When was the last time you bought tickets to an event the old-fashioned way? Quite a tough question? Perhaps you bought tickets for your child’s school play. The reality is that, since nearly all ticket sales have moved online, event promotion has drastically changed. Whether you’re promoting a conference, music festival, training workshop or charity fundraiser, there are many free ways to promote events online.

These are our top tips and a few creative ideas to get you started;

Digital Media

Video can be expensive to produce but there are creative ways to whip up a video to draw attention to your event. Do you have footage from a previous event? If so, consider pulling out specific elements and freshening it up with a new background track. If you're hosting a music event, ask your acts for permission to use their footage to promote your lineup. Once you’ve got a video put together, embed on your event page, and share to your audience via social media.

Content Marketing

Create a unique content that ties into your event. If you’re organizing a conference, engage your speakers to answer a few questions for an interview style post or find out if they have content to share as a guest post. If you’re planning  a theatre show, ask actors to share their stories or engage your social audience to suggest questions. Tell the stories of those touched by your charity or cause, if you’re organizing a charity event.

Social Media

This is probably the most referenced method for promoting an event for free online. Just beware that over-promotion on social media isn’t well received. Promotional posts shouldn’t account for more than 10-20% of your daily or weekly updates. Find creative ways to plug your event by sharing a blog post like those mentioned above or an infographic related to the theme or topic of your event. If you’re managing a conference or business event, check out Evvnt’s post on using LinkedIn to promote events.

Get Fans to do it For You

Incentivize your audience and attendees to share the event with their friends. For example, if an attendee signups up 5 friends they receive a free drink, free ticket upgrade, free track of your headlining artist. Alternatively, you could giveaway tickets to your event to create shares and buzz around your event. Encourage your audience to share the contest in order to boost entries or chance of winning.

Email Marketing

Send event invitations to your existing database. If you don’t have an existing database, once you’ve started to receive registrations you can email them updates and news about your event as well as any special offers. If you are collecting personal information in order to create a tailored event experience, consider how you can start using this information through email ahead of the event.

We don’t profess to hold the secret formula to promoting events for free or argue that these ideas are revolutionary. We do however, focus on providing our users with the best possible, free-to-set-up platform, enabling them to create uncluttered, professional event sites, promote and sell tickets, register attendees and view the success of the event with at-a-glance analytics.

Create a free account and explore the platform in your own time. We’re just a click or call away to answer your questions and if you’re planning an event in January, don’t forget we’re still running our 50% off January promotion!