Online events – we organize them, but how to promote them?
Over the past year, online events have gone from being a modern and innovative form of event organization to a mainstream way of holding events, given the spread of COVID-19 and the associated social isolation and restrictions. The importance of online events has grown tremendously, making promoting them and reaching the right audience a key factor.
Where to promote online events and what are the effective ways and communication channels that really work?
Regardless of what type of event you are promoting, using the right communication channel is key to reaching your desired target audience. Here are our six effective ways to promote online events:
Social networks
Users who use social networks have an affinity for communicating, interacting, learning, or purchasing online. They are more likely to attend online events whose topics match their interests, especially since they are used to living on and through their phones.
- Facebook is extremely suitable and convenient for promoting an online event, as it allows this to be done through purposeful creation of one, accompanied by an invitation to users to join it. Through advertising or sharing by users, it can reach large groups of people, including your future customers. Facebook allows for two-way communication in real time, receiving feedback and comments from your regular users, which can convince others to trust you. It also allows for monitoring trends in consumer behavior and attitudes, as well as adjusting current campaigns and offers with a few clicks, when necessary. Facebook promotion is increasingly popular in Bulgaria and represents the largest share of internet advertising in our country. It also allows for easy and effective analysis, as well as for creating lasting relationships with users who are excited about your activities, offers and events.
- LinkedIn helps you reach potential users from over 200 countries, engaged with the topic that is the focus of your online event. It makes it easier to find visitors for your event, allows for customer connectivity, and has an extremely convenient and smart search engine. The platform is an excellent way to support promotion. It allows you to distribute a variety of advertising content - online event promotions and advertisements, presented thematically to a specific target audience in a professional manner. LinkedIn is an ideal communication channel with which to reach highly educated professionals who are part of the business as a whole.
Banners posted on specialized sites and groups
When you post about an online event, you need to make sure you’re reaching people who are interested in the topic. One way to do this is to post in relevant groups and sites. Posting a promotion for a webinar on cars on a site for moms, for example, won’t do you any good. If the event is specialized and aimed at a specific group of people, find a place that these people enjoy visiting and promote it there.
Make the most of the power of email marketing
Email marketing is still one of the most effective promotional strategies in a wide range of business areas. It is a very good idea to send email newsletters to your email list to inform them about an upcoming virtual event. To enhance the impact and interest in the event, it is especially important to rely on graphic and audio-visual elements to successfully convey engagement, even in an online format.
YouTube
Creating a video of a previous event, showing its success, benefit and significance, and sharing it on YouTube afterwards, allows you to reach more potential customers. Maintaining a YouTube channel with regular subscribers is a good way to promote the activity and organized online events.
Blog
Maintaining a blog is an affordable and useful way to engage users and create a lasting audience that follows your activities – reads the articles published there regularly and is excited by your suggestions and advice. A blog is an effective and profitable means of promoting your new events. Professional blog support The section guarantees high performance not only in terms of promoting online events, but also in general for the modern online presence of businesses.
Remarketing
Remarketing is a way to inform users who have visited your site or page, shown interest in events you organize or used your services, about new offers and upcoming events. Customers who have interacted with you, were impressed or satisfied, are much more likely to join the upcoming event or recommend it to other users.
Where should we not promote online events?
Avoid promoting online events through printed advertising materials, such as flyers. Online events do not correspond to print, unlike business events that are to be physically held on a specific day and time. Another disadvantage of advertising virtual events through print is that you can't refine the audience – flyers and brochures usually are distributed randomly and in directions. This way they reach mainly people who either don't read them at all, are not interested in online events, or don't use the internet outside of their work duties. Online events should be promoted primarily online.
Who can help us?
There are several aspects of creating and promoting an online event that should be entrusted to specialists. It would be a good idea to trust copywriting services both for creating the text content for the event and for his presence on social networks. As for the overall vision of the event, the need for the services of a designer is inevitable. Marketers are the specialists you can trust for online advertising campaigns,and to more easily achieve the set goals and results.
