear, engaging press kit. Highlight the event's context, the planned highlights, the organizers and partners, and provide a dedicated press contact.
  • Send a press release at the right time. Send it at least 4 to 6 weeks before the event, and follow up by highlighting strong news (such as reaching a registration milestone).
  • Target the trade media your audience reads, especially for your B2B events.
  • Personalize your contacts with journalists. Why not invite local journalists to your event?

4 - Promote your event through emails and newsletters

Email campaigns and newsletters are powerful conversion channels for promoting an event, especially with an already-qualified audience.

Effective tactics:

  • Segment your audience to refine the message in each of your emails, and make them more compelling.
  • Set up an automated email sequence. Start with an announcement or teaser, then an official invitation, followed by reminders, and finally, use email for your post-event communication.
  • Craft your email subject lines carefully, to boost their open rate. Highlight the benefits of the event for your targets, or a strong call-to-action.

Need a simple and powerful tool for sending online invitations? Discover Digitevent's personalized online invitation solution, which maximizes your deliverability, so your promotional emails really reach your target.

5 - Leverage your strategic partnerships

Setting up strategic partnerships lets you increase your visibility with already-engaged audiences, and pool communication resources. This might mean writing an article on partner blogs, or promoting the event on another brand's social media, for example.

Practical tactics:

  • Target the right partners. These are the ones with an audience that complements yours, and who share your values or your event's theme. They could be professional associations, specialized media, expert networks, schools, partner brands, or suppliers.
  • Offer a win-win exchange. For example, offer them broad exposure for their brand during the event, or shared data after the event (leads, insights and trends, etc.).

6 - Launch contests

Contests play on the gamified side of communication, and help generate visibility for your event. Be sure to clearly display the legal terms of the contest: start and end dates, rules, how it works, the prize, the method for choosing the winner, etc.

Innovative tactics:

  • Launch a User Generated Content campaign (content created by users) tied to a branded hashtag. Contest entrants must make a post related to the event's theme to win their spot.
  • Have the contest promoted and the winner chosen by an influencer in your industry.

7 - Create and share teaser videos

Share teaser videos across your different channels: the format is dynamic and easily grabs your target's attention. Make sure to clearly highlight the event's key information: the date, the location, how to register. To do this, use overlay text on the video, to make it clearly visible.

Innovative tactics:

  • Give your event's key message a face. Have it delivered by your speakers, your partners, your CEO, or why not the intern helping you prepare the event? This way, you create an emotional connection to your event.
  • Create a teaser video with a "surprise speaker". Before their presence is announced, your event's headline speaker makes a teaser video with their face covered or blurred.

8 - Set up a referral program

The idea here: turn your attendees, partners, or clients into ambassadors, while boosting registrations through network effect.

Effective techniques:

  • Offer an attractive reward for both parties: goodies, gifts, a VIP ticket, or a discount on a future edition for the referrer, and a ticket discount or access to bonus content for the referred person.
  • Make referring as easy as possible. Provide a unique referral link or code to use, along with ready-to-share content for referrers, to encourage sharing.
  • Recognize your referrers. Personalize your communication with them by acknowledging their involvement, and thanking them warmly.

Paid channels

Here are the main paid levers to activate, with the indicators to track for each:

  • Meta / LinkedIn / X Ads: CTR, CPL, conversions, ROI
  • Google Ads: CPC, conversions, traffic quality
  • Influencer marketing: reach, engagement, tracked traffic, brand awareness
  • Sponsored contests: participants, reach, leads or conversions

1 - Launch paid advertising campaigns

Paid advertising (on Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Meta Ads, etc.) is an excellent lever for accelerating your event's visibility, generating qualified registrations, and re-engaging undecided visitors. Craft your ad message so it's both appealing and informative.

Note: paid advertising can be fairly technical, and requires a certain level of expertise to get a good ROI. Consider getting support from a specialist, or taking training, to learn how to deploy your budget in the most cost-effective way through this channel.

Effective tactics:

  • Clearly define your advertising objective. Is it awareness? Conversion? Retargeting (to re-engage visitors to your site who haven't registered)?
  • Segment your audience according to each ad platform's targeting criteria: socio-demographic criteria, geographic criteria, behavioral criteria (followers of your social media page, visitors to your website, etc.).
  • Use custom or lookalike audience features, which let you capitalize on the profile of people already registered for your event.

2 - Develop a marketing strategy with influencers

Influencer marketing is a fantastic way to promote your event. It multiplies the reach of your event communication, by tapping into the emotional connection influencers build with their audiences through parasocial relationships.

Effective tactics:

  • Target micro and nano-influencers in your industry instead. They require a smaller budget, and generate more engagement from their community, meaning more potential results for promoting your event.
  • Share the event's value proposition with influencers, without limiting their creative freedom. They should promote it in the most authentic way possible, in keeping with their usual editorial style.

How do you measure the success of your event promotion?

Once your event promotion plan is built, take the time to set up a dashboard that measures your strategy's performance. This will let you know what worked well or less well, and do better next time if needed.

To do this, track specific KPIs, tied to your event promotion objectives, to measure their impact.

This could include:

  • KPIs related to conversion: total number of registrations or conversion rate by channel. For example, the percentage of site visitors who registered through your landing page.
  • KPIs related to the event's visibility: reach and engagement on social media, email open and click rates, traffic on the event website, mentions of the event in the press or on social media, etc.

To dig deeper, check out our article on event communication KPIs.

Make sure to choose the right tools to track these metrics effectively. Google Analytics lets you measure traffic, social media tools track your performance on social platforms, a monitoring tool tracks your event's media coverage, etc.

Also carry out a cool-headed review once your promotion campaign is over. Which channels converted best? Which content generated the most visibility and engagement? Which moments in the campaign drove the most results? What return on investment did you get from your promotional campaign?

Finally, don't hesitate to gather feedback from your guests themselves. Send a satisfaction survey to everyone who attended the event, and ask them how they heard about it. The goal: get insights to analyze internally, to promote your next event even more effectively.

You're now, almost, ready to promote your event the right way! Discover Digitevent, the event management platform that lets you promote your event beforehand, engage attendees during the event, and measure its performance afterward. Everything you need to organize a successful, memorable event!