Social eCommerce

Chapter 11. Event Promotion

Promoting events such as concerts, seminars, conferences, classes, and workshops requires a slightly different strategy from other ecommerce categories. For non–speaking events such as concerts, games, or tournaments, it’s simply a matter of designing great ads, spending enough money on the campaign, and doing extra-fine-grained targeting.

Speaking and teaching events (conferences, classes, etc.) involve more work to prove the value and importance of the content. People are going to spend a lot of money not just to attend your event, but probably also to travel there. This chapter deals mostly with four kinds of events:

• Digital (virtual)
• Local
• Regional
• International

Each requires a different approach to ad targeting when you’re trying to attract the largest audience.

Within the digital category, there are three subcategories that you should keep in mind when thinking of your marketing strategy:

• Automated (seems like it’s live, but it’s actually prerecorded)
• Prerecorded
• Live

Establish Thought Leadership

The first thing you need to do is show that the event is going to be worthwhile—interesting, engaging, and valuable. To do that, you’ve got to establish the thought-leadership status of the people who are speaking at the event. This is true even for virtual events.

Your speakers should be doing a certain amount of this (as well as promoting your event) on their own. Check with them to make sure that they’re mentioning the event on social media, and ask ...