Are you hosting an event and looking for event marketing ideas? Read on for myZone’s top tips for cheap, or even free,  event promotion.

Free Event Marketing Techniques

1. Crafting a Viral Strategy For Your Next Event

Viral traffic is one of the best ways to promote your event for less, and it should form a major part of your event marketing strategy. You can begin to create viral traffic by encouraging people to talk about the unique aspects of your event on social media.

Start by carefully analyzing the biggest draws of your next event by thinking about what is uniquely different about it. Did you manage to get hold of a great venue? Are you hosting an experiential event that completely immerses your guests in the experience through games or other activities? Find out what it is about your event that’ll sell the most tickets, and get people talking about it on social media.

2. Secure Great Performers

There is a lot to consider when booking performers for your event. But one thing is certain, when you hire a well-known artist you are essentially paying for their marketing power. Although good artists require a budget, the “buzz” they create costs nothing extra. Good artists and performers are not free, but their marketing power is included in the pricetag.

3. Get Your Friends on Board and Stay Social

This means on and off social media. Social media content that adds value to anyone who sees it, whether or not they’re attending your event, is good content that is shareable and has the potential to go viral. If you want attendees and followers to share your social posts, they need to be interesting enough to warrant it. Remember, simply sharing the content you create is not enough; you need to engage with followers and give them something interesting to share and discuss.

Your closest friends and business associates can be great free event marketing channels, so maintain good relationships and don’t neglect them even when you’re busy producing your event. Your friends, sponsors and strategic partners can have a big influence on the reach of your content and help you seed your viral event marketing program.

It could be as simple as shining the spotlight on someone else by liking and sharing their content, then asking them to do the same. These friends and partners can serve as advocates that will help you promote your event for less by increasing your promotional reach.

4. Pay-for-Performance Marketing

Hire a sub-promoter that will advertise your event in exchange for a percentage of the ticket sales. Hiring a company for a percentage of the ticket sales is another low risk event marketing strategy. The company gives you everything up front so you only pay based on the performance of your event. A good sub-promoter will have all the necessary tools and Internet skills to get your event seen by the right people and you can account for the cost of your sub-promoter (or network of sub-promoters) by baking the cost of their services into the ticket sales so there is no out of pocket expense.

5. Keeping Your PR Channels Open 

Having a unique event means the press will want to cover it, but it is still always a good idea to build and maintain close relationships with the top editors and top publications in your city. Know who they are, ands give them extra information and newsworthy tips. If you have a great artist coming to town, give them first dibs on the story. Build a list of media outlets that you work with because media exposure costs nothing and can be a great channel for free event marketing.

Cheap Event Marketing Techniques 

6. Remarketing

Remarketing (targeting people who have been to your website but didn’t buy a ticket) is another way you can promote your event for less by getting more lucrative results for your marketing dollar. A small percentage of people who visit your website will buy tickets, so reach out to the people who haven’t through advertising placement after they leave your site.

For example, ticketZone has an advanced demographic tool that allows the tracking of age, gender, location and interests of people who connected through Facebook and then bought tickets to a particular event. You can use this ideal customer demographic data to target the people who visited an event website and who fit the profile of your typical ticket buyer, and then remarket very specifically to them. This cuts the cost of marketing to a larger audience and can be a great cheap event marketing method.

7. Email Marketing 

Email is a very neglected event marketing tool that we believe holds a lot of promise. Make sure you have an updated email marketing list that targets people who may be interested in your event, such as previous ticket buyers. Mail Chimp is a very cheap and robust platform that can help you compile this kind of data, and has proven to be a great event marketing tool for many of our clients.

As part of your email marketing strategy, you should also be sending out regular newsletters to keep in touch with your regular customers and keep them in the loop of what’s going on.

8. Giving Out Free Tickets

If you’re looking for other ways to promote your event for less, try giving away a few tickets to get some bodies through the door and build positive momentum. Release early-bird tickets for free or at a lower cost, and make sure you protect against illegal ticket sales by making them non-transferrable.

Your early bird ticket buyers are a large low-cost marketing channel. When you are approaching a holiday like Halloween or New Years, getting those early influencers on board is important because people want to go where their friends are going. If you get the early tickets out with enough time ahead of the event and secure those guests then they will recruit their friends over time.

You want to get people committed early on so they become a large marketing voice months in advance. Limit those tickets to loyal customers, with a maximum number of tickets per person; a certain level of exclusivity is also important.

9. Hyper Targeted PPC

Although PPC can be costly if you are targeting keywords broadly it can be a cost-effective way to generate ticket sales if you narrow your targeting by choosing the correct target keywords. For example, targeting keywords like “New York Nightclub” will rack up an expensive bill very quickly, but if you hyper target your keywords for a specific event, artist, music genre, and day of the week, you’ll yield higher ticket sales. It’s also a good idea to narrow your PPC targetting geographically (within 10 miles of your venue, for example).

10. Staff up/Outsource

Make sure you ave enough people to fill your most important event marketing roles, or consider identifying tasks that you can outsource in order to free up your time so you can focus on what matters. Taking charge of all aspects of event marketing is not only impossible in most cases, but it will slow you down and hinder the success of your event.

Promoting Your Event For Less: Share Your Thoughts!

Know of a great way to promote your event for less that we didn’t touch on? Let us know in the comments below. And remember, feel free to contact us for more info on cheap event marketing. With Halloween and New Year’s Eve just around the corner, there’s no better time to ramp up your event marketing efforts than right now!