Increasing the attendance of your live event, whether it’s an online live event such as a webinar or a live event such as a seminar can be achieved thanks to social media.
There are a few event marketing strategies you can implement to promote your live event, either through paid advertising or organically, leveraging the different marketing features on Facebook.
How To Use Social Media To Market Your Event
Update your Facebook page banner
The first event marketing tip is to update your Facebook page banner.
Since Facebook now allows you to have a video banner instead of a static image cover, it is important to leverage this feature to help promote your event.
When creating your video make sure you follow the size recommendation. Ideally, your cover video should be 820 x 462 pixels. In terms of the length, it should be from 20 seconds to 90 seconds long.
If people view your video from a mobile device though, the sides of the video won’t show so make sure important elements such as text overlay are closer to the middle of the video so it’s not cut off when watched from a mobile device.
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The video when used as an event marketing strategy should include all the important information about your event such as the time, the location, the date, the benefits of attending, who will be presenting and who the event is for.
Make sure you also add a call-to-action asking people to register to the event. You can also redirect the call-to-action tab below the banner to the registration page.
Publish posts about your event
The second event promotion strategy is to publish posts about your event on a regular basis. Your posts should not just be about promoting the event, but also build momentum about the event. If a new speaker has been confirmed, then announce it and share information about the speaker and what makes them special.
Other posts that can help build momentum when using Facebook as an event marketing strategic execution is sharing behind-the-scenes pictures of videos leading up to the event.
For example, if it’s a live event, you can record the event space being prepared and share it as a post. Other posts you can publish can be short videos giving insights on what will be shared either from you the organiser or from the speakers if your event includes guest speakers.
Make sure that any post you publish also includes a call-to-action redirecting people to register.
Leverage influencers
A third event marketing tip to promote your live event is leveraging influencers.
Influencers are people in your industry who have large and engaged audiences as well as authority and credibility. What this means is that your event marketing plan should include asking an influencer to market your event.
You can either pay influencers a flat fee, or commissions or negotiate something else to make it a win-win situation for both you and the influencer.
In order to identify online influencers, you can start by performing a simply Google search. For example, should you want to find influencers in the makeup industry, look for “makeup tutorial blogs”.
Once on the blog, make sure it is being updated regularly and that the content is aligned with the values of your brand. If the blog is being updated regularly, that means it’s still active.
If so, explore the person’s social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter or Youtube. Should their audience size, video views and engagement rate be much higher than the average audience size of social media users in your industry, you could consider partnering with them to promote your event.
Use live videos
The fourth event promotion strategy is to use live videos.
Facebook live is Facebook’s live-streaming video functionality. Facebook users can find your live videos in their newsfeed if they are your friends or follow you, or can find your live videos broadcast from your business page if they are fans of your page. Facebook live is a good tool to use is because Facebook prioritises live videos.
In other words, Facebook will show your live broadcast in the newsfeed of more people than they will show your standard posts.
Make sure when using Facebook as an event marketing strategy that your live video includes all the important information about your event such as the time, the location, the date, the benefits of attending, who will be presenting and who the event is for.
Make sure you also add a call-to-action asking people to register to the event.
If you’d like to take your Facebook marketing to the next level, and increase the results you’re getting from your current Facebook marketing efforts by 10, click here to download my FREE Facebook marketing report. Simply enter your name and email and I’ll instantly send you the report.
Use Facebook stories
The fifth event promotion strategy to promote your live event is to use Facebook stories. A Facebook story is a new visual way to publish a post on Facebook and is very similar to Instagram stories. A Facebook story can be a series of photos, videos or animations and once posted, they disappear after 24 hours.
Since they disappear after 24 hours you can use them as an event based marketing strategy without cluttering your Facebook profile or your Facebook page with promotional posts.
Plus, Facebook stories can be much more engaging than standard posts because they are visual and you can add different types of effects and filters which makes your content much more interesting to viewers.
When creating your story as part of your event marketing plan, make sure it includes all the important information about your event such as the time, the location, the date, the benefits of attending, who will be presenting and who the event is for. Make sure you also add a call-to-action asking people to register to the event.
Then, once you’re ready to publish your story, simply login to your Facebook account and click on the plus sign below the ‘stories’ tab.
Use Facebook ads
The sixth event based marketing strategy to promote your live event is to use Facebook ads. When you choose this option, you’ll have to decide which campaign objective to select among the 11 different campaign objectives available.
The most common one to select when promoting an event is the conversion campaign objective as it will allow you to see exactly how many registrants you’ve gotten as a result of your ads.
Make sure when using Facebook ads as part of your event marketing plan, you install the Facebook pixel on both your event registration page and on the thank you page in order to track your conversions.
Create a Facebook event
The seventh event based marketing strategy to promote your live event is to create a Facebook event. Facebook events can be very powerful for businesses as they can be promoted to thousands of people in a very short space of time and help drive ticket sales and increase attendance rates.
What also makes Facebook events a very powerful marketing tool, is the fact that guests can invite other people to attend, so you can really benefit from word-of-mouth.
In order to create a Facebook event, simply go to your Facebook page, click on “events” and click on “create event”, then follow the prompts.
If you’d like to take your Facebook marketing to the next level, and increase the results you’re getting from your current Facebook marketing efforts by 10, click here to download my FREE Facebook marketing report. Simply enter your name and email and I’ll instantly send you the report.
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About the Author
Corinna Essa is known internationally as the go-to person when it comes to social media marketing.
Corinna owns a social media marketing company helping businesses around the world leverage the power of social media without doing any of the legwork. Her company has been featured in many media outlets including Sky Business news, Working Women magazine, Ymagazine, Tasmanian Times, Channel 7 and 101fm.
Corinna is also the author of 2 bestselling books “Money On Demand – The 16 Fastest Ways to Becoming a Millionaire Online” and “Reach: The SECRETS to converting your social media audience into your network marketing downline fast”
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