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Hillary Millman: Promoting Your Event-What's the Story
- Keep the goal for the event in mind...is it for visibility, fundraising or volunteer recruitment.
- Clarify why you are having the event, your target audience, and how to reach them.
- Are you marketing to friends or strangers? You messaging to friends of friends should be different than your message to strangers. Messaging to strangers needs its own plan.
- Don’t rely solely on social media; you don’t own it. You must build your own email list (you own that). Consider postcards that are compelling instead of letters. When using social media, create your own event page and share it. Look for mini-influencers to build traffic to your event page. Use social media savvy graphics.
- Keep current year presenters and honorees engaged in subsequent years’ event.
Chereese Jervis-Hill and Justin Wingenroth:
Planning What You Do at the Event
- The goal is to make sure the folks at your event know about your organization and how they can support your cause. This requires strategy, execution, and training Board members in their role. Make sure your Board members are visible. Help them find fun ways to encourage guests to bid, donate and participate.
- Strategically place Board members and supporters of the organization at tables with significant potential donors and friends, dignitaries, and members of the media.
- Keep your ‘Run of Show’ tight, with small bites of essential information and engaging tone. Ask your presenters and honorees to share scripts of their comments beforehand so you can correlate tone and introductions. Or try filming videos of speeches in advance of the event and showing those at the event with honorees just accepting the award in person. Mix it up. Have fun. Perhaps the only speaker is the one with a personal story to tell about how the organization impacted their life.
- Program activities at the event that are fun, innovative and relate to the purpose of the event. Depending on the type of event---gala, outdoor activity, indoor casual--- look at ways to engage the participants in an activity that relates to your cause.
- Capture moments at the event. Try flash mob photography with props that relate to your cause, photo booth pics with props that are shared on individual social media, or photos at stations along a walk/ golf/ bike event.
Mike Dardano, Marianne Oros and John Van Dekker of the Chamber Marketing Committee: Marketing Before and After the Event
- The reason for marketing your event is to make money and one of the critical components of making money is ‘Sponsors.’ Here are sone techniques for wooing sponsors. Link sponsorship levels to your mission. Articulate what is in it for them. Connect sponsors to participants. Promote sponsors ahead of the event with curtain calls and certain reveals for sponsorship levels that create buzz. Plant seeds for the following year. Share photos from the event that highlights key sponsors, tag to their social media pages.
- Encourage coverage of your event with compelling personal stories and press ready photos and script. B Roll and press releases are key for engaging the press in promoting your event. Know what writers and reporters are looking for.
- Finding cost-effective ways to do marketing essential if you are to make money so look at the skill sets of your board and volunteers to help. Ask professionals for free help with small specific questions. Pay for ads and try to barter for larger coverage of your event. Use influencers in local and hyper-local media. Use hyper-local community calendars.
- Finding Influencers with an interest in your mission or cause may not be easy, but try Google searches, Instagram key words and hash tags, enter all-text key words, and some local magazines and publications list influencers and reporters by topic.
- Know the cost and benefits of owned, earned, and paid marketing. You own your website, email lists and posts. You earn media coverage. You pay for ads and boosts on social media.
Join us on October 18th for our next Nonprofit Boot Camp.
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