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event marketing ideas

5 Creative Event Marketing Ideas You Should Steal

Creative event marketing ideas can boost ticket sales exponentially. While you’ve undoubtedly heard about the importance of promoting your event through social media marketing and advertising, if you really want your event to be successful, it can help to think outside the box.

Here are five creative event marketing ideas you might not have thought of that you can try immediately. The best part is that none of them have to be very expensive!

1. Host a Twitter Chat

A Twitter chat is a live online event. You promote your Twitter chat in advance and people will “attend” at the specified time by following a Twitter hashtag that you create for the event.

People can follow all tweets related to the hashtag and even publish their own tweets to join the conversation (they just have to include the hashtag in their own tweets so everyone else sees their posts). Many people choose to use a tool like TweetChat to follow hashtag-based chats on Twitter. This is much easier than continually refreshing a personal Twitter stream to find the latest tweets from the chat.

If you want your chat to be successful, you need to deliver information that your target audience wants. You could answer questions about your event or give sneak peaks behind the scenes. Even better, invite the performers or speakers to join the chat! Buffer offers a great introduction to hosting and joining Twitter chats.

2. Livestream Videos

Livestreaming is very popular, and thanks to easy to use and free tools, like Facebook Live and Periscope, you can hold live video sessions directly within Facebook using your iOS or Android mobile device.

Livestreaming works very well to generate excitement for your event. With that in mind, you need to provide great content that your audience actually wants. Consider interviewing performers or speakers to generate excitement for your event that leads to ticket sales.

Using some third-party tools, you can even create a split-screen in your livestream, so you and the person you’re interviewing don’t have to be in the same place at the same time. BlueJeans, Wirecast, and OBS are examples of tools you can use for creating a split-screen. Each offers different features and pricing models, so review the details and choose the tool that will work best for your livestreaming goals.

3. Host an Ask Me Anything (AMA)

An Ask Me Anything (AMA) is exactly what the name implies. Someone agrees to answer any questions people want to ask at a specific place and time online. You can host an AMA on sites like Reddit or AMAfeed.

To successfully run an AMA to promote your event and sell more tickets, you need to make sure you understand how the site or tool you’re using works and what the site allows you to do (or not do). Furthermore, if you’re using Reddit for your AMA, make sure you understand what the Reddit community will tolerate. This article from PR Daily explains the AMA process using Reddit very well.

4. Hold Free Webinars

Free webinars are very effective in event marketing, particularly for non-entertainment events. For example, if you’re holding a non-profit event or a business-related event, a webinar could work very well for promotion and increased ticket sales. Tools like GoToWebinar, WebinarJam, and WebEx make it easy to hold free webinars.

You can hold a webinar at a specific time and let people know in your promotions for the webinar that you’ll provide useful, meaningful information. The most successful webinars teach people something and end with an upsell. The content of the webinar should make the upsell be the next logical step for viewers to take to solve their problems or meet their goals. For event marketing, the upsell would be buying tickets to your upcoming event.

Another bonus of holding free webinars is that you’re able to collect email addresses from people when the register. With that in mind, the topic of the webinar should be closely related to your event’s purpose and theme to ensure the right people register. Once they register, you can continue to promote your event to them through email marketing!

5. Partner with an Influential Brand Ambassador

Who is influential among your target online audience? Who already has the eyes and ears of your target audience for reasons that align with your event’s purpose? When you identify that person, approach them and ask them to be a brand ambassador for your event. To find online influencers in your niche, free tools like Followerwonk and BuzzSumo (free for limited search results) work very well as a starting point.

You can use social media marketing to try to motivate online influencers to share information about your event to your target audience, but hiring an influential brand ambassador might be a wise investment for your event marketing. Consider the focus, size, and reach of an influencer’s audience before you approach them with your offer.

Keep in mind, you might be able to engage an online influencer’s help without having to pay them money. They might actually like your event enough to promote it for free, or they might be willing to negotiate for a different type of payment such as free tickets to the event or free cross-promotion.

Your Next Steps to Leverage Creative Event Marketing Ideas

Developing and implementing creative event marketing ideas doesn’t have to be expensive, but you do need to be willing to promote the ideas listed above if you want them to successfully increase awareness for your event, word-of-mouth marketing, and ticket sales. If no one knows about your Twitter chat, livestream, AMA, or webinar, no one will attend, which means your efforts will be for naught.

Furthermore, you need to consider your audience and pursue event marketing ideas that are the right match for your event and your target audience. Just because webinars work really well for non-profit and business-related events doesn’t mean they’ll work well for your event. You have to be willing to test creative event marketing ideas to ensure they’ll drive adequate results your event, so start small, tweak to improve results, and scale once you know what works.

Need help selling tickets online and marketing your event to boost ticket sales? AttendStar offers online ticketing and event marketing services! Just contact AttendStar at 615-223-1973 or use the contact form to get started.

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