Chapter 59
Event Marketing Strategies
Do you promote offline events?
Holding events is one of the best ways to grow your business. It positions you as the expert in your field and puts you in front of multiple prospects all at one time. My favorite word: leverage! As we discussed in Chapter 58, you can start a group or club on any number of platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo! Groups, Google Groups, and Meetup. But the challenge of actually promoting these events remains. Let's look at a few marketing strategies that can help drive registrations.
First, you may already know that you can post your events on a huge number of websites including Craigslist, WorkIt, Meetup, Plancast, and many local media websites. Problem: doing this is a major pain in the neck. Every platform has different submission requirements and online forms, not to mention the challenge of knowing all the relevant websites to begin with. As luck would have it, there's an online service that solves the problem. FullCalendar is a platform where you pay $19.95 and upload your event information just once and then have them populate dozens or even hundreds of other websites on your behalf.
The FullCalendar service is available only in major U.S. cities (listed on their homepage) but if you happen to live in one of these cities, it's a great way to get the word out quickly and easily (and inexpensively). I once had an event in downtown San Francisco and marketed it only on FullCalendar. ...
