Step 4: Marketing

With your aims decided and your event planned out, you now need to go-get those delegates! So, how will your potential delegates find out about the event? How will you reach them? How will you make your invitation stand out so that your invitation is accepted?

When planning your marketing campaign, places to advertise could include:

• the internet
• your website
• direct mail invitation
• specialist press
• local and national newspapers
• your contacts list and existing customers
• word of mouth

Keep in mind that the promotional method that costs the most money may not necessarily yield the best response. Also remember that each method has a different speed of response and useful life span, so it's important within your campaign to identify which source of referral actually prompted each attendee to take part to avoid wasting effort on things that return no result.

Think about the timing and frequency of your promotional triggers. The promotions that work best are the ones that prompt an immediate response:

• promoting too early allows people to put off a decision to attend to another day, that then gets forgotten
• signing up too far in advance has a higher risk that your attendees' plans will change, and cancel their place
• leaving it too late carries the risk that your message may not reach the potential delegate in time (remember this will be a different length of time for each type of media)

Work backwards from the date of your event to determine when to schedule your range of promotional triggers. Adverts in just one place may not be enough.

Armed with solid information about response to your event promotion allows you to take pro-active control of the event's outcome.

If demand is too low:

• try changing your promotional focus
• reword your adverts and try again (particularly easy with email marketing)
• consider adapting the content to gain a wider appeal

If demand is too high:

• scale back on future adverts already in the pipeline
• have a solid mechanism in place to tell newcomers that you're full
• create a waiting list
• verify that those already registered are still planning to attend

Using the built-in marketing reports provided by plusforevents.com you can

• monitor the effectiveness of each promotional media
• monitor response rate graphically, over time
• match specific promotional triggers with real response
• run automatic waiting lists

Knowing in real-time which marketing tools are actually working allows you to make adjustments to your promotion before the actual event.

Being pro-active in this way enthuses a positive experience and therefore positive image of you and your company.

Make it easy for your attendees to say Yes!
to your events