This event marketing to-do list has been formulated from past events that I have designed, implemented, and successfully promoted. It’s filled with fun and crucial details – on valuable use of Facebook, Twitter, and more.
This essential art marketing list can and should be customized to meet your precise purposes. This particular sample design is devised to market a theoretical arts event for which you are spearheading the marketing efforts for an organization. Before we get into the rest of this formula, we should make sure you have all the right ingredients:
– A clear grasp of what marketing is and is not
– A Google Calendar or iCal
– A Facebook (FB) account
– A Twitter account
– A Youtube account (optional but recommended)
– A dedicated website (also optional but strongly recommended)
– An email address
– A phone
– And of course, an exciting function that you want to promote
What Marketing Is and Is not
I deal principally in effectual referral marketing or inbound marketing, sometimes also referred to as word-of-mouth marketing or evangelism. The kind of marketing that is driven by excitement instead of inundation. Be cautioned, it is a thin line between love and spam. It is vital that you sincerely understand the distinction before you start on any of the action steps, or you will risk reversing the desired outcome – that is, you could very well deter people from buying into your event, product or service.
Though I am about to show you how to methodize your marketing, please know that the best marketing is that which is based on partnerships and human-to-human interactions. Thus, these tools and practices can only be extensions of your true self – your personal character, your beliefs, and your interests. With that said, if your marketing is slightly irritating in person, the masses will experience your advertising as hugely annoying when you apply this strategy, perceiving you as self-involved and robotic. If your marketing is genuine in person, the general public will receive your efforts as a favor to them – not to your self-interest.
How does your marketing affect your audience?
Allow me to present you with a hypothetical situation. The club is emptying at the end of the night and there’s a woman hitting up the same line over and over while handing out flyers. You take the flyer and surprisingly like what you see. One of your favorite acts is playing next Saturday. You ask her a couple of questions about the show, but she is too busy to respond to you because she is papering everyone else with flyers. She has you fill out her mailing list for the guest list. And when you show up at the function, she scarcely remembers your encounter. Then you learn she normally promotes functions for a music style you don’t like all that much. But now you get email messages for shows you don’t necessarily enjoy. There are no opt-out capabilities on the messages so you have no choice but to mark them as spam.
Was this fictional promoter a terrible marketer? Even worse. She was a lousy empathizer, an terrible listener, and not anyone that you’d consider a trustworthy co-worker or companion. This is a sample of ‘outbound’ marketing, also interruption marketing, repeatedly copy-pasting text and movements. If she had shown genuine empathy and listening, she could have secured a new alliance, repeat support, evangelism, and we may not remember her as such a nuisance today.
That is the secret to marketing. Respect your audience and your audience will care for you.
Basic DOs and DON’Ts
– DON’T promote in robot fashion, even if you are using automation software.
– DON’T copy-paste, except for URLs. NO letter templates either.
– DON’T use unfavorable emotions in your cause like guilt or fear.
– DON’T use the words “benefit” or “fundraiser” even if your event is one – see above bullet. This includes “support” which values the promoter’s interests over the patron’s.
– DON’T promote indiscriminately.
– DO make clear the many benefits for your audience.
– DO recognize and give attention to your committed followers.
– DO customize your messages to individuals.
– DO vary the vocabulary in your regular mass messaging.
– DO promptly reply to questions.
– DO publicly and personally acknowledge your supporters.
PREPARATION
These are the approaches you will take right before executing your plan. It is critical that you have a fine relationship with your calendar, allowing yourself the means to zoom in and out of the details as needed. For instance, you should be able to effortlessly go from the three-month plan to focus in on a particular week or day at will. Structuring your marketing strategy far ahead will help you do this.
1. Open your calendar (like iCal or Google Calendar) and create a distinct calendar for your event.
2. Indicate critical dates starting back three months from the event: T-Minus twelve weeks, ten weeks, eight, six, four, two, one, target date, and lastly, T-Plus one week. To illustrate, an event on Wednesday, April 20th, 2011 would have the following as notable dates:
January 26
February 9
February 23
March 9
March 23
April 6
April 20
May 4
3. Create a daily check-in list. It could very well look something like this:
Review Social Networks
– Assess FB page
– Look at FB event page
– Check Twitter account
Check in with artists Examine Press Release and Copy for Mass Emails, Send by due date(s)
Check in with staff
Be sure that website info is up-to-date
This is only a sample. The most important thing is that you have a full list that records every aspect and required task, from which you can create sub-lists for specific categories and/or delegation. Review this regularly.
4. Setup a project folder to house and keep all your resources organized. It will contain among other things:
– A Contact Sheet for staff, artists, venue contact, vendor contact, etc.
– Your daily checklist from above
– The tailored Must-Have Action List which we’ll examine in the next pages
– Any hard-copy samples of any verbiage or graphic design materials
– Day-of event materials list
– Day-of event to-do list
THE ACTION LIST
The key to superb referral marketing is regular and organic conversation and approachability. While the schedule should be a well-oiled machine, the communication itself should be ANYTHING other than mechanical.
12 weeks to event:
Collect all relevant bios and photographs from your artists. By the way, good photographs are hugely important. All photos should be hi-res (minimum 300 ppi), no graphic design, and all uploaded to a service like Google’s Picasa for easy download. These pics should be of human beings. Faces and action photos are most appealing.
10 weeks to event:
– Have a fun writing/brainstorm activity with your staff and principal volunteers to think up good headlines and tag lines for both the Press Release and the Mass Emails. Where’s the twist, the angle, the humor, the scarcity? Include in this brainstorm possible partners and sites to promote, both on the web and in the real world, e.g. Online: Craigslist, Squidlist, FlavorPill, Yelp, etc. Real world: universities, arts venues, events, and cultural organizations. Schedule working these partners and co-presenters into your strategy. And also, administer staff to give presentations and manage the creation and dissemination of materials for each.
8 weeks to event:
– Create draft 1 of your press release.- Post the event specifics on the homepage of your online site, plainly featuring any cool photos or promo video, with very special attention to event basics: where, when, ticket link, contact information.
– Start Social Networking buzz making the most of the collected information from the brainstorm. Publish your Facebook event and initiate invitations.
A critical note on Facebook events and invites: Once in a while, I see improperly coordinated squad members making numerous event pages for the exact same affair. This is a weakness. Having multiple event pages confuses your traffic hugely. Even more so when you seek to make special announcements.
TIP: Do NOT send mass invites right at the start. Target top-quality invitees first – Folks likely to attend or promote the event even if they can’t be there. As they rsvp YES, publicly acknowledge them on FB, tell them you look forward to seeing them, and nicely ask them to repost. This is fundamental to establishing social networking momentum. As others plainly respond NO, delete them from the invitation entirely. However, the NO RSVPs that go out of their way to write on the event’s wall are still showing support. So keep them on the list, reply to their comment by publicly acknowledging them anyway, and ask them to help advertise the event via repost if possible. As the yesses build up, proceed to invite more guests, repeating the above steps as necessary.
Why the slow invite directive? The universal public is judicious and is more likely to participate in what has already been socially approved by reliable sources. Those trusted sources are buddies and respected members of the community. And they are also the masses of people giving your event the thumbs up.
By more mindfully inviting audience to your FB event page, you can check the responses and insure that it is indeed socially accredited right up until the event start. On the flip side, impersonal promoters invite absolutely everyone at once. Say you have 500 friends. But because FB is international, only 100 actually reside in your city. Now, 50% of the out-of-towners automatically rsvp NO and the other 50% do not reply at all. Of the locals 20% (your die-hards) say YES, 20% say MAYBE, and 20% say NO due to schedule skirmishes or plain lack of interest. Those are in fact decent numbers! However, when the remaining 40% of locals show up to your event page, they’ll see 20 attending, 20 maybe attending, 220 not attending, and 240 awaiting reply, i.e. unimpressed.
– Twitter. Most people and groups highly under-employ their Twitter accounts. You should be posting frequently on notable topics even if they’re not directly related to anything you’re marketing. A super way to do this is to just re-tweet provocative info from relevant organizations, media outlets, or high profile people. In this manner, your audience will connect you with important and applicable subject matter in any situation. It is a MUST to keep the language fresh (no repeat copy-pasting ever) and try posting up to four times a day on anything fruitful or fun in the focus of your organization’s mission.
6 weeks:
– Generate YouTube videos!
A well-made video can be a remarkably effective tool. An editor with an eye and ear is key. Following the classic length of film trailers, do 2.5 to 3 minutes maximum. These can be interviews, mini-docs, or music videos. Anything exciting, sharp, weird, and above all, engaging. Include titles for the event details: name, tagline, date, place. If done well, these will be re-posted by your artists and the network at large.
NOTE: Some of your artists may already have remarkable videos. These should be leaked over time via social networks, e.g. a new video highlighted and multi-posted per week.
– Review and edit the 2nd draft of your press release.
– Continue everyday management of FB and Twitter accounts. Email artists to check in with them and remind them to post event info on their blogs and sites, and to pass out flyers where their audience gathers. Another great way to cross-promote is to use the [@name] option when promoting the event on both FB and Twitter. This will automatically multi-post for you. Remember to check for retweets so you can call attention to people in public for supporting your event. Also, it is not untypical to retweet retweets! It’s a fairly easy way to let people in your network know that others are cheering you on.
– Send Mass Email #1. This email is a TEASER and as such, should be short and written and subject-lined as a personalized email, perhaps even signed like one, e.g: Thanks!Anthem Salgado or Would love to see you there!The Art Of Hustle Party Planners
4 weeks:
– Send the ultimate draft of your press release to all local media. For papers, see what departments (e.g. theater, arts, culture, and definitely all calendar listings editors) your event may be handed in to, possibly more than one. Include links to high-res pics and to your YouTube video(s) so that writers and editors can consider and download materials with ease. Plenty of papers also have event forms to complete online – make sure you’re following the steps. Even if you have seldom or have never appeared in the newspaper, don’t overlook it. Even if editors and writers aren’t publicizing your events, they are definitely still perusing your press releases so it’s a good way to sustain relationships, informing chief media professionals of your organization’s events.
– Proceed with day-by-day administration of FB and Twitter accounts. At this moment, you can safely add progressively more invitees to your event, keeping in mind NOT to re-invite people you’ve already deleted for their NO rsvp. Doing so would be upsetting and potentially damaging.
– Publish the event invite to the FB pages of targeted high-quality people – folks with a lot of FB activity, leaders, EDs, ADs, visible community folks. Remember, this is NOT spam. Each one should have a personalized hello and should be reserved for people you would in fact like to see come.
– Call your artists. Calling your artists personalizes the experience for them so they don’t feel like they’re being advertised to either. It helps them feel connection and buy-in, and it’s a useful way to check the pulse of the interest.
– Send Mass Email #2. This would be your official announcement including all the crucial facts. Incorporate any media hype or supportive quotes. Because this may be rather detailed, remember to format it so the eye can smoothly scan to particular bits of data: When is it? Where is it? How do I buy tickets?
2 weeks:
Call, call, call. This is an ideal time to make personalized phone calls to core individuals (good friends, leaders, visible personalities). These should NOT and NEVER be marketing calls. These are honest check-ins that ask: “How are you? What are you up to? (Offer counsel, helpful hints, sources). Great, let me know how we can collaborate (And mean it!). Anyway, did you read about our event next week? It should be lots of fun. Can you make it?”
A NOTE ON COMPS: Usually, complimentary tickets should go to folks you owe favors to (teachers, longtime supporters, etc.); however, tactically thinking, consider also who would be likely to broadcast the event, i.e. talk up the show amongst their contacts whether in person or in public via social networks. These are not deals or trades of any kind, but rather calculated wagers on individuals who might expand your audience by virtue of social “stickiness”.
1 week to event:
Send Mass Email #3. This should be a mix of personalized and official email. Start off with the casual hello and announcement, followed by the official particulars and information. Again, include any media hype or supportive blurbs. Now, every tweet should be related to your specific one event, and little else. Again, up to four or so times a day, capitalizing on retweets and any quotes and media.
Event day:
– Publish your last tweets and FB announcements. I would even incorporate a cheerful text message reminder to special associates. Though almost all of your energy should really go towards operations and preparation.
– STILL, you should have designated digital camera persons for both still and motion pictures. These individuals needn’t be masters but they should definitely know their tools extremely well in order to maximize on the archival process. You will need these photos and recordings to report back to the public post-event and for forthcoming promotions and all around “social capital”.
– Plus, for an added social boost, designate a live tweeter, ideally somebody with a smart phone. Taking pictures and tweeting about the excitement is a very smart way to draw last minute walk-ins.
Post-event, T-Plus 1 week:
It’s not done yet. Not taking care of follow-up after the event is a BIG waste of momentum.
– Upload exceptional event photos to an account (e.g. Flickr or Picasa, and certainly FB). Edit and upload the extremely fun event video clip to YouTube and FB – again, something short and appealing, event highlights and audience opinions, like those old Broadway TV ads – “Oh, it was far better than Cats!” – Email and call core persons (your die-hard believers) to thank them personally. Publicly thank all the people possible via twitter AND on each person’s FB page. Include the links to the photos and videos for your guests. Your guests will feel loved. And any person who missed the event will wish they hadn’t and will know not to pass over the next one! This is the regular life cycle of publicizing for ANY event. You’ll learn when you adopt this process that you will get considerable spikes in online interaction, plus new “followers” and “friends”. Congratulations!
Ending NOTE: You’ve done it! You have learned the importance of:
– Compassion in marketing
– Organizing far in advance
– Using a trustworthy calendar system
– Keeping a master list for project particulars
– Becoming familiar with social networking manners and practices
– Personalizing your communications
– Momentum-building and follow-through
This understanding equips you with a solid map to be tailored to meet your needs. And this is only the beginning! Continue to instruct yourself and your group on effective language, communication, project management, outreach, team building, professional development for artists, and more! Revel in your pursuit. There is a lot to take in and to enjoy. I bid you endless adventure and curiosity.