Murray Media’s Top Tips on how to promote your event

You have the venue booked, catering arranged and your guest speaker confirmed, so it’s time to rally up your guests for your event. But how to start?

Promoting your event and reaching the right people can be vital to its success, so here are some of our Top Tips on how to do just that:

Always plan and research before you begin
Before you begin to invite everybody you know take some time to think about the type of people you would like to come to your event. What age group are they? Where do they live? Why would they want to come to your event? From this you can then form an idea of the typical person you are trying to reach.

Once you then know who you want to reach you can research into the best way to reach them. For example, would it be worthwhile posting an advert in the local paper if you wanted to reach 18-20 year olds? Probably not, but it may be worth running a social media campaign or teaming up with the local university to be included in their newsletter or put posters up around their campus.

Get it in the news
Making your event newsworthy can be a great way to build a buzz and drum up interest from potential guests. Whether it’s raising awareness for charity or teaming up with local businesses, think about what makes your event special and what could be your promotional hook. 

Once you know what this is the first thing you need to do is write a press release. This can be around one page with at least one great image you can attach and contact information. 

When you have your press release all ready to go, the next thing is to engage with the local press to get them to feature it. It may be emailing the most relevant editor or speaking to a contact you’ve engaged with before, and send them the release directly.

Another fantastic way to connect with the press is to list your event on free listings online. This can be online or printed, with your local paper, blogs, tourist websites or magazines. A lot of these are registered online, so be sure to search for listings and complete the forms to submit your event. 

Use Social Media to engage with potential guests
Social Media is a fantastic tool for reaching new potential guests with news of your event. But with Facebook constantly changing the way they assess business page posts and who sees them, what are the best ways of using this tool?

One thing we’d suggest doing is making a digital invite to your event, as visual content is proven to achieve a higher engagement. This can be a short video or an image, with all of your event details on you can share. When you’ve created this we’d then suggest considering running a social media campaign to boost this post. 

With social media campaigns, you can choose exactly who sees your post based on their previous choices, so it’s a great way to reach your target audience and ensure your event appears in their news feed. Another plus is that with campaigns starting as low as £3 it’s a relatively cheap way to promote your event, making it really cost-effective.

For more information about Murray Media and our services check out our website or give us a call on 01273 204200.

If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk