Marketing an Upcoming Event

First Answer: You can try LinkedIn or Facebook. LinkedIn, depending on the actual event, may be a hit or miss. Facebook you can get a pretty decent reach in your area, once again depending on the nature of the actual event.

First/Second Answer: You may want to address your pricepoints, or offer online discounts in these venues. If you're selling tickets at the door, make the online ones cheaper, so it entices them to want to purchase. Since I don't know your metrics (very hard to do offline btw) you may be able to pull attendance up using price testing.

Second Answer: Depending on the price of the tickets, you may need to book much more than 300 tickets to get the promised 300 butts in seats. I'd go back to whoever set these numbers up (the 300 guarantees) and see how they came up with that number. If they pulled it out of their butts, you may want to start hustling free tickets ASAP. If the number was based on certain marketing activities and logical ways of thinking, you should try to stick to your original plan.

Tidbit about FB Ads: When you target, FB has an "AND' targetting function that a lot of people don't realize or use. What you would want to do is create ads based on the industries the business is in and then make the 'AND' targeting category Entrepreneurs, Business Owners, Managers etc, so you're not wasting ad spend. I believe it's called Additional Interests or something, I'm speaking off the cuff here though.

Good luck

Hi Idrissa,

You should have begun selectively giving tickets away from day one.

When I say "selectively", I mean just that.

If you had given each sponsor 10 free tickets for them to pass on to their staff, you would already have 220 of your projected attendance covered.

Allowing sponsors to offer free tickets to their customers or as gifts to prospective customers may (depending on the event) be a "sales tool" for the sponsor, and puts your sponsor in a position of becoming a willing "promoter" of the event.

It may be too late for this sort of incentive offer. Many times an event can be planned to include activities that are attractive to the sponsors customers/prospective customers, employees, etc. and much of the initial promotion efforts become somewhat automatic.

Hi Idrissa, not sure exactly where you're located. But the following list may help you with getting some additional online exposure for your event. Some of the event listing websites offer additional advertising options too, might be worth checking out. Totally depends on location/industry and your goals though.

List Of 50+ Event Directories You Can Submit Your Event To:

Business Directories | Confident Brand

Thank you for everyone's advice. We have been giving free tickets to sponsors (10 each) and to in-kind partners. Also, I must mention that the ticket cost is quite low-- $10. So I don't think the discount would really be impactful. Thank you for the event link, I am continuing to submit the event and we will see how things go.