How to Effectively Promote Your Event Online – 13 Powerful Tips

One of the most critical and often overlooked steps of running a successful online event is promotion and marketing. You can nail all the logistics and plan an incredible event, but if no one knows it’s happening—it could all be for nothing. Luckily, effectively promoting your online event is simple, with a little helpful direction.

Today, we’re going to look at 13 tips for how to promote events online the proper way, including things you can do on your own, ways to leverage sponsors and other organizations, and other great steps you can take right now.

1. Create Content on Your Blog to Support the Event

Your blog is an already established channel for connecting with your audience. Take advantage of the work you’ve already done to build up that audience by communicating about your event in your blog posts. The best part about this is you can start promoting your event and answering critical questions weeks or even months before your event date.

2. Build a Custom Landing Page for the Event

A must-do step when it comes to how to promote events online is to create a custom landing page for the event. This gives you an incredible way to relay important information, including things like start times, dates, announcements, and even a way for attendees to sign up. This page will be critical for search engines to discover your event and include it in their results for people to find your event(s).

What’s really great about choosing to use the Event Espresso platform for your organization is that when you create an event, the system automatically creates a custom landing page for you. All you have to do is input your information, load up an image, and the system builds out a beautiful custom landing page just for your event. Event Espresso is also optimized for search engines (more on Event Schema Markup down below).

3. Add Your Event to Your Email Signature

Are you someone who connects a lot with potential attendees via email? If you are, you could include the details of your event in your email signature. To avoid information overload or a cluttered look, you can simply put the name of the event linked to your custom Event Espresso event landing page. That way, anyone you connect with has a simple pathway to find out more about your event and hopefully sign up!

4. Market the Event Through Email

Hopefully, you’ve been working hard to build up an email list of your members, customers, fans, or supporters. If you haven’t, that’s okay. It’s never too late to start. When figuring out how to promote events online, leveraging your email contact list is a great way to get the word out. Remember to email your attendees early and often, especially as new information is available and as important event dates happen (especially registration dates). 

And if you choose to use Event Espresso for your organization, the system easily integrates with popular mass emailing platforms like MailChimp and Infusionsoft. You can leverage these integrations to send out information promoting the event or even for announcements to those people who have already signed up to attend.

5. Take Advantage of Event Schema Markup in Google Search

Many times, potential attendees are going to hear about your event from someone else and use Google and other search engines to find out information. If you’ve got a developer or a little technical knowledge, you can use what’s called event schema markup to better showcase the details. What this does is shows critical details of your event right in the Google search. People can find out information about your event even before they click to see your custom event page!

6. Add Your Event to Facebook Events

Social media is a powerful tool to connect with your followers, fans, and other potential event attendees. Make sure you add your event to Facebook events and include the location. Facebook will automatically start showing the event to people who live in the area, which is a great way to get some free promotion.

7. Leverage Local News Event Calendars

Not only is Facebook a good spot to post details of your event, but so are local news event calendars. One of the best tips when it comes to how to promote events online is to take advantage of event calendars run by local news stations and local newspapers. Generally, these are free and are a great way to connect with even more potential event attendees.

8. Share With Your Network on LinkedIn

If your upcoming event is something of interest to your professional network, don’t forget to share your details on LinkedIn. You can do this through direct and personalized messages or as a post to everyone you’re connected with. This is another great spot to send a short marketing message with a link to your custom event page where people you hook with interest can get more information.

9. Create Instagram Stories Promoting the Event

Speaking of social media, don’t forget Instagram, especially if your target audience is known to frequent the platform. You can create stories that showcase you preparing for the event and even teasers to the kind of entertainment or content happening at your event.

10. Make Use of Twitter, Snapchat, and TikTok

One of the best ways to build up steam and a buzz around your event is to utilize every social media platform you have at your disposal. Outside of just Facebook and Instagram, you also have sites like Twitter, Snapchat, and TikTok, to name a few. Make sure you’re sending out a coordinated social media message on all platforms for the best results.

11. Run Targeted Social Media Ads

If you want to really take advantage of the reach of social media, you can spend some money and run targeted ads across all platforms. Facebook and Instagram allow you to run ads on both platforms under one account, which is great for convenience and a congruent message. The other platforms also have ad opportunities that can really get you and your team the interest boost you may be looking for.

12. Collaborate With Your Event Sponsors

Your event sponsors are there to support your cause, but they are also looking to get some publicity themselves. It’s in their best interest to see your event as successful as possible. Make sure someone on your team coordinates with your event sponsors to get the word out as much as possible. One of the easiest ways to do this is by providing some graphics and wording to the sponsors they can easily share on their social media, email, and other marketing channels. You can also offer special prices and discounts that sponsors, vendors and partners can offer to their audience.

13. Send Out a Professional Press Release

News stations and other media sources get their information for stories from press releases. And while a press release may cost you a few dollars, it can be a great way to get out the word for your event. If you’re running an event that may be of interest to the media, this is a great opportunity to look into.

Putting It All Together

The best way to ensure your event is a success is to work your tail off promoting as much as possible. Remember, the earlier you start promoting, and the more channels you leverage, the better your results are going to be.

If you’d like some help to streamline the process, take a minute to check out how Event Espresso may be able to assist. With the ability to easily create a custom landing page, connect with email programs, and easily take registrations and sell tickets, it’s the simplest way to get on the road towards a successful event. And the best part, compared to other online event platforms, you control your custom landing page and the sign-up process, as opposed to being confined to the strict parameters of some other platforms.